Oral Glutathione Pills
Swallowed glutathione is largely dismantled before it is absorbed.
What Doesn't Work in Delivery
Most delivery failures in the supplement market are predictable from first principles. This section takes three widely sold formats, explains why they underperform, and states what would have to change for them to work.
Why these three
Each represents a different failure mode. Oral glutathione fails at the intestinal wall, where the tripeptide is hydrolyzed to its constituent amino acids before absorption. Liposomal labeling fails as information, because the term is unregulated in supplements and is applied to products with no vesicle characterization. Oral NAD+ capsules fail at the compartment question, since the cofactor is cleaved before absorption and plasma levels say little about intracellular pools in any case.
The pattern
In all three cases the marketing claim skips a step in the physiology. A molecule present in a capsule is not a molecule in circulation, and a molecule in circulation is not a molecule inside the cell that needs it. The useful question for a formulator is which of those three transitions the product actually demonstrates, and with what assay. Where a product demonstrates none of them, the correct description is a precursor strategy, not a delivery breakthrough.
What Vegalab takes from it
These pages exist because Vegalab's pipeline includes formats in the same categories, including a glutathione and a nicotinamide mononucleotide program. Publishing the failure modes sets the standard our own formulations have to meet: measured release, measured stability, and an honest statement of which compartment was sampled. Pipeline products are in development, not on sale, and availability depends on the regulatory pathway in each market. Each page therefore ends with the study design that would settle the question, so a partner can compare a supplier's data package against a fixed standard instead of against marketing copy.
Key facts
- Intestinal and hepatic gamma-glutamyltransferase hydrolyze glutathione, and a single oral dose did not meaningfully raise circulating glutathione in humans (Witschi et al. 1992, Eur J Clin Pharmacol 43:667)
- The term liposomal is not a defined or enforced specification for dietary supplements in the US (21 CFR 101; no liposome standard exists in supplement labeling rules)
- Extracellular NAD+ is cleaved by CD73 and related ectoenzymes before cellular uptake (Nikiforov et al. 2011, J Biol Chem 286:21767)
- Oral nicotinamide riboside raised whole blood NAD+ in healthy adults, with whole blood rather than plasma as the measured endpoint (Trammell et al. 2016, Nat Commun 7:12948)
How our delivery technology applies
A carrier earns its place only where it addresses the actual failure step. For a brush-border-hydrolyzed tripeptide, that means an inner matrix that excludes peptidases until past the point of degradation. For an oxidation-sensitive thiol, it means a moisture and oxygen barrier for shelf life. Naming the step first is what separates a formulation program from a label word.
Ask us which step your current formulation actually clears.
Everything Labeled Liposomal
In dietary supplements, liposomal is a marketing word rather than a specification.
Oral NAD+ Capsules
Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide is not absorbed intact in any useful quantity.
Related reading
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