The Health Benefits of Fucoidan

Fucoidan - Science long ago proved that the earth’s surface is comprised of 85% water, the major portion of which is saltwater. Although humans cannot safely consume saltwater, our seas provide an abundance of living nutrients whose existence and uses are only now being investigated. Edible seaweeds and echinoderms are among this group and they have proven a rich source of Fucoidans.

Fucoidans are sugars comprised of a complex mixture of fucose, galactose, mannose and uronic acid. While mankind has learned to cultivate and extract fructose, glucose, lactose and sucrose from ready sources, fucoidans have been long overlooked. They are one of the largest molecular sugars known to exist, but collecting the raw materials and consistently refining the sugar is challenging.

Brown seaweeds offer the highest concentration of fucoidans and individual seaweeds produce specific fucoidans. This is not dissimilar to antioxidant sources: fruits and vegetables. The colors of fruits and vegetables represent specific families of antioxidants. Optimal nutritional support is achieved by eating a wide variety of antioxidants daily in order to provide the best protection to the body’s cellular structure.

Various extraction techniques are employed in industry in an effort to preserve and deliver the highest quality fucoidan available in nutritional supplementation. The process begins with the selection of seaweeds to ensure a comprehensive selection of fucoidans. The raw seaweed is stabilized in water through its extraction process to maintain stability in the molecular weight and ionic charge of the material. It seems that this is critical to producing the highest quality fucoidans. Once extracted, the fucoidans are converted into a powdered formula that can then be reconstituted for use in beverages and other dietary supplements.

Widely used in certain Asian cultures for hundreds of years, seaweeds – and particularly certain varieties of brown seaweeds – have been revered for their ability to stabilize health and speed healing. In recent years fucoidans have been more widely studied for their ability to heal and protect the body from acute illness such as virus to chronic illness like cancer.

When battling viruses it seems that the fucoidans bolster the cellular protection to prevent the introduction of the virus into the healthy cell. Further, they seem to inhibit the ability of the virus to replicate by preventing the replication of the virus in adjacent healthy cells.

On a cellular level cancer acts much like a virus, spreading through a replication of the diseased cellular structure. Again, due to the fucoidans’ ability to protect the healthy cell there is increased resistance to the spread of the disease throughout the body. With the rising numbers of circulatory disorders compounded by chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart and atherosclerosis, fucoidans offer a natural, effective alternative to pharmaceutical treatment. It offers highly effective anti-clotting and clot-lysing agents, which have been proven to reduce risk of developing heart disease.

As clinical trials expand and its health benefits become more widely considered and publicized, fucoidans will most likely become readily utilized in alternative medicine. If you choose to incorporate fucoidans into your diet in an effort to improve your overall cellular health and long-term health outlook it is imperative to ensure that the product you select has been manufactured to the highest standards.

Fucoidans produced utilizing these basic guidelines provide the most stable molecular structure and greatest efficacy.

Much more than Fucoidan is discussed back at the Natural Source Vitamins Homepage