Astaxanthin: Super-Antioxidant & Neuroprotectant

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Think Pink For Brain Health!

Astaxanthin is a carotenoid that’s found in:

  • certain marine microalgae
  • tiny crustaceans that eat the algae
  • fish (and flamingos!) that eat the crustaceans

Yes, it’s the one that makes things pink.

But it does a lot more than that…

Super-antioxidant

Move over, green tea! Astaxanthin has higher antioxidant activity than most carotenoids. For example, it is 2–5 times more effective than alpha-carotene, lutein, beta-carotene, and lycopene:

Antioxidant activities of astaxanthin and related carotenoids

We can’t claim credit for naming it a super-antioxidant though, because:

Astaxanthin: A super antioxidant from microalgae and its therapeutic potential

Grow new brain cells

Axtaxanthin is a neuroprotectant, but that’s to be expected from something with such a powerful antioxidant ability.

What’s more special to astaxanthin is that it assists continued adult neurogenesis (creation of new brain cells):

❝The unique chemical structure of astaxanthin enables it to cross the blood-brain barrier and easily reach the brain, where it may positively influence adult neurogenesis.

Furthermore, astaxanthin appears to modulate neuroinflammation by suppressing the NF-κB pathway, reducing the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, and limiting neuroinflammation associated with aging and chronic microglial activation.

By modulating these pathways, along with its potent antioxidant properties, astaxanthin may contribute to the restoration of a healthy neurogenic microenvironment, thereby preserving the activity of neurogenic niches during both normal and pathological aging. ❞

Source: Dietary Astaxanthin: A Promising Antioxidant and Anti-Inflammatory Agent for Brain Aging and Adult Neurogenesis

That first part is very important, by the way! There are so many things that our brain needs, and we can eat, but the molecules are unable to pass the blood-brain barrier, meaning they either get wasted, or used elsewhere, or dismantled for their constituent parts. In this case, it zips straight into the brain instead.

See also:

How To Grow New Brain Cells (At Any Age)

(Probably) good for the joints, too

First, astaxanthin got a glowing report in a study we knew not to trust blindly:

A Multicenter, Randomized, Double-Blinded, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Efficacy and Safety of a Krill Oil, Astaxanthin, and Oral Hyaluronic Acid Complex on Joint Health in People with Mild Osteoarthritis

…and breathe. What a title that was! But, did you catch why it’s not to be trusted blindly? It was down at the bottom…

❝Conflict of interest statement

NOVAREX Co., Ltd. funded the study. Valensa International provided the FlexPro MD® ingredients, and NOVAREX Co., Ltd. encapsulated the test products (e.g., both FlexPro MD® and placebo)❞

Studies where a supplement company funded the study are not necessarily corrupt, but they can certainly sway publication bias, i.e. the company funds a bunch of studies and then pulls funding from the ones that aren’t going the way it wants.

So instead let’s look at:

Astaxanthin attenuates joint inflammation induced by monosodium urate crystals

and

Astaxanthin ameliorates cartilage damage in experimental osteoarthritis

…which had no such conflicts of interest.

They agree that astaxanthin indeed does the things (attenuates joint inflammation & ameliorates cartilage damage).

However, they are animal studies (rats), so we’d like to see studies with humans to be able to say for sure how much it helps these things.

Summary of benefits

Based on the available research, astaxanthin…

  • is indeed a super-antioxidant
  • is a neuroprotective agent
  • also assists adult neurogenesis
  • is probablygood for joints too

How much do I take, and is it safe?

A 2019 safety review concluded:

❝Recommended or approved doses varied in different countries and ranged between 2 and 24 mg.

We reviewed 87 human studies, none of which found safety concerns with natural astaxanthin supplementation, 35 with doses ≥12 mg/day.❞

Source: Astaxanthin: How much is too much? A safety review

In short: for most people, it’s very safe and well-tolerated. If you consume it to an extreme, you will likely turn pink, much as you would turn orange if you did the same thing with carrots. But aside from that, the risks appear to be minimal.

However! If you have a seafood allergy, please take care to get a supplement that’s made from microalgae, not one that’s made from krill or other crustaceans, or from other creatures that eat those.

Where can I get it?

We don’t sell it, but here’s an example product on Amazon, for your convenience

Enjoy!

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  • Better Sex Through Mindfulness – by Dr. Lori Brotto

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    Female sexuality is such a taboo topic that, if one searches for (ob/gyn professor, women’s health research director, and psychologist) Dr. Brotto’s book on Google or Amazon, it suggests only “lori brotto mindfulness book”. So, for those brave enough to read a book that would have shocked Victorians, what does this one contain?

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  • How To Eat To Lose Belly Fat (3 Stages)

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    Belly fat is easier to gain than it is to lose, and it’s absolutely something that needs more attention in the kitchen than in the gym. Here’s one way of doing it:

    By the numbers

    First note: this video is by a man, and judging by the numbers mentioned, assumes that the viewer is also a man. An end goal of 10% body fat is a little on the low side for men, and would be dangerous for women. The magic 15% mark that he mentions as being a point where various metabolic things change, is more like 20% for women. All assuming normal hormones, of course, since it is hormones that direct this.

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    With that in mind…

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    • Stage 1: count calories (we don’t usually recommend this at 10almonds, but he does, so we’re reporting it here) and use your weight in pounds multiplied by 12 to give your daily calorie target. Make the majority of your diet foods that have a large volume:calorie ratio, such as fruits and vegetables, in order to feel full without overloading your metabolism. He has an interesting method of calculating a protein target; instead of the usual “1g/kg of body weight”, he says 1g per cm of height. Doing this consistently should get you to 15% body fat (so, 20%, for women).
    • Stage 2: start counting fat intake too, and aim for 20–25% of your daily calories as fat. Continue, aside from that, with what you were doing in Stage 1. Doing this consistently should get you to 12% body fat (so, about 17%, for women). Being under the usual healthy level for a while should allow your body to start getting rid of visceral fat.
    • Stage 3: track everything, levelling up your precision (no more “this little thing doesn’t count”), and planning ahead when it comes to social events etc. Doing this consistently should yet you to 10% body fat (so, about 15%, for women). This stage has a good chance of making most people miserable, so if that happens, consider the benefits of going back to the healthier 15% body fat (men) or 20% (women).

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    Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose Itwithout calorie-counting! We prefer this 😉

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  • If You’re Poor, Fertility Treatment Can Be Out of Reach

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    Mary Delgado’s first pregnancy went according to plan, but when she tried to get pregnant again seven years later, nothing happened. After 10 months, Delgado, now 34, and her partner, Joaquin Rodriguez, went to see an OB-GYN. Tests showed she had endometriosis, which was interfering with conception. Delgado’s only option, the doctor said, was in vitro fertilization.

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  • Are GMOs Good Or Bad For Us?

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    Unzipping Our Food’s Genes

    In yesterday’s newsletter, we asked you for your (health-related) views on GMOs.

    But what does the science say?

    First, a note on terms

    Technically, we (humans) have been (g)enetically (m)odifying (o)rganisms for thousands of years.

    If you eat a banana, you are enjoying the product of many generations of artificial selection, to change its genes to produce a fruit that is soft, sweet, high in nutrients, and digestible without cooking. The original banana plant would be barely recognizable to many people now (and also, barely edible). We’ve done similarly with countless other food products.

    So in this article, we’re going to be talking exclusively about modern genetic modification of organisms, using exciting new (ish, new as in “in the last century”) techniques to modify the genes directly, in a copy-paste fashion.

    For more details on the different kinds of genetic modification of organisms, and how they’re each done (including the modern kinds), check out this great article from Sciencing, who explain it in more words than we have room for here:

    Sciencing | How Are GMOs Made?

    (the above also offers tl;dr section summaries, which are great too)

    GMOS are outright dangerous (cancer risks, unknown risks, etc): True or False?

    False, so far as we know, in any direct* fashion. Obviously “unknown risks” is quite a factor, since those are, well, unknown. But GMOs on the market undergo a lot of safety testing, and have invariably passed happily.

    *However! Glyphosate (the herbicide), on the other hand, has a terrible safety profile and is internationally banned in very many countries for this reason.

    Why is this important? Because…

    • in the US (and two out of ten Canadian provinces), glyphosate is not banned
    • In the US (and we may hypothesize, those two Canadian provinces) one of the major uses of genetic modification of foodstuffs is to make it resistant to glyphosate
    • Consequently, GMO foodstuffs grown in those places have generally been liberally doused in glyphosate

    So… It’s not that the genetic modification itself makes the food dangerous and potentially carcinogenic (it doesn’t), but it is that the genetic modification makes it possible to use a lot more glyphosate without losing crops to glyphosate’s highly destructive properties.

    Which results in the end-consumer eating glyphosate. Which is not good. For example:

    ❝Following the landmark case against Monsanto, which saw them being found liable for a former groundskeeper, 46 year old Dewayne Johnson’s cancer, 32 countries have to date banned the use of Glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer. The court awarded Johnson R4.2 billion in damages finding Monsanto “acted with malice or oppression”.❞

    Source: see below!

    You can read more about where glyphosate is and isn’t banned, here:

    33 countries ban the use of Glyphosate—the key ingredient in Roundup

    For the science of this (and especially the GMO → glyphosate use → cancer pipeline), see:

    Use of Genetically Modified Organism (GMO)-Containing Food Products in Children

    GMOs are extra healthy because of the modifications (they were designed for that, right?): True or False?

    True or False depending on who made them and why! As we’ve seen above, not all companies seem to have the best interests of consumer health in mind.

    However, they can be! Here are a couple of great examples:

    ❝Recently, two genome-edited crops targeted for nutritional improvement, high GABA tomatoes and high oleic acid soybeans, have been released to the market.

    Nutritional improvement in cultivated crops has been a major target of conventional genetic modification technologies as well as classical breeding methods❞

    Source: Drs. Nagamine & Ezura

    Read in full: Genome Editing for Improving Crop Nutrition

    (note, they draw a distinction of meaning between genome editing and genetic modification, according to which of two techniques is used, but for the purposes of our article today, this is under the same umbrella)

    Want to know more?

    If you’d like to read more about this than we have room for here, here’s a great review in the Journal of Food Science & Nutrition:

    Should we still worry about the safety of GMO foods? Why and why not? A review

    Take care!

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