Dear Friends,
Astaxanthin is one of the most powerful antioxidants in nature – and the research on how it may help us as a supplement continues to evolve.
To get the latest and explore why astaxanthin is so unique, I interviewed Dr. Karen Hecht and Dr. Susan Hamrahi from AstaReal, the premier cultivator of astaxanthin for supplements.
Dr. Hecht is the Vice President of Science and Dr. Hamrahi works in Scientific Communications.
Here is Part 1 of the interview:
Carl: So Karen, a lot of people watched our last episode from three years ago. But for those who aren't familiar with astaxanthin, maybe just take a minute to explain what it is, why it's so unique, and why it can be valuable to our health.
Dr. Karen Hecht: So even if you haven't heard of astaxanthin, you may have seen it on your plate at some point. Astaxanthin is an antioxidant member of the carotenoid family. And carotenoids are the yellows, oranges, and reds that you find in your food, primarily in fruits and vegetables. So you might think of beta-carotene and carrots, lycopene and tomatoes.
But while we get most of the carotenoids in our diet from fruits and vegetables, astaxanthin is not found in any edible terrestrial plants. And so we would have to turn to the red in a lobster or salmon or prawn or crab. You would find it in red colored seafood. So astaxanthin is the red carotenoid that contributes that pigment, the red color, to those foods. And the best source in our diet is from sockeye salmon, wild sockeye salmon at that. So that's where astaxanthin is found on our plates.
Carl: A very important distinction because a lot of farm-raised salmon has a synthetic version of astaxanthin just to create that color. Is that still the case?
Dr. Karen Hecht: That is still the case. And most of us consume primarily farmed salmon, it’s just what's more available on the market. So when you're choosing wild salmon, you are getting a natural form of astaxanthin that makes its way through the food chain up to the salmon's diet. And when we're talking about supplementation, we're also talking about this natural form that, in our case, it does not come from salmon. Rather, it comes from a naturally occurring algae called Haematococcus pluvialis. And it makes the same form or type of astaxanthin that you would find in the wild sockeye salmon as opposed to the farm.
Carl: Astaxanthin is one of the most powerful antioxidants in nature. What makes it so unique and powerful?
Dr. Karen Hecht: So astaxanthin has a unique structure that allows it to span the full thickness of the cell membrane. It’s long enough to do this. It also has the kind of architecture that matches the cell membrane, which means it has these oxygens on the ends, on either end of the molecule. So if you picture kind of like a dumbbell structure on the ends, you've got those oxygens that do the free radical quenching.
And in terms of its in vitro power to quench free radicals, there is a study that did a direct comparison with other antioxidants and found that astaxanthin was number one in terms of quenching singlet oxygen. And it was 6,000 times stronger than vitamin C in this capacity in this experiment. And I frame it that way because a lot of people are very familiar with vitamin C as an antioxidant. It's one of the most used antioxidants in supplements today. Of course, astaxanthin does not replace vitamin C, which is an essential nutrient for us, but just gives you a sense of how powerful it is at neutralizing free radicals.
Carl: And Susan, from a practitioner perspective, why would you recommend to your peers that they consider astaxanthin for their patients?
Dr. Susan Hamrahi: Yes, Astaxanthin is one of my favorite nutrients as well. As Karen said, its superpower is its structure. And how that applies to us every single day is that we have these parts of cells called mitochondria. And mitochondria are responsible for producing the energy in our cells. So they're little powerhouses that help us create energy for our everyday life. And astaxanthin is considered a mitochondrial nutrient. If you nourish your mitochondria, that allows you to produce energy at any age, and help you produce your energy more efficiently. This helps your body maintain its energy levels and be able to fuel and go on about your day in a much more efficient manner.
Carl: One of my favorite things about astaxanthin really is its versatility. It's an oil, so it's fat soluble like vitamin E, for example. However, it also can work in the water-soluble parts of cells. There aren't too many antioxidants that can do that. Is that right, Karen?
Dr. Karen Hecht: Yes, so you're referencing the fact that because astaxanthin spans the full membrane thickness, it's able to quench free radicals on either side of the membrane periphery as well as inside the membrane. So that is quite unique. You mentioned vitamin E. Vitamin E is a fat loving or lipophilic antioxidant, but it's actually too short to span the full membrane thickness. So that means it's maybe a little more limited spatially in terms of how far it can reach the free radicals it's able to quench.
One other thing that's really interesting about astaxanthin as compared to vitamin E, for example, is that when we have really high levels of free radicals that we're asking these antioxidants to quench for us, some of them will give away their electrons and eventually run out and turn into pro-oxidants. Vitamin E and vitamin C are examples of such antioxidants that are known to do this, but astaxanthin has a different quenching mechanism that allows it to share its electrons rather than give them away. Relying more on this mechanism makes it a pure antioxidant, meaning it doesn't itself become a pro-oxidant the way some other antioxidants might do under certain conditions.
Carl: That makes sense. And the other thing I like too is there are different types of free radicals, and astaxanthin can help neutralize or quench free radical activity in a lot of different varieties of free radicals, which again, just makes it very valuable to our health. And probably one of the reasons why it can do so much, I would assume. Is that fair?
Dr. Karen Hecht: Yes. I just want to say that as the owner of the company, the depth of your knowledge is really impressive. I think it's amazing how much you know about the ingredients that you're selling and recommending to people. I think this level of knowledge about astaxanthin is quite rare. And I feel like you're an amazing collaborator here and colleague.
And you’re absolutely right. Astaxanthin is really good at quenching singlet oxygen and superoxide in particular. But it's also able to quench other types of free radicals, peroxyl type radicals, primarily reactive oxygen species. But there's also some evidence that it's able to quench some reactive nitrogen species, although that's not really where its strength is necessarily. And that's why when we think of antioxidants overall, we want to get a nice variety because they do have different fingerprints or different personalities.
Perhaps they're found in different parts of the cell, or they have a preference for quenching different types of free radicals. And then the other thing that I would love to share with everyone is that although we're talking about this direct free radical quenching activity, astaxanthin and other antioxidants do more than that in the cell. They interact with different genes and promote increased expressions of our own endogenous antioxidants. So we call that indirect antioxidant activity. And we've seen the way that astaxanthin actually helps to promote mitochondrial biogenesis as well, meaning making more mitochondria. So there are different mechanisms of action beyond just the going in and neutralizing a free radical directly.
Carl: That's a great point. And Susan, as you know, not all astaxanthin is the same. And at NatureCity, we certainly always want to use the premium forms of different nutrients for our supplements and we think AstaReal is certainly the premier form when it comes to astaxanthin. What are some of the things about AstaReal that really stand out for you in terms of the quality and why it really has become a market leader?
Dr. Susan Hamrahi: So at AstaReal we have over 85 human studies researching astaxanthin's impacts. As Karen mentioned many involve the mechanisms of action in the body and why it is so beneficial for us to utilize through daily supplementation. We have a diet gap because no one's eating all of that salmon every single day to ensure that we're getting proper amounts of astaxanthin for our bodies to utilize. And I think AstaReal, and of course I'm biased, does such great service to our end users and to my colleagues as a practitioner with research support.
Doctors want to know if there is research to support what they’re recommending and is that recommendation going to fulfill the needs of that patient. And so, we like to make sure that our research and our data behind the ingredient put the proof in that pudding, with claims substantiated and backed by true science.
Carl: Well said. And the quality and the way you make your product too is top notch, which is very important. So, you mentioned the science, and we'll start getting into some of the newer findings in a moment, but I'd like to start with some of the core benefits users may experience with astaxanthin and AstaReal.
And I'd like to start with my favorite, which is vision health. Particularly how it can help with eye fatigue and tired eyes. We all spend all day looking at these screens and it has a big effect and impact on our eyes. Perhaps Susan, you can start with this one as I think you have a little background in vision.
Dr. Susan Hamrahi: Thank you. Yes, eyes are near and dear. I did do a lot of work in ophthalmology and working with ophthalmologists to make recommendations for eye health. As we know from the Age-Related Eye Disease Study which has been out probably almost 20 years now that there are specific carotenoids that are very beneficial to the eyes as you know Carl with your formulations as well. And what we know about astaxanthin is that while it is a carotenoid for the body, it also has incredible benefits for the eyes in a lot of different ways.
Two of my favorites, which I'll mention, and then Karen, I'm sure you have some additions here, but as I mentioned earlier, mitochondria are energy centers. Our vision takes up an incredible amount of energy just to function properly every single day. Our eyes are truly an extension of our brains. And we can process up to about 36,000 bits of information every hour that our eyes take in. And there's about 100 million cells that are light sensitive in our eyes. So that's a lot of demand on our body. And with all of that energy and that light also comes some oxidative stress. So astaxanthin helps the eyes to fight that and maintain a good balance of energy so your eyes don't feel fatigued.
Secondly, we've done quite a bit of research with visual accommodation – which we think of as switching between near and far distance vision. Well, the digital age is upon us and we are all looking at these screens every single day for hours on end. And the eyes' ability to fluctuate between near and far involves a body of muscles called the ciliary muscles. They help control your lens to go from seeing near to far, and far to near. And as our eyes fatigue, we don't do that so readily. And that's when we start to get some blurred vision or some other symptoms of computer vision syndrome that we probably all experience and don't even realize that we are experiencing it. The blinking or stiff back, stiff neck, all are downstream effects of that.
And astaxanthin can help us just like it helps the salmon. When they first started to research astaxanthin in salmon, they were looking at the muscle protection that astaxanthin provides to salmon and that also translates to us. So we as humans also utilize that muscle benefit, and the ciliary muscle in the eye is one of those areas that benefit, which helps to maintain the accommodation function. We even have research that Karen I'm sure you can speak of in adults and now in children to help with the symptoms of computer vision syndrome and accommodation.
Carl: Karen, do you want to pick up from there?
Dr. Karen Hecht: Absolutely. So I think that one of the things Susan touched on earlier is that there are a number of carotenoids that are quite well known to support vision. What's interesting is that astaxanthin brings a complementary function. So when we think of lutein and zeaxanthin, we're thinking of their benefits in the back of the eye and the retina to filter out blue light and support contrast sensitivity among other things.
Whereas astaxanthin is found at the front of the eye in that ciliary body which are the muscles framing the lens at the front of the eye to help support mitochondrial function, accommodative function. And what's interesting is that in addition to influencing objective measures of accommodation - so our range of focus, our near point of focus - we also see in the studies that it actually impacts subjective symptoms. So things that people actually report feeling, you know, eye strain, eye fatigue, in some cases headaches, also a secondary symptom of computer vision syndrome.
And so I think it's interesting for us to note these things in our own experience as we're trying out astaxanthin and supplementing, are we feeling anything different? Because so many times when we supplement we understand that it's providing some benefit that we may not feel but perhaps we're able to measure, but it's nice to also have something that you can feel is making a difference as well.
Carl: Both of you touched on again what I just love about astaxanthin and how it works in the front of the eye. And for those of us in the audience who are just mere mortals and not doctors, let me see if I could paint this picture for us. So, your eyes have a lens which may have to flex depending on whether you're looking at something up close or far away. And these ciliary muscles control the flexing of the lens. So, it's very easy on the eye and the muscles when you're looking at something far away because your lens flattens out and the muscles don't have to do too much work.
The real challenge, and this gets back into the computer and screen thing, is when you're looking at something up close. For you to be able to see, the ciliary muscles have to pull back on that lens and flex it so you can see what you're looking at. If you could picture yourself at the gym and pulling down on weights or something like that and you got to hold them in that position all day. That's what your ciliary muscles are doing for big parts of the day because they must flex that lens while we're staring at our computers and screens all day. And I'm as guilty as anybody. I spend way too much time looking at screens. But that creates a lot of work on the eyes.
And this is where astaxanthin I think comes in to help those ciliary muscles function better. So, your eyes can feel less fatigued, less strained and so on and so forth. Is that the right description or how to frame it?
Dr. Susan Hamrahi: Yes, great explanation. When you're looking at a screen for prolonged periods of time, it's like you're holding this isometric contraction. Think like arm circles forever, basically, right? And so your eyes definitely get tired and that's where that temporary blurred vision and eye strain comes from partly, with those muscles getting tired from being contracted for so long.
Carl: And Karen in studies how long does it typically take to start seeing some benefits from astaxanthin?
Dr. Karen Hecht: Most of the studies we see show statistically significant results within four weeks for vision in particular. And the minimum dose where we see an effect for vision is four milligrams a day.
We’ll pause the interview here - be sure to read my next letter, where Dr. Hecht and Dr. Hamrahi discuss the impressive research findings with AstaReal Astaxanthin and how it can help your skin, muscle endurance and recovery, immune health and cognitive function.
Yours for Good Health,
Carl Pradelli
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