CHLORELLA AND SPRIULINA

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The astounding health benefits of chlorella and spirulina

What can these two superfoods really do for your health? They offer a stunning array of health benefits. Chlorella and spirulina have been shown to be effective in treating and even reversing the following conditions:

• Cancers (all types)
• Obesity
• Diabetes
• Hypoglycemia
• Arthritis
• Depression
• Severe liver damage and liver disorders
• Intestinal ulcers
• Hemorrhoids
• Asthma
• High blood pressure
• Constipation
• Bleeding gums
• Infections
• Inflammation of joints and tissues
• Body odor / breath odor
• Various degenerative diseases
• Essential fatty acid deficiencies
• Mineral deficiencies (magnesium is a common deficiency)

Both chlorella and spirulina are particularly useful for:

• People with poor digestion and assimilation (these micro-algae are easy to digest and absorb)
• People with poor vitality and anemia
• Individuals who consumer large quantities of animal protein (the micro-algae protein, in contrast, is easier to digest and offers a far healthier balance of minerals)
• People who eat refined or processed foods
• People who take prescription drugs (spirulina protects the kidneys and liver)
• People who are overweight or obese
• People who engage in physical exercise and / or strength training
• People with low energy levels (feeling depleted, exhausted, etc.)

In fact, both chlorella and spirulina have been described as "the perfect food:"


Chlorella:

Chlorella has been touted as the perfect whole food. Aside from being a complete protein and containing all the B vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E, and the major minerals (with zinc and iron in amounts large enough to be considered supplementary), it has been found to improve the immune system, improve digestion, detoxify the body, accelerate healing, protect against radiation, aid in the prevention of degenerative diseases, help in treatment of Candida albicans, relieve arthritis pain and, because of its nutritional content, aid in the success of numerous weight loss programs.

- Earl Mindell's Vitamin Bible

Spirulina:

Spirulina's predigested protein provides building material soon after ingestion, without the energy-draining side effects of meat protein; its mucopolysaccharides relax and strengthen connective tissue while reducing the possibility of inflammation; its simple carbohydrates yield immediate yet sustained energy; its GLA fatty acids improve hormonal balance; and its protein-bonded vitamins and minerals, as found in all whole foods, assimilate better than the synthetic variety. Spirulina can generally be considered an appropriate food for those who exercise vigorously, as evidenced by the many world-class athletes who use it

- Healing With Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford

Chlorella and spirulina have such strong health benefits that even well-known doctors and authors use these products and note their benefits:

It is possible that the GLA found in spirulina and possibly these other products accounts for some of the positive effects that people experience when using them, including decreased appetite, weight loss, and improved energy levels, especially mental energy. I personally have used all of these products and must say I have experienced a subtle increase in mental clarity and alertness (not like a nervous, caffeine-type stimulation). These algae must subtly stimulate our nervous systems or release certain internal neurochemicals that create this "up" feeling.

- Staying Healthy With Nutrition by Elson Haas, M.D.

In all, these two superfoods are effective in not just reversing a long list of serious diseases (discuss in far more detail below), they are powerful health enhancers that demonstrate phenomenal benefits even to people who are in "good" health!

he treasure inside: chlorella & spirulina

Both chlorella and spirulina are packed with nutrients and phytochemicals that boost health and fight disease. In this section, we'll take a closer look at their major nutritional components and see just what these superfoods have to offer.

Chlorella is a tiny, single-celled water-grown alga containing a nucleus and an enormous amount of readily available chlorophyll. It also contains protein (approximately 58 percent), carbohydrates, all of the B vitamins, vitamins C and E, amino acids, and rare trace minerals. In fact, it is virtually a complete food. It contains more vitamin B12 than liver does, plus a considerable amount of beta-carotene.

- A-to-Z Guide To Supplements, James F. Balch M.D.

Protein

Spirulina is simply the world's most digestible natural source of high quality protein, far surpassing the protein bioavailability of even beef (which most people consider to be the #1 source of protein). The digestive absorption of each gram of protein in spirulina is four times greater than the same gram of protein in beef. And since spirulina already contains three times more protein (by weight) to begin with, the net result is that, ounce for ounce, spirulina offers twelve times more digestible protein than beef.
That's an astounding difference. It means that spirulina is the ideal food source for people working to get more protein into their diets:

• People on low-carb, high-protein diets like the Atkins Diet or the South Beach Diet.
• People who exercise vigorously or engage in strength training.
• People who are frail, who have trouble gaining weight, or who are malnourished.

In fact, there's probably no better single food source on the planet than spirulina for these people. The protein found in spirulina is also a complete protein, meaning that it contains all eight essential amino acids, unlike beans, whole grains and other plant-based foods that typically lack one or more amino acids.
Personally, I've found spirulina to be the perfect replacement for meat in my own diet. For a variety of reasons that I don't have the space to write about here, I prefer to avoid animal meats in my diet. But tofu and soy products have never given me the "fullness" feeling of animal proteins. Spirulina is the only plant I've ever found that gives me as much protein as eating animal products. And I only need a few grams of spirulina to get the job done: I frequently take 5 grams with each meal, and I find it does the job of eating an entire serving of animal meat.
When it comes to protein, the bottom line is that spirulina is the world's best source for it. You can't grill it like a steak, but if you really want the best protein nutrition you can get, spirulina can't be beat.

The vitamin and mineral content of chlorella and spirulina

I've already mentioned many of the vitamins found in these micro-algae: all of the B vitamins, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, provitamin A, and so on. But what's important about these vitamins isn't just that they are present: it's the fact that they are found in their natural forms in these micro-algae.
In other words, if you take "bulk" vitamin supplements, you are often taking synthetic vitamins that have been manufactured in a chemical plant from ingredients that you'd never normally eat. These synthetic vitamins may be molecularly similar to the vitamins found in plants, but clinical trial show that they aren't the same in effect. There's something almost magical about vitamins found in plants: they're simply more healthful, more absorbable, and more effective at getting the job done.
That's why I never recommend people take isolated vitamins in pill form. There's simply no need to. The best way to take vitamins is to eat vitamin-rich superfoods like chlorella and spirulina. In this way, you get all the vitamins you need, in the proper natural form that the human body was meant to digest.
And you don't have to worry about dosages, either. If you take both chlorella and spirulina, you automatically get near-perfect ratios of the most important vitamins and nutrients your body needs. That's one reason why these superfoods are called "perfect foods." In fact, you can eat these in large quantities without any worry of overdosing on individual vitamins.
Whatever vitamin you need: C, E, B, A, and so on, chances are that it's found in either chlorella or spirulina.

Minerals

Virtually all Americans are deficient in certain minerals like magnesium and zinc. That's because all refined foods have had their mineral content stripped. When a food processing plant refines wheat berries to make white flour, it removes as much as 98% of some minerals. The resulting powdery substance -- white flour -- is technically unfit for human consumption because it is nutritionally deficient and simply cannot sustain human life. That's why they have to "enrich" these flours: by law, certain vitamins have to be put back in just to prevent the more obvious nutritional deficiency diseases like beriberi and ricketts!
By eating these processed foods, and by not getting enough "natural" foods like chlorella and spirulina, most Americans simply don't get enough magnesium and zinc in their diets, not to mention trace minerals and other macrominerals. Worse, yet, virtually all low-carb dieters are calcium deficient due to the high acidity of their diets and their near-complete lack of dietary magnesium thanks to eating animal meats and dairy products. Although they are technically eating moderate amounts of calcium found in meats and dairy products, their bodies can't use it because they don't have the magnesium and Vitamin D necessary to turn calcium into strong bones.
What all these people have in common is a serious need for mineral balance in their bodies. They need more magnesium, more zinc, more trace minerals, and better sources of potassium and calcium, just to name a few. Truly, this need is present across the board. Hardly a person can be found who isn't deficient in one or more of these minerals.
With chlorella and spirulina, however, you can reverse your mineral deficiencies because these superfoods are rich in minerals! An ounce of chlorella, for example, contains far more calcium than an ounce of milk. So much for the "milk builds strong bones" hype: chlorella's calcium and magnesium content far surpasses milk in building strong bones.
Many people, in trying to deal with calcium deficiencies, take calcium supplements containing calcium carbonate. That's made primarily from ground up seashells, and this brings up a question: do people really need to be eating ground up seashells? Of course not. The idea of eating seashells is absurd, yet that's exactly what people are doing when they take common calcium supplements. Sure, you're "taking" the calcium, but are you absorbing it? Probably not.
Similarly, many people take coral calcium supplements, which are made from ground up coral reefs instead of ground up seashells. Once again, it's probably better than taking nothing at all, but were human beings really meant to eat coral reefs? Of course not! Scuba divers like to observe coral reefs, but you never find them chewing on reefs. This is not a food source intended for human beings. In fact, no animal on planet Earth eats coral reefs!
Plants, on the other hand, are fully intended for human consumption. The human digestive system reveals this truth in rather obvious ways, such as the need for dietary fiber in order to support healthy bowel movements, not to mention the existence of certain vegetable-grinding instruments found in the mouths of every human being: they're known as "molar teeth." Clearly, our bodies were designed to chew vegetables, not seashells or coral reefs. Not surprisingly, then, it's plants that offer the healthiest sources of the vitamins and minerals our bodies really need -- in the form we need. Put simply, the minerals in micro-algae are easily absorbable by the human body. If you experienced some health benefits from taking coral calcium, you'll be stunned at the much stronger benefits from consuming micro-algae.

The plants richest in chlorophyll—the micro-algae and cereal grasses—were cited earlier as good sources of magnesium. Green plants also have the greatest concentration of calcium of any food; because of their magnesium, chlorophyll, and other calcium cofactors, increasing the consumption of green plants often is a simple solution to calcium problems.

- Healing With Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford

he essential fatty acids found in chlorella and spirulina

Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs) are the "good" fats you've been increasingly hearing about in recent years. Your body can't live without them. They're needed for a healthy heart, a healthy nervous system, and especially a healthy brain (the human brain is around 80% fat).
You've no doubt heard about omega-3 EFAs. Perhaps you've also heard of GLA (gamma-linolenic acid, found in borage oil) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid, found in many fish oils). If you've read anything about low-carb dieting or the "Mediterranean Diet," you know that the consumption of these healthy oils, from sources such as flax oil, produces astounding health benefits in the human body. Heart disease and various cardiovascular disorders respond quickly and positively. Brain function is improved, diabetes is brought under control, blood sugar is regulated, and cancer risk soon plummets.
Most of us think of these oils coming from fish or seeds. That's why I was pleasantly surprised to learn that chlorella and spirulina contain these essential fatty acids! I was stunned to learn that Spirulina contains a sizable dose of GLA and omega-3 fatty acids. It is especially high in GLA, which is something that is almost universally lacking in the American diet.
Human breast milk is high in GLA, probably due to the infant child's need for brain-building fats. And since many infants never gained the important nutritional benefits of their mothers' milk, they've been GLA-deficient for their entire lives. The American diet of processed foods contains virtually no GLA whatsoever. And low-carb dieters aren't getting any either, unless they specifically supplement it. But you can get it from spirulina:

The richest whole-food sources of GLA are mother's milk, spirulina micro-algae, and the seeds of borage, black currant, and evening primrose. GLA is important for growth and development, and is found most abundantly in mother's milk; spirulina is the next-highest whole-food source. We often recommend spirulina for people who were never breast-fed, in order to foster the hormonal and mental development that may never have occurred because of lack of proper nutrition in infancy. The dosage is the amount of oil that provides 150-350 mg GLA daily. A standard 10-gram dosage of spirulina provides 131 mg of GLA

- Healing With Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford

I'd like to note the last sentence of the quote mentioned above: a standard 10-gram dosage of spirulina provides 131mg of GLA. This is important to understand, because almost everyone who takes spirulina or chlorella takes far too little to be effective. They frequently make the mistake of thinking these superfoods are medicines or drugs, and they take one or two tablets at a time. That provides only one gram of spirulina, which is 1/10th the recommended standard dosage. You can't get much benefit from just one gram. These superfoods aren't drugs. They aren't medications. They are foods. You can eat them like you eat a salad or a steak. You can eat a hundred grams a day and be all the better for it.
I discuss this in more detail in a later section, but the important point here is that most people take far too little to be of much help! If you really want to get well on these superfoods, you've got to take large quantities. These are foods, remember, not pills. As I mentioned earlier, I take 5 grams at each meal, and even that dose is considered only half of a "standard" dosage.

The astounding chlorophyll content of chlorella and spirulina

Chlorella is the richest source of chlorophyll on planet Earth. What's so good about chlorophyll? There's nothing more cleansing and detoxifying than chlorophyll. And people who follow Western diets (high in processed foods and animal foods) are in desperate need of cleansing and detoxifying.
Here's something interesting: chlorophyll actually helps remove heavy metals from your body that have accumulated due to the ingestion of contaminated food products. Certain sea foods are especially known to contain dangerous levels of heavy metals like mercury, but these contaminants are also found in animal products and even non-organic crops. If you've been eating refined foods, you undoubtedly have mercury, cadmium, arsenic, lead, PCBs and other contaminants in your body. The chlorophyll in chlorella actually helps remove those heavy metals from your body, which can have seemingly miraculous benefits to your health.
Another common source for contaminants is mercury fillings used by dentists. They call them "silver fillings," actually, since they don't want to openly admit they're still putting mercury -- one of the most potent nerve toxins on the planet -- into the mouths of patients. These mercury fillings emit a steady stream of mercury vapor that gets absorbed into your body. Frequently, small bits of these mercury fillings crack, break off, and are swallowed with your food. In this way, nearly all dental patients in America and other "civilized" countries are subjected to routine mercury poisoning at the hands of their dentists.
Chlorella can help protect you against this mercury be escorting the mercury out of your body before it can do damage. If you take chlorella before and after receiving dental work, you will help protect yourself from the toxic effects of mercury fillings. This is especially important if you decide to have your mercury fillings removed, as more and more people are doing. The very process of drilling them out results in a tidal wave of mercury exposure in your body. Having a stomach full of chlorella offers considerable protection against the mercury bits you inevitably swallow during this procedure.
I underwent a full-scale mercury filling removal program myself. It required nearly ten sessions in the chair, and I used chlorella each time. As a result, I suffered no ill effects from the mercury removal. Today, my mouth is 100% free of mercury, and the chlorella that I continue to take on a daily basis protects me from dietary mercury that might find its way to my dinner plate.
Chlorophyll does much more than protect you from mercury, however: it's also a general detoxifier that supports liver function so that your lives can do a better job of eliminating toxins from your system.

Chlorella vs. spirulina

In this section, I've talked about chlorella and spirulina as if they were twins. But they aren't: each has a unique nutritional profile. Although I strongly recommend using them both as part of every meal (I do), you may find yourself needing one or the other based on certain circumstances. So here's the score:

Chlorella:

• A better source of chlorophyll, which makes it more detoxifying and cleansing.
• It is especially good for people with liver disorders or people who drink or smoke.
• It is very helpful for people with dry stools who suffer from constipation.
• It is especially good for people who need "rebuilding" -- people who suffer from degenerative diseases (muscle, nervous system, etc.) or people who are frail.
• Contains Chlorella Growth Factor (CGF), which boosts the immune system, reverses cancer, and offers other health benefits.
• CGF also helps repair nerve tissues throughout the body and is excellent for treating degenerative brain and nerve disorders.

Spirulina:

• A superior source of digestible protein. Contains 12 times the protein of beef.
• Easier on the digestive system than chlorella, which can cause diarrhea in sensitive individuals.
• The best source of gamma-linolenic acid (GLA), a "good" fat necessary for the human brain, proper heart function, and other body systems.
• Contains phycocyanin, a potent anti-cancer phytochemical that also gives spirulina its characteristic blue hue.

As you can see, both chlorella and spirulina offer a vast range of health benefits, and many of their strengths overlap. That's why I generally recommend that people consume both in substantial quantities. As a general rule, you should consume spirulina and chlorella in a 2:1 ratio. In other words, if you take 10 grams of spirulina a day, take 5 grams of chlorella, too.
If you are suffering from a particular health condition, increase your consumption of the micro-algae best suited for that condition. These health conditions are discussed in more detail below. Recommended dosages of chlorella and spirulina are also covered in more detail in the "how to take chlorella and spirulina" section later in this guide.
Now we'll take a look at the use of chlorella and spirulina for specific health conditions and dietary patterns.