25 Nov Health Benefits
Foods provide to our organism all the essential and non-essential components that may confer health benefits.
Therefore, the understanding of the biochemical mechanisms of action of food constituents have led to the development of several industrial food products which include nutraceuticals (food extracts with medicinal effect on human health), functional foods (foods which are modified so that they contain higher than normal concentrations of bioactive components) or dietary supplements (according to FDA are defined as “products that are intended to supplement the diet that bears or contains one or more of the following dietary ingredients: a vitamin, a mineral, an herb or other botanical, an amino acid, a dietary substance for use by man to supplement the diet by increasing the total daily intake, or a concentrate, metabolite, constituent, extract or combinations of these ingredients”) that in many cases have been suggested to offer specific health advantages.
Unfortunately for most of these supplements there is not enough experimental evidence to support various health claims that are made for these products or for their ingredients, or to avoid possible undesirable interactions with drugs received by the consumer.
It has also to be emphasized that the intake of a bioactive constituent isolated from a natural source may have entirely different biological effects to our organism than those of whole plant cells or cell extracts.
There are also some general concerns with respect to botanical preparations mainly relating to quality and safety issues such as toxic chemical and microbial contamination (63). On the other hand, the excessive intake of certain vitamins and minerals contained in multivitamin supplements may lead to adverse effects depending on the sensitivity of the consumer (64, 65). Thus, among various dietary supplements, Spirulina with its vast and unique content in precious dietary components is considered as an excellent food product without any toxicity and offers multiple health advantages to the consumer. In this respect, despite the few human studies done so far on the health benefits of Spirulina, the experimental evidence for its potential therapeutic application is overwhelming in the areas of anti-oxidant activities, cancer, viral infections, immunomodulation, cholesterol-reduction, diabetes, obesity, asthma, allergies, skeletal muscle exercise, anti-bacterial action and probiotic effects (29).
Although there is today a surge of research interest concerning the isolation and characterization of specific Spirulina bioactive components and their putative use for clinical applications we have to emphasize that Spirulina is not a medicine and it cannot replace pharmaceutical treatment for any disease.
However, when used as a source of supplementary food it can provide health benefits to our body.
(**) Literature on the subject
