Article at a glance:
- Chlorella is a nutrient-rich superfood that lets people enjoy multiple health benefits.
- One benefit chlorella provides is that it can help maintain the health of your arteries.
- It also helps keep blood pressure in check and lower cardiovascular risk factors.
How does chlorella help your cardiovascular health? This superfood has many healthy compounds that bring incredible health benefits. Some of the most well-known ones are positive effects on the heart and blood vessels.
Curious to know more? Read on to find out the benefits of taking chlorella for arteries.
What Is Chlorella?
Chlorella has become a steadily popular supplement for years. It’s a superfood that comes from single-celled algae that grow in freshwater. Natively, you can find chlorella in Taiwan and Japan. In more recent years, they are also grown and harvested in the US (Hawaii), China, and India.
Many consider this type of freshwater algae a superfood thanks to the nutrients it brings. It’s chock full of healthy compounds and a long list of health benefits for our bodies. Chlorella is known for containing complete proteins, vitamins, and minerals. It also contains chlorophyll, chlorella growth factor, and essential fatty acids.
Chlorella Supplementation
You’ll find two strains of chlorella that brands use for their supplements: Chlorella pyrenoidosa and Chlorella vulgaris. While both bring in many nutrients, it’s best to go for the Chlorella pyrenoidosa strain as it’s more nutrient dense than vulgaris.
Today, chlorella is widely available, and you can easily find it at pharmacies, health stores, online shops, and online retailers. You can typically get them as powders, tablets, or in vials of liquid extracts.
Chlorella Benefits for the Arteries
Is chlorella good for heart health? Yes, in fact, chlorella is known to have positive effects on our cardiovascular system. Among the long list of nutrients it has, chlorella also provides those that can help maintain the health of both the heart and the arteries. It can help in numerous ways.
Does chlorella help blood circulation?
One of this superfood’s most well-known, proven benefits is that chlorella minimizes arterial stiffness. But wait, what is arterial stiffness?
Simply put, this happens when arteries’ walls lose their elasticity. Because of aging, our arteries gradually become stiffer, which can be worsened prematurely due to several factors. Some of the common factors include smoking, diabetes, or consistent high blood pressure.
When your arteries lose flexibility, they also lose their ability to expand and contract optimally. This leads to health issues like higher blood pressure, heart disease, and even stroke. It may also lead to kidney damage and chronic kidney disease.
Now, you may be wondering: is chlorella good for blood circulation? By helping reduce arterial stiffness, chlorella also helps reduce one’s blood pressure. Thanks to this, it also helps blood circulation, especially among older adults.
Is chlorella a vasodilator?
Numerous human randomized clinical trials found that chlorella decreases arterial stiffness. A 2013 study examined chlorella’s effects on young men’s arterial stiffness. The research involved 14 young men who were either given a placebo or chlorella tablets in a span of four weeks.
It found that those who took the supplements experienced reduced arterial stiffness. The same study also suggested that chlorella may have a vasodilator tendency. Simply put, chlorella may help open up blood vessels, increasing blood flow to the body tissues.
Does chlorella increase nitric oxide?
A similar study from 2015 examined whether chlorella also affects arterial stiffness, but this time, among middle-aged men and older. It also observed the change in nitric oxide levels in the body, which is a vasodilatory factor. As such, it also plays a role in lowering a person’s blood pressure.
The study observed 32 subjects, individuals between the ages of 45 and 75. One group received a placebo, while the other took chlorella supplements for four weeks. The study found that those who took chlorella had reduced arterial stiffness, while those who received a placebo saw no change. It also noted an increase in nitric oxide leaves in the blood of people who took chlorella.
How Does Chlorella Help Reduce Arterial Stiffness?
The two studies mentioned above believe that some of the nutrients carried by chlorella are compounds that help reduce arterial stiffness. The studies suggested that antioxidant nutrients in chlorella play a role in doing so. Such nutrients include vitamins c and e, beta-carotene, and zinc. They also believe that other nutrients like arginine, potassium, calcium, and essential fatty acids help minimize the stiffness in arteries.
Other Ways Chlorella Helps the Arteries
Apart from keeping their walls elastic and flexible, chlorella helps maintain the health of your arteries in other ways. Here are some of them:
Lowering Blood Cholesterol
Is chlorella good for the heart?
Chlorella is widely known to help lower a person’s blood cholesterol. Several studies have showcased chlorella’s potential to help lower LDL cholesterol and total cholesterol. This may be due to several of chlorella’s nutrients, including vitamin B3, carotenoids, antioxidant vitamins, and essential fatty acids.
Because of this, chlorella helps reduce the possibility of fat blocking the arteries, helping lower a person’s risk of suffering blocked blood vessels and cardiovascular events like a heart attack or stroke.
Binding Heavy Metals
Chlorella cleans out arteries from toxins and heavy metals as well. It’s a well-known supplement that helps bind these unwanted compounds in the body and helps flush them out. Numerous studies have shown its potential to help in “detox.” One notable study found that it can help lower levels of dioxin, a harmful chemical that also disrupts hormone activity in the body.
Other Chlorella Health Benefits
Besides lowering one’s blood pressure, reducing a person’s cardiovascular risk factors, and keeping a person’s overall cardiovascular health in check, chlorella supplementation also brings numerous other benefits.
- Chlorella may help lower blood sugar levels.
- Chlorella may help reduce body weight.
- Chlorella may also improve a person’s immune system activity.
- Chlorella has been shown to help reduce inflammation, making it a great supplement for those with chronic respiratory issues.
- Chlorella may also help with a person’s eye health thanks to its rich carotenoid content.
- As a nutritional supplement, chlorella has also been observed to promote liver health, as studies found that it improved health markers for those suffering from liver disease.
- Thanks to its fiber content, chlorella is also known to help with digestion.
Adding Chlorella to Your Diet
With these benefits and a long list of others, you may be wondering what is the best way to take chlorella as a supplement. Luckily, this superfood is flexible. Given that it comes in several forms, you can use it in multiple different ways.
- Taking Chlorella Tablets or Capsules with Water – You can take chlorella supplements if you get them as tablets or as powders in capsules. You need to take the correct daily dose when you do so, which is between 3 to 10 grams daily.
- Mixing Chlorella Powder or Liquid Extract with Drinks – If you want a tastier way to take chlorella, you can mix the recommended dose in powder or liquid form and add it to your drinks, protein shakes, and smoothies.
- Mixing Chlorella Powder or Liquid Extract with Food – You can add chlorella to the food you’re cooking or pastries you’re baking. For best results, you can look for recipes incorporating chlorella powder or liquid extract into the ingredients list.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is chlorella a blood thinner?
No, it’s not a blood thinner. Chlorella lowers blood pressure by helping reduce LDL cholesterol and decreasing arterial stiffness, not by helping thin the blood.
Can chlorella cause blood clots?
Yes, it can cause blood clots because it has high amounts of vitamin K. It may lower the efficacy of blood thinner medication due to its vitamin K content. However, you don’t need to worry about this if you’re a healthy individual who is not prone to blood clotting.
Does chlorella oxygenate the blood?
It doesn’t directly bring more oxygen into the blood. However, studies have shown that chlorella helps increase a person’s VO2 max or, simply put, one’s maximum oxygen uptake. This makes chlorella an especially wonderful supplement for many athletes.
Chlorella and Healthy Arteries
Chlorella is one excellent supplement to get if you want to improve or maintain your cardiovascular health. It has a lot of healthy nutrients that can benefit your heart and blood vessels and help lower your risk of grave cardiovascular disease.
Want to start helping your arteries out? Try taking chlorella for arteries and see the difference in the long run.
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