VITAMIN X

Last week I went to a talk by Guy Toyama, the Director of the Friends of the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA), located next to the Kona airport. NELHA was funded to generate electricity from the temperature difference between deep cold sea water and warm surface seawater but has grown into a technology center that incubates innovative companies in food, energy and water. The tenants use the deep seawater in unique ways such as raising shellfish, making high nutrient drinking water, sea horse farming, and growing blue green algae.

I was intrigued to hear about a company called Nutrex Hawaii that makes a nutritional supplement from algae. The key substance in the supplement is astaxanthin which is created when the algae is stressed by a drop in water temperature. The stressed algae turns red due to its creation of astaxanthin. This same substance is created by lobsters when they are put into boiling water. Astaxanthin is also found in wild salmon which is why the meat is bright red. Farm raised salmon is grey colored so they have been buying the red algae to feed to their fish to get the same red color of wild salmon.

Researchers have been studying astaxanthin, a phytochemical, for a number of years, and some think that it is so potent in improving health that they have started calling it vitamin X. Vitamin X has been shown to relieve arthritis pain, prevent macular degeneration, and improve physical stamina in humans. It also reduces LDL cholesterol in the blood and inflammation in general. It reduces the pain from sun burns and in studies on mice exposed to carcinogens, it reduced their cancer incidence rates about 50%.

So off I went to get some of this Vitamin X for myself. I found it, BioAstin, in Hilo at Abundant Life and immediately started taking 2 pills (8 mg) with each meal. You would get 4 mg of astaxanthin by eating 4 oz of wild salmon. So far I haven’t noticed any change, but I am optimistic that I will get all the health promises of joint and tendon health, skin health and UV protection, eye health, anti-aging, increased immunity, and cardiovascular health.