Brown Seaweed for Weight Loss?

Yes.... and err....no. More on the research of seaweed and weight.

I was most amazed to open one of my diabetes magazines and see a blurb on seaweed. Weight loss with brown kelp. Oooo, I thought. Something new to help my ailing physique and maybe my blood sugars? Cause we all know dropping 10 lbs can help drop glucose levels. Ya, ya. I know it. But... I just can't seem to achieve it. So... I read on of course.

The gist of the blurb was that the fucoxanthin from brown seaweed causes mice and rats to burn more fat. Rats deprived of this in their diet did not burn as much fat.

Oh... my... maybe I'll look for sea weed recipes. But wait... I'm a diabetes eductor not just a desperate broad with diabetes. I should dive a little deeper and remind myself not to be gullible.

So off I go. To learn more about brown sea weed (kelp I guess)and weight loss.

What Did I Learn?

Well, I learned that the results were reported at the American hemical Society's 232nd national meeting in 2006. The doctor is a PhD.Dr. Kazuo Miyashita is a chemistry professor in Japan's Graduate School of Fisheries completed this research. Okay.

He and his colleagues did not feed sea weed to the rats - they fed a concentrated extract of fucoxanthin obtained from brown sea weed which appeared to boost the production of a protein necessary for the in metabolism of fat.

What does "appeared to boost" mean? I must find the original manuscript or see if the article is published in a respected journal to see if the results were even significant. But ... why bother, since the results were not on humans. And even Dr. Miyashita himself has said that it would not be practical for people to eat enough sea weed to see any weight loss. (Remember, concentrates were given to rodents.) No, no. I'm not entirely negative.

Here are the good things I learned...

1. This is promising and hopefully someone will pursue the possibility of sea weed for weight loss in more research. Hopefully human and hopefully with brown sea weed pills.

2. I don't have to google around for seaweed recipes right now as I'm not convinced I'll lose weight on it.

3. Seaweed does have a number of positive nutritional qualities so even if research pans out and I start eating seaweed, I'll likely get other health benefits too (as long as I don't get high blood pressure since sea weed is loaded with sodium).

4. I'm happy to learn that I'm still not so gullible. Even after a national diabetes magazine printed the blurb I did not fall for it hook line and sinker (although I do see the magazine as being irresponsible for not mentioning the researcher's comments that humans could not feasibly eat enough brown seaweed see a benefit for weight loss.)

5. As an aside, I learned there's an amazing variety of sea weed out there - red, green, brown with all sorts of unpronounceable names. Who knew? I'm getting punchy. Must check my blood sugars to make sure I'm not low.

I look forward to more research down the road on this brown, slimey topic of seaweed and weight. As usual, if I stumble across something useful, I'll attempt to write about it somewhere on this site.

Cheers and good health-- Bev

Leaving Seaweed Weight Loss to go back home to Lowering blood glucose levels