By: Kennedy Shelley
The stuff that turns salmon and trout meat pink may improve your skin and improve your athletic performance.
If you have not heard of astaxanthin, you might want to start looking into it.
This is produced from a type of algae that trout and salmon eat, which turns their flesh pink.
Astaxanthin is a powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory. Some scientists think it is why people who eat wild caught salmon have better overall health.
(To understand why wild caught salmon is so much healthier than farm raised, see this article in Freedom Health News.)
Reducing inflammation not only helps the heart, but also helps those who suffer from autoimmune diseases such as arthritis.
But it also could help in the treatment of certain types of cancer. Specifically, breast and skin cancers by slowing down the rate of growth of those dangerous cells.
Because it seems to help the heart get more oxygen, it seems to improve athletic performance, as well as help people recover from heart attacks.
You can get astaxanthin from shrimp, lobster, crab, salmon and trout (again wild caught, farm raised don’t get the algae). Basically, fish that are pink.
You can also get it in a supplement form.
Is there any downside to using this? There may be a slight decrease in male testosterone. It seems to affect how the body uses 5-alpha-reductase which affects DHT levels.
This doesn’t seem to be a huge effect, but it is one worth watching if you already suffer from low testosterone.
But in a related note, it has been shown to improve male fertility. In 2005 researchers put a group of men on the supplement for three months.
The 30 men suffered from low sperm counts, but they saw significant benefit from the supplement.
While astaxanthin seems to improve skin health, people who use medications such as Propecia are cautioned against using it.
But if you are not in these risk groups, there are exciting reasons to look into it.
Back in 2006 researchers looked at rats with high blood pressure and found that astaxanthin seemed to help the elasticity of arteries, reducing overall blood pressure.
These seem to help with feelings of fatigue and give greater endurance.
While it is impossible to supplement your way out of a bad diet and lifestyle, if everything else is good, this supplement might give you a solid boost in a number of different ways.
Even healthy people want to reduce the inflammation in the body that are caused by oxygen, the sun and just being alive.
Although the sources of astaxanthin may be expensive, every little bit you get seems to help.
There has been no study to show that long term supplementation causes any harm. And many studies that show people who eat a diet heavy in wild caught salmon actually have better health than most.
It is not clear if the benefit is from the astaxanthin or the high levels of Omega 3, or it could be a healthful combination of both.
But it is clear that this is a supplement worth considering adding to your diet.
