08/01/2022

What are polysaccharides? What has the research taught us?

The importance of Polysaccharides

Dr. John E. Lewis has been conducting clinical research at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine on the effects of polysaccharides for the better part of the last 20 years. He and his colleagues have discovered that consuming certain polysaccharides on a daily basis is likely one of the keys to achieving and maintaining optimal health and to help support people who are trying to recover from a significant health challenge. Many of you may be faced with a health challenge that so far continues to result in a poor quality of life. Or, you may not have a serious health challenge, but you may have fatigue or low energy, feel unfocused or lethargic, or just not feel well. You may have tried other dietary supplements or remedies to help you feel better, but you still have not made any progress. If you have not been taking a product like Daily Brain Care, then you may be missing out on the benefits of polysaccharides and what these complex carbohydrates or sugars can do for you. I will share with you some background information about why polysaccharides are important for you to take every day and how Daily Brain Care achieves that for you.

Nutrition for Optimal Health

Optimal health can only be achieved through proper nutrition that includes the right amounts of the correct macronutrients, micronutrients, and phytonutrients. All of these nutrients are required by our cells to enable them to function properly. Ultimately, starting with each individual cell all the way up to our entire body, we need certain amounts and types of these different nutrients to function correctly and optimally. We will talk about the distinctions among these diverse types of nutrients in another post.

What are Polysaccharides?

In this post, I want to focus on your need for including polysaccharides in your diet, as I know how important they are for achieving and maintaining optimal health. In case you are not familiar with them, polysaccharides are simply a type of carbohydrate, which is a macronutrient. Polysaccharides are complex (i.e., poly) in their chemical structure meaning that they have many different carbon bonds that hold them together.Polysaccharides are complex carbohydrates that may be familiar to you, occurring in foods such as vegetables and whole grains. Polysaccharides are different from monosaccharides (i.e., mono = single or simple sugars) like fructose. The polysaccharides that I have found through my research to be the most beneficial for supporting optimal health come from aloe vera and rice bran, and both of these polysaccharides are typically uncommon, if not entirely absent, in the modern diet. Do you know anyone who eats aloe vera?I do not!In fact, to genuinely enjoy their benefits, you must consume them in concentrated amounts in a dietary supplement like Daily Brain Care. Otherwise, you would not be able to consume enough of them from their natural plant sources to achieve a therapeutic benefit.

Why are Polysaccharides Important?

The field of glycobiology (the study of the biology, biosynthesis, and structure of carbohydrates, saccharides, or sugars) demonstrates the importance of polysaccharides (complex sugars) and how they are used in so many more ways than just as a source of energy. The discoveries in this field are revealing the ways in which polysaccharides are utilized by every cell in the human body. In 1996, Harper’s Biochemistry listed several important saccharides as glucose, fucose, mannose, galactose, xylose, n-acetyl glucosamine, n-acetyl galactosamine, and n-acetyl neuraminic acid. These saccharides are crucial for proper cellular function, and yet we know that only two of them, glucose and galactose, are present to any great extent in the modern diet.

Polysaccharides are Vital for Health

In our research, we have shown that providing people with these concentrated polysaccharides from aloe vera and rice bran on a daily basis stimulates remarkable changes. We have shown that consuming these polysaccharides will lower inflammation, which is now known to be one of the hallmarks of all types of chronic disease. You need some inflammation when you are ill or injured, as it is the body’s natural response to healing itself in an acute situation. However, long-term, chronic uncontrolled inflammation leads to a host of problems, which oftentimes result in serious medical intervention if left unaddressed. In addition, people taking these polysaccharides showed remarkable improvements in overall immune function, including an increase in the production of adult stem cells, which is so important for our daily wellbeing. It is known that the immune system is in constant contact with all other major organ systems, so it is vital to have a healthy, surveillant, and well-functioning immune system to defend you from all ongoing threats to your health and survival. Our stem cell making capacity declines with age, but these polysaccharides were able to increase that production process, which was an overly exciting discovery for us. We also showed that polysaccharides helped people to have better overall cognition, which means that they think better, are more focused, recall memories, and properly respond to situations, people, and events. In addition, people have reported feeling more physically and mentally functional, having a better mood, and a generally elevated quality of life in response to taking polysaccharides daily. We will discuss in more detail the results of all of these research studies in subsequent posts, but these are some of the highlights for now.

Conclusion

Please remember that “a sugar is not a sugar,” meaning that all sugars are not created equally.The differences in sugars are dependent on at least two important characteristics:(1) their source and (2) their biochemical structure.The complex sugars that come from aloe vera and rice bran are vastly different from the simple sugars that come from overly processed corn.So, please do not confuse the word “sugar” with always meaning something bad or detrimental. If someone makes the statement that all sugars are bad for you, then it is not only ignorant, but wrong. Many sugars can be beneficial for you and if taken in proper amounts they can be part of your formula for achieving and maintaining outstanding health.

While it may be relatively easy for the average person to get enough nutrients to satisfy energy requirements (i.e., macronutrition), it is much more difficult to get the amount and type of polysaccharides to allow the body’s cells to function optimally. This is because these polysaccharides, particularly certain types from aloe vera and rice bran, are not common in the modern diet. These polysaccharides are crucial to health and wellbeing and yet unfortunately not only are most people unaware of that fact, but they would not even know where or how to get them. At Dr Lewis Nutrition™, we have a solution to meet every person’s needs at every stage of life. Daily Brain Care has been formulated to provide you with the polysaccharides that you need to be healthy that diet alone cannot provide. Daily Brain Care has no known adverse effects, it can be taken with any medication or other dietary supplement, and it does not result in a tolerance that is common with medications that are taken over an extended period of time. Try Daily Brain Care today and optimally support your health!

FAQs on Polysaccharides

What do polysaccharides do for the body?

Polysaccharides (i.e., carbohydrates or sugars) are compounds that provide nutrition for the cells. Like other nutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fats, they are used by our cells to conduct the bioengineering of life, which simply means that they provide information to our genes that then guide our cells to function. Certain polysaccharides, such as those from aloe vera and rice bran, are known to have significant health-promoting benefits, such as improving overall immune function, helping to rebalance the immune system, lowering inflammation, and increasing adult stem cell production, among other actions.

What is the most common polysaccharide?

Two of the most common types of polysaccharides that occur in nature are starch and cellulose. Starch is composed of thousands of glucose units, and we get starch in our diet when we eat whole and minimally-processed potatoes, rice, wheat, and corn. We are able to digest starch by certain enzymes in our digestive system. All plants are structurally bound together by cellulose, which is also formed by many glucose units. However, unlike starch, humans do not have the necessary enzymes in our digestive system to break down cellulose. Nonetheless, this type of indigestible polysaccharide is beneficial for helping us to properly eliminate other digestive byproducts.

Why are polysaccharides healthier?

Polysaccharides, like the ones from aloe vera and rice bran, are typically healthier than the more common monosaccharides (e.g., fructose) and disaccharides (e.g., sucrose) simply because they are more than just an energy source. They have documented and demonstrated health benefits, such as enhancing immune function, lowering oxidation, balancing the immune system, increasing adult stem cell production, and improving oxidative status, among other activities.

Why do cells need polysaccharides?

Cells need polysaccharides from key sources like aloe vera and rice bran to function optimally. The body’s inherent intelligence is smart enough to take other common saccharides from other plants and reconstruct them into a polysaccharide, but this is an inefficient process that does not result in the same benefits. The coded information from the polysaccharides from aloe vera and rice bran is apparently more effective for health-promoting benefits than saccharides of diverse types from other sources.

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