The Most Protective Molecule in Nature

It’s hard to believe that any substance is so protective that it can keep an organism alive for 40 years without food or water, and under conditions of freezing cold, blistering heat and intense ultraviolet light exposure. But believe it: This is the level of protection that Natural Astaxanthin brings to Haematococcus pluvialis (another tongue-twisting word like “Astaxanthin”) microalgae cells.

When Haematococcus cells are healthy, well-fed, have plenty of water and are in favourable climactic conditions, they are green and they use flagella to swim around. To put it simply, they’re healthy and happy. But stop feeding them, take them out of their normal aqueous environment, put them in intense ultraviolet light and extreme temperatures (or do all three of these things at once), and the algae cells stop swimming and go dormant to save energy. But this “hibernation” isn’t enough to keep them alive under these conditions.

Any living organism, be it plant or animal, needs food and water to survive. When you take away these essential needs, it’s only a matter of time before an organism will die. But these algae are different because they have the ability to generate Astaxanthin. They do this as a survival mechanism to withstand this extreme environmental stress.

They hyper-accumulate huge amounts of Astaxanthin and turn red in a period of just about one week under highly stressful conditions. The Astaxanthin works like a protective force field to fend off starvation, dehydration, intense UV exposure and extreme temperatures. And amazing as it may sound, simply give the algae some nutrients, put them back in water and in a favourable climate, and what do you think happens?

They turn green again and start happily swimming around! Astaxanthin has been well documented in clinical research to distribute itself throughout the entire body. It gets into muscles and the skin. It can cross the blood-brain barrier and the blood-retinal barrier to enter the brain and eyes. It gets into the heart, the liver, the kidneys and other organs. And what it’s doing on a cellular level in our bodies is the same thing it does for the algae cells—providing its incredible protective properties to keep the cells healthy and alive.