Eight Essential Glyconutrients: Fucose

I have talked a lot about these glyconutrients that we are NOT getting in our diets, why they are so essential to our health and why we need to supplement them, so I thought that I would start to discuss in more detail what the individual glyconutrients are and what they do.

The first to get this detailed treatment is Fucose. This nutrient occurs most commonly in fucoidan which is a brown algae found in seaweeds. It is also found in some mushrooms, brewers yeast and human breast milk. When attempting to increase our intake of all whole foods these days we need to be aware of where they are produced due to increasing pollutants in the world.

Why do we need Fucose? It is involved in many of our body processes and research has shown that it influences brain development, acts as an immune modulator by retarding tumour growth/spread and improves cell communication. It also provides protection from respiratory tract infections and inhibits allergic reactions. The transfer of fucose to newborns in breast milk is thought to be the catalyst for improving their immunity.

Here we have it: Fucose, the first in my series of essential glyconutrients!

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OK So Glyconutrients are Essential – Why Supplements?

Do you know how the food you are eating is produced? For most people the answer is probably no. The fact that most children these days do not have any idea how milk for example gets from the cow to the table (or for that matter that it comes from cows!) I find quite sad.

Having grown up on a farm myself I have firsthand knowledge of a lot of modern farming techniques. We have land that is continually cropped and filled with chemical fertilisers to enable the nutrient leached soil to raise yet another crop. A little known fact is that plants require the addition to the soil of only 3 nutrients to grow, the body needs at least 45 nutrients to function effectively. Where can we get these if not from our food?

And that is not even taking into account the genetically modified seed that many of the farms now use. The idea in this scenario is that the end product is superior and that you can produce a tougher plant that requires less chemical pesticides. Supposedly that is to contribute to a more natural environment, it just so happens that it reduces the production costs too! (and the essential sugars)

The fruits and vegetables that we do raise are picked early for transport to faraway markets and then gassed to ripen. If you drop a tomato on the floor these days it is so hard it is more likely to bounce than go splat! The all important phytonutrients in ripe fruit are never given a chance.

Of course then our food is cooked and canned, pasteurised and processed. Science has shown that cooking depletes the scant glyconutrient levels in some cases to trace amounts. There is no way that we can derive enough of the vital glyconutrients from our diet alone.

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Glycosylation = Improved Cell Communication

“Everything man needs to sustain health can be found in nature.
It is the job of science to find them”
Paracelsus

Nutrients derived from food (or good quality supplements) are the raw materials that cells use to fight disease and to recover. Cell-to- cell communication can be enhanced by the addition of glyconutrients to your diet. The body is designed to restore, repair, protect and defend itself when it has the right tools.

Cells communicate to understand and satisfy their needs for: nutrition, cleansing, support, identification and regulation. But how do they do this? Proteins within the cell have specific biological sugar molecules attached to them. The ‘words’ used to communicate are formed when these sugar (glyco meaning sugar) molecules attach to protein stems and become glycoproteins. They penetrate the cell wall and contain the messages expressing the cell’s needs. Glycoproteins facilitate communication inside and outside the cell thus enabling cell-to-cell communication. This cell communication can easily break down when glyconutrients are in short supply.

The bottom line? Glyconutrients help support your body, allowing your cells to send and translate messages to each other enabling them to communicate clearly and operate efficiently.

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The Unmasking of Glyconutrients - Where to start??

The best place I guess is to discuss what is happening today within our environment – specifically to our food and subsequently our nutrition. No matter what the labels say on our food, studies point to the fact that there has been an overall decrease in the nutritional quality of much of the food we eat. Toxins and pollutants are a constant challenge. Much of the food we eat is picked before it is ripe: processed and pasteurised and shipped long distances to market. So while you may be eating the recommended 5-9 serves of fruits and vegetables per day (and many people are not), the nutrients may be inadequate and quantity can’t always make up for quality. Therefore we need to look at supplementation to overcome the imbalance in our modern diets.

In 1996, Harpers Biochemistry (a medical textbook) published the body’s need for and use of 8 specific sugar molecules called glyconutrients. The research also reported that of the 8 glyconutrients only 2 are prevalent in our modern diets. It showed that these glyconutrients are necessary for proper cell communication. Of course the body prefers to get these nutrients directly from food however research has also shown that in a typical diet today we are only getting 2 of these glyconutrients: glucose from table sugar and galactose from milk products. The body then has to divert its available resources to manufacture the other 6 glyconutrients - resources which could be far better utilised in maintaining overall health, protection and repair functions.

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