Glyconutrients……..an understanding of what they are;

The following was written by: Duncan Crow a Wholistic Consultant

In 1996, an issue of Harper's Biochemistry listed Gyconutrients as being fundamental to cellular function and health. This food is revolutionary; it represents a disruptive technology to the drug companies because it will eliminate the need for most drugs and also, eliminate virtually every other player in the field.

You've heard of cell receptor sites. They are just locations on the cells that dock to or accept docking from many substances. Each receptor has one or more function, and without the receptor sites being intact you lose or diminish that function and illness follows.

In a nutshell, when you've been ill, toxic, and malnourished or under a great deal of stress or trauma, your body may fail to manufacture the tiny amounts of sugars (glyconutrients) that must be incorporated into the receptors. The cell receptor sites are made of glycoproteins -- glyconutrients and protein in varying combinations. These have a specific function, like a lock and key. There are no extraneous functions in the body. Cellular function absolutely relies on correctly formed cell receptors; in fact, 86 diseases have been linked to malformed receptors. For a look at many of the diseases that are rooted in malformed receptors, see glycoscience.com.

This is too important a concept to miss, so I'll clarify with a quick overview of some functions the receptor sites perform. Infections use receptor sites to attach to your cells; white blood cells use receptor sites to identify and attack the infections. The receptors on cancer cells are malformed, which allows your immune response to recognize them and attack them too as 'not-self'. These two scenarios rely on the receptors on the immune cells also being functional. Your immune response must always function correctly or it will mount a variable uncontrolled response, including doing nothing and attacking your own tissues as in autoimmune disorders. Your natural bowel bacteria relies on properly formed receptors on bowel wall cells to adhere to the bowel wall and out compete the bad bacteria. The toxins they produce to keep down competitors also stick to receptor sites of the bad guys.

Growth hormone must have intact receptors to attach to on cells in order for the cells to accept nutrients and repair or grow, or healing and growth is not going to happen, even in the presence of the correct nutrients. Sex hormones and endorphins, our natural pain killers, also rely on specific sites being intact. Insulin attaches to receptor sites, and malformed sites results in higher levels of circulating insulin, insulin resistance and diabetes. Drugs including glutamate antagonists, calcium antagonists, opioids, in short, your heart drugs, your stroke drugs, your cholesterol dugs, pain drugs, all the drugs a person might need to patch biological function, rely on intact receptor sites in order to adhere to the cell wall and do their job. Don't think this does not include herbs, because it does.

You can see now that a health problem may indicate not a need for drugs, but a need for properly formed receptor sites, to restore and maintain optimal cellular function. By repairing those sites you might find that medication wasn't necessary, and cellular performance was simply blocked by a nutrient deficiency. Through oral supplementation we can correct the deficiency and build up your health until you can begin to make correctly formed glycoproteins again. The cells will become more efficient, thus natural functions such as immune responses and nutrient assimilation might all improve.

You can see now why glyconutrients are called a disruptive technology. Every cellular function relies on them, and without attending to this deficiency and others, which can eliminate the need for drugs, there's no point at all in applying drugs as a first choice. Doctors in this decade might well seem to be amiss in their duty to the patient if they do so. A vitamin can act as a drug, but a drug can never act as a vitamin!

Health is better than a drug band-aid. Because glyconutrients have been used to prevent the adhesion of infectious organisms and of metastasis cancer cells, they make a rather nice band-aid as well. Not bad for a food.

Limu has Glyconutrients along with Fucoidans

Glyconutrient is a broad term used to describe many different kinds of beneficial plant sugars. The beneficial effects of glyconutrients on the human immune system are nothing less than remarkable. These glyconutrients profoundly impact the way our bodies defend against disease on a cell-to-cell basis. So much so, that their existence has prompted the development of a new science called glycobiology.

Cell to cell communication & the natural building blocks that enable cells to send and receive biological code have been recently scientifically discovered, published and documented within medical textbooks. The study of glycolic and glycobiology is exploding. Over 20,000 peer reviewed studies published annually. One popular website is www.functionalglycomics.org.

The last 4 Noble prize awards in medicine, deal with cell to cell communication in our bodies and cellular interactions, or lack of cell to cell processes and breakdowns in cellular communication.

Glycoproteins and glycolipids cover the surface of every cell in your body and serve as telephone lines between cells. Make no mistake. There is no way to overestimate what glycoproteins and glycolipids do for you. The proper relay of information between cells determines your health status. Your immune cells cannot relay vital messages without these glycoforms, and your body cannot create enough glycoforms without sufficient levels of the EIGHT GLYCONUTRIENTS, which are flucose, mannose, galactose, xylose, fucose,

N-acetylglucosamine, N-acetylgalactosamine and N-acetylneuraminia acid.

Again, we cannot underestimate the importance of getting sufficient levels of these potentially life-saving nutrients. The essential eight sugars are engineered to instruct your immune cells where to go and what to kill. They play an important role in preventing a number of disorders-from allergies to asthma and from cancer to chronic fatigue.