Reprinted Articles

Do you know that a deficiency in certain sugars could be causing illness? How can that be true? We all know that too much sugar is bad for us… It was only quite recently that scientists discovered a family of ‘nutritional’ sugars. Sugars that are found in plants, sugars that play an important part in the functioning of our immune systems, that boost kidney function and help prevent disease.

Scientists recognise that there is a direct link between disease and diet. The human body is an amazing machine that can heal itself of disease if it is given the proper nutrition that it requires. Conversely, the lack of appropriate nutrition in the diet can leave the body defenseless and susceptible to disease.

There are so many health problems today that can be attributed to dietary deficiencies. Fast foods and processed foods, which are lacking in nutritional value, make up a large portion of our diets today.

Many of our foods are so processed that they contain no essential nutrients to feed the body’s immune system. As a result our immune systems get weaker and lose the ability to combat disease. Packaged foods tend to be loaded with additives designed to give them an eternal shelf life. Fruit and vegetables are mostly picked too early and often gassed to ripen.

Let’s now go back a little in time. It had been known for a long time that the aloe vera plant had remarkable healing properties. It seemed though, that once the aloe was processed commercially, it did not show the same health benefits as did the fresh, newly picked aloe.

It was during the early 1980s that a research pharmacologist was hired to attempt to isolate the medically active ingredient from the aloe vera plant. He set out to discover why the same benefits that were obvious with the freshly harvested plant, were not evident after processing.

After lengthy research it was discovered that the active ingredient in the aloe vera gel was a long chain carbohydrate made up, predominately, of a sugar called Mannose. Within a day or two of the aloe leaf being picked, this long-chain sugar molecule began to disintegrate, thus causing the gel to lose much of its effectiveness. This led to a new process being developed and patented, a process that protected this long-chain sugar from being destroyed. This new stabilized aloe extract was made available to the public as a juice, and testimonies soon began to flow in.

Many people who tried this new product were reporting great benefits to their health and it was soon realized by the scientists that this was a significant discovery.

Not a lot was known at that time about this science of carbohydrate structuring and it was being taught at only one or two universities in the world. Before long, however, researchers all over the world began studying these carbohydrates and by 1990 there had been about 4000 papers published about this new science that became known as Glycobiology. It was named as one of the ‘hottest’ new fields of medical research, with a complete chapter of Harpers Biochemistry in 1996 being devoted to a review of these sugars, which were identified as being essential for cell-to-cell communication and immune function.

It was found that of the 200 carbohydrate monosaccharides, or sugars, found in nature, there were eight biologically active sugars (glyconutrients) that gave our cells their structural support network and were critical for cellular communication. These glyco or sugar forms work to keep our hormones in balance, fight off disease invaders, enable blood to clot and create a complex cellular messaging system. Reason enough to include them in our diet?

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Tags: Nutrition