Yes.

In the farm-raised conditions, some people think there's a misconception that they're just artificially dyed pink with some type of dye.

They're actually fed astaxanthin as part of their diet.

And so these farmers or these scientists were thinking we could sell an extract of this algae to the salmon farmers to incorporate in their feed.

But then we started looking deeper and we're like, well, you know, if it's helping the salmon so much and there's some intriguing initial studies looking at its antioxidant activity, anti-inflammatory activity, exceptional safety that had been demonstrated, we said, well, this could benefit humans as well.

And so let's try to go down that route and be, you know, higher value product and then helping the world in addition to the salmon and potentially other animals as well.

So that was what it was.

pretty amazing

And so they don't even know how it changes over time, right? Can you tell us what are the main benefits of astaxanthin? And then let's get into more stuff after that.

So like you said, it's an antioxidant, but it's different.

Not all antioxidants are the same.

There's how potent they are and what types of reactive oxygen species or free radicals that they're best at targeting.

With astaxanthin, it's uniquely structured to be able to quench singlet oxygen, which is a particular type of oxygen that kind of has extra energy, say from UV light that hits it.

And that energy can be damaging to other components in your cells, like your lipids and your proteins and DNA.

With astaxanthin, it can interface with that and actually absorb the energy and the molecule can vibrate and dissipate the heat from that energy and then be back to normal and with no damage to the cell.

called? What's it called?

Yeah,

exactly.

And so astaxanthin is part of the carotenoid family, which people may have heard of beta carotene or lycopene or lutein or zeaxanthin.

They're all in the same family.

And this family of molecules or compounds was created as part of... kind of co-evolved with photosynthesis to protect plants and algae from environmental stresses.

And so the whole family of these carotenoids are pigments.

They absorb light.

what's your stance

Of course, the thing that came up for me is like, okay, is it going to interact with something else that I'm taking? And number two, What is the common side effect profile that people should be watching out for?

Yeah, so there's been nothing in terms of human studies or animal studies of clinical relevance or translation in terms of safety issues or side effects.

There's been no dose limiting toxicity in animal studies that are relevant to humans.

in terms of looking at the liver enzymes, which if you inhibit or activate certain liver enzymes, it may impact how well you absorb certain other or metabolize certain other drugs in terms of how they work in the body.

Something may work faster or have more potency if you impact those liver enzymes.

Astaxanthin hasn't been demonstrated in any human clinical studies to have a... clinically relevant impact on those liver enzymes.

There was one study back like 25 years ago in two people at a very high dose looking at some liver enzyme activity, but in other studies that wasn't replicated.

I mean, I think, you know, this is so compelling I think one of my questions that was coming up in my head when you were saying all of this is like, how does someone even know about astaxanthin to kind of give it in these large doses that you can't really get through diet? How did that even come about?

... and kind of dilapidating the body, accelerating all of those processes?

Well, it's all interrelated.

Um, so the, the body is, is, you know, well-equipped, um, to sense, you know, intruders and injuries and, and things, and, and that's how we survived.

And so this is the kind of, um, you know, ties back to, uh, the ancient origins of, of life.

And, and, and so, um, you know, inflammation is your body's normal response, you know, to infections, you know, whether it's bacterial or viral or, um, parasitic or fungal, um, or injuries, wounds, cuts, scrapes, you know, tears, strains, uh, or surgeries, um, or environmental exposure, you know, pollutants, et cetera.

Um, you know, all of these things, um, uh, or psychological stress, all of these things send, you know, your body, your immune cells in your body have receptors that, that actually are on the lookout, you know, for pathogens or for damage.

You know, damage could be certain muscle cells leaking, you know, leaking components of the cells or of the mitochondria that, you know, shouldn't be leaking, which means that the, the membranes are damaged, you know, or the function is impaired.

Like, how do you-- What could one expect to notice with supplementing astaxanthin beyond just eating some salmon every now and again?

Like what are the, uh, confirmed benefits based on research?

Yeah.

So there's kind of two aspects to the conversation.

One is what it does as a molecule in the cells, and that's kind of fundamental to all the effects that you'll see ultimately how it manifests itself in, in various, you know, areas of the body.

And then, then there's all of those ultimate effects like on the heart and the brain and, and the joints.

And so just looking at how it works in the cells as, as a starting point, the astaxanthin molecule, like I, like I mentioned, is a xanthophyll carotenoid.

And, and I'll mention that carotenoids are a really critical family of, of molecules that co-evolved with photosynthesis to help plants and microalgae against environmental stresses.

But in terms of like brain and joint health, what has the research suggested?

Like, what is your overall perspective?

there's a lot of noise there's a lot of hype there's a lot of claims there's a lot of people marketing for various things um there's certain things that are backed by uh big names big companies um and and certain things get more weight based on how how many how much money is behind them, what the resources are to promote them.

And so you may have certain things that become really popular, become fads, but may or may not have a whole lot of science behind them.

Or they may have some intriguing science in preliminary research studies that doesn't necessarily translate into human or clinical applications.

So I think it's really important to try to parse through all the noise and dig into the science and see what's real and also to look for independent, robust studies.

And so just as an example, the National Institutes of Health, specifically the National Institute on Aging, which is one of the institutes at the NIH, has a program called the Interventions Testing Program.

And this is a highly rigorous, highly robust program that has been ongoing for the last 20 years.

Anything else you'd like to add? Do you think the audience would appreciate related to this topic? Yeah, I think