The results of a neuroscience study that was published in the end of 2010 may be of high interest to you if you already heard about the spirulina benefits or the motor neuron disease that is called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (or ALS – the abbreviation of it).
For those of you that don’t know what ALS is – this is actually a progressive and fatal disease that is caused by the degeneration of the nerve cells, the motor neurons and the nervous system that controls that movement of the muscles. The amyotrophic lateral sclerosis condition causes muscle weakness and in most cases, it may even end in death.
Okay, so let’s focus on the connection between the blue green algae that is called spirulina and the ALS disorder. The neuroscience research study that we are talking about here discovered that taking this blue green alga can actually help protecting the body from the unwanted effects of this motor neuron disorder. It’s necessary to mention that the researchers and scientists still don’t have enough information to determine whether spirulina benefits for this cause or not, but you can be sure that they are working on more studies and experiments that will give us a more accurate answer.
Anyway, the study was done by scientists from the University of South Florida. In the trial that was conducted, the scientists took mice that had the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis condition and fed them with spirulina supplements. After ten weeks, the mice that were fed with these blue green algae supplements showed reduced symptoms of motor neuron degeneration and inflammatory markers.
This study shows that the consumption of this algae have a positive effect over the symptoms of the ALS disease, and it can delay the motor degeneration symptoms and the entire progress of this horrible disorder.
According to the assistant professor at the University of South Florida, Dr Svitlana Garbuzova-Davis, the results of this neuroscience study may represent a significant advancement in the treatment of ALS – and the current treatments of the disease only affect the symptoms of the disorder without relieving or solving the overall progress of the said condition. However, we would have to wait for further studies to be conducted about the connection between the spirulina and this motor neuron disease in order to know if the blue green alga really can be used as a reliable and effective treatment for this condition.
We do hope that a more effective treatment for ALS will be discovered (and it doesn’t matter if it involve the spirulina alga or a different material), but we need to remain patient and allow the scientists to do their work. Obviously, the ALS disease isn’t an easy one to deal with, and some of you may not know it but this motor neuron condition is also known as the Lou Gehrig’s disease – after the name of the famous baseball play from the New York Yankees that, unfortunately, was diagnosed with ALS in 1939.
Just a quick credit to another website for publishing the results of the research study about the spirulina benefits and this disease – the name of the site is Zenopa and we are talking here about a UK recruitment agency (that was formed in 1991 by their Director Mark Denton) that is a popular and respected supplier of sales & marketing personnel to many of the large pharmaceutical companies in the industry.