Top 10 Questions about Beta Glucan: Answered by the Formulator (Updated 2024)

That's probably one of the most commonly asked questions. If I get into an elevator and I got three floors to go up, I'm going to explain to them that beta-glucan is a complex carbohydrate, very complex, not like a simple sugar that you have to worry about your diabetes or whatnot, and some might even refer to it as a fiber.

Beta-glucan is kind of a general term and it can come from multiples of sources. Probably the Cheerios girl made barley and oats famous.Certain seaweeds, mushroom, probably one of the oldest sources, and we use, for example, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which is a form of baker's yeast. Now, over the last several years, different companies have sought out other sources, and it adds to a little bit of confusion in the marketplace, but we typically look to extracts from baker's yeast.

Most of our conversations have to do with the immune system, and in particularly the immune response. Now, again, if you're talking to the Cheerios girl, she's going to be talking about lowering cholesterol, so cardiovascular issues. And there are many other things. There's a pre-probiotic, the friendly gut bugs enjoy this material. Topically, it's great for the skin in various sundry concoctions. Now you're start to see, particularly in some of the higher priced stores, you're going to see beta-glucan as one of the listed ingredients. But for most of our conversation, we'll be talking about how the immune system responds in a better way when beta-glucan is in play.

I always used to say, "Anybody can fog up a mirror," if you're above room temperature. And it's not just people. Pets. I mean, this stuff has been researched and... Tremendous amounts of literature on PubMed, on anything from fish, to earthworms, to shrimp, you name it. In fact, there's even data on certain plants, improving their immune response against certain plant diseases when beta-glucan is employed. So it is a broad umbrella that's cast when you start talking about who can, or what can, benefit.

I would say probably it's safer than the water you drink, particularly if you're at someplace like Detroit. I mean, the window of safety is so broad, it's hard to even describe it. Some of the research has had long-term studies of not just milligrams, but grams. I mean huge amounts of material being used for long periods of time, and no side effects whatsoever.

Well, no. In fact, as I said earlier, you've not only got different sources, whether or not you're using pond scum, or seaweed, or mushrooms, or baker's yeast, the actual molecular structure of these beta-glucans will vary quite a bit. Without getting too much into the tall weeds, if you can imagine a long chain of, let's say pearls, and you've got little side chains coming out, the frequency of those side chains and the lengths of those side chains will have a significant impact on the amount of immunological activity that's produced by a particular dose.

I went to PubMed just yesterday, and there was just short of 196,000 studies.
that popped up when I typed in just the word glucan. Now, out of all of those studies, I'd have to say probably cancer would be at the top of the pile, and well over 12,000 studies when you look at a combination exercise of glucan plus cancer. And those numbers literally are changing in the few minutes we're doing this work.

Well, I think the biggest difference is that this material actually works. Unfortunately, in the food supplement industry, companies are not compelled to put forth evidence, and somehow people are under the misconception that the FDA or somebody actually is out there testing or employing some sort of a question to answer as to whether or not certain ingredients are even safe to use. That's not the case. So I'd have to say the biggest difference is that at a relatively small dose, I'm talking about milligrams, we produce more immune response than you could get maybe with pounds of other, quote, unquote, beta-glucans from the various source.

Well, the way that we do it when we're doing testing for medical research is literally thousands of dollars are spent on immunological testing. We'll look at white blood cells, how many are working, how many are not, how many are producing what are called cytokines, lymphokines, think of those as immunological fax messages and emails. There's a list of about probably 10 or 12 common indicators that can be used. I think for the typical Joe and Sally citizen, if they understand enough to go to PubMed and look for the material that we talk about, then you're going to find a list of studies not only that show that it works, but whoever's number two, you couldn't afford it. We're talking thousands of dollars, many thousands of dollars before you get anything that even moves the needle just a little bit.

Well, the most common dosing method is orally. Now, we've done all kind of testing, IV, IM, IP, but since we don't sell it as a pharmaceutical today, even though it's on route to one day probably being used as a pharmaceutical, we're looking at orally dosing. And the dose is based upon individuals' body weight. And so whether or not you're giving it to your parakeet, whether you're giving it to your dog, whether you're giving it to your daughter or son, or whether you're going to take it, is based upon the body weight. The more an individual weighs, the higher the dose needs to be.