A Series Listing and Explaining Postbiotics and their Health Benefits
By Ross Pelton, RPh, PhD, CCN
Fulvic acids are as critical for life as water, oxygen, and sunlight and they were playing a crucial role in the health of plants for millions of years, long before humans began to evolve.
Fulvic acids are created in soils when bacteria decompose plant and animal matter. Although fulvic acids have been around for millions of years, scientists are just beginning to understand the critical roles they play in the life of plants, animals, and humans. Recent research from Japan has reported that fulvic acids are one of the many types of postbiotic metabolites that are present in Dr. Ohhira’s probiotics.
The molecular structure of fulvic acids makes them one of the most interesting, complex and relevant classes of chemical compounds ever discovered. Although fulvic acids are relatively small regarding their molecular weight, they have more binding sites relative to their size than any other group of compounds found anywhere in nature.
Binding Sites: Fulvic acid’s binding sites enable it to chelate, or bind to many minerals. An individual fulvic acid molecule can bind to and transport around 60 to 70 different minerals.
Transporting Nutrients: Fulvic acids are extremely effective at dissolving minerals and binding or chelating them into the fulvic acid molecule. This ability enables fulvic acids to carry nutrients from the soil into plant root hairs, and ultimately, across cellular membranes and into plant cells. In fact, fulvic acids play a critical role in the transport of nutrients from the soil into plants. Consequently, fulvic acids have been referred to as bio-stimulants and nutritional boosters or master dietary transport agents.
Nature’s Powerful Detoxifier: Fulvic acids effectively bind organic pollutants such as pesticides and herbicides. It also chelates toxic metals such as mercury and leads and it also detoxifies and neutralized radioactive substances. Fulvic acid functions as nature’s super detoxifying agent by chemically modifying toxic elements in a way that renders them harmless.
Maintenance of Optimal Acid/Base Balance: Being weakly acidic compounds, fulvic acids work somewhat like another class of postbiotic metabolites named short-chain fatty acids to help create and maintain the optimal level of acidity in the intestinal tract which promotes the growth of friendly probiotic bacteria while inhibiting the growth of pathogens.
Environmental Disaster: The massive increase in the use of pesticides and herbicides over the past 50-70 years has increasingly killed the bacteria in the soil in agricultural lands all over our planet. This practice means bacteria are not present to break down organic matter in the soil, which would typically result in the production of fulvic acids and results in decline in the transport of nutrients into plants, resulting in nutrient depletion in plants, especially our food supply. There has been a substantial reduction in the nutritional content of the commercially available food supply over the past half-century.
Powerful Antioxidant: Fulvic acids are some of the most powerful natural antioxidants and free radical scavengers in all of nature. In chemistry terminology, carboxyl or carboxylic acid groups are symbolized as COOH. Fulvic acid compounds can have as many as 30 carboxyl groups per molecule. Fulvic acids can donate the hydrogen from the -COOH group to neutralize free radicals. This ability is the aspect of fulvic acids that makes them powerful antioxidants.
One of Nature’s Most Powerful Electrolytes: Electrolytes are substances that are capable of conducting electrical current. All cells possess what is referred to as a membrane potential, which refers to the difference between the electrical charge on the inside vs. the outside of the cellular membrane. Healthy cells have a membrane potential of approximately 70 millivolts. When cells become unhealthy as in inflammation and cancer, the membrane potential drops significantly, and when a cell’s membrane potential reaches zero, the cell dies. As an electrolyte, fulvic acids can supply an electrical current that recharges the electrical potential in cells. The fulvic acid functions like a cellular battery charger that balance and optimize the electrical energy in cells.
The Fulvic Acid Phenomena: A phenomenon is something that is judged to be extraordinary or remarkable. A rapidly growing body of scientific research suggests that this class of low molecular weight organic compounds called fulvic acids can justifiably be called a new health phenomenon. Fulvic acids are now being widely utilized in agriculture to improve health and disease resistance in plants as well as increasing plant growth and crop yields.
Fulvic acid is also being increasingly used in animals. When fulvic acid is added to livestock feed, it results in improved health and growth of the animals. For example, adding fulvic acid to the feed of chickens improves their growth rate. When fulvic acid compounds are fed to dairy cows, they give more milk while also consuming less feed.
Although only a few human clinical trials have been conducted, fulvic acid supplements for human consumption are beginning to appear in the marketplace. It seems that the health benefits that fulvic acids impart to the soil and the health of plants and animals will also benefit humans.
Summary: Fulvic acids are postbiotic metabolites that have been created by probiotic bacteria as they break down organic matter in soils. This is a process that soil-based probiotic bacteria have been engaged in for millions of years before animals and humans began to evolve.
In the last few decades, scientists have learned that fulvic acids are essential to the life processes of all plants, animals, and humans. Life on earth would not exist without fulvic acids. Recent research in Japan reported that fulvic acids are present in Dr. Ohhira’s Probiotics. Thus, fulvic acids are one of the features of that helps to explain why Dr. Ohhira’s Probiotics are so effective at providing Rapid Microbiome Restoration for people with intestinal problems. The benefits of fulvic acids include the following:
- Master transport agents to deliver nutrients to cells
- Effective promoters of cellular detoxification
- Powerful antioxidants
- Maintaining optimal acid/base level in the intestinal tract
- Suppress the growth of “bad” bacteria
- Recharging the electrical charge on cell membranes
Fulvic Acids Help To Understand The Dr. Ohhira’s Difference!™
