Useful and medicinal properties of marine medicine

People have long appreciated the treasures of the flower goddess Flora, but Neptune, the god of the seas and oceans, has its own green pharmacy. The leading place in it belongs to marine plants - algae.

Algae - green, red, brown and other colors - are considered delicious products extracted from the sea, and effective medicines. They are on the mandatory list of healthy foods and are essential ingredients of the national cuisine of Japan, China and Korea, where food is always equated to a medicine.

In our country, algae are popular in the Far East, but in Central Russia, their benefits and medicinal properties began to speak relatively recently, so it is worth learning about this culture better and more.

Algae is a group of lower aquatic plants containing chlorophyll and other pigments that produce organic substances in the process of photosynthesis. Algae, no flowers, no seeds, and spores, as a rule, are devoid of a solid shell. Algae are also devoid of roots and the substances they need absorb the entire surface from the water. The body of algae( thallus, or thallus) is simpler in structure than mosses, ferns and other inferior terrestrial plants. At the same time, the sizes of algae range from a fraction of a micron to several meters.

In nature there are more than 30 thousand species of algae, in the sea areas adjacent to the shores of our country, grows more than 900 species, of which about 80 species are considered edible. On the basis of differences in the set of pigments, morphology and biochemistry( composition of cell membranes, reserve substances), there are 10 types of algae: blue-green( Cyanophyta);golden( Chrysophyta);pyrrophytic( Pyrrophyta);diatoms( Bacillariophyta);

is multi-corpuscular, or yellow-green( Xanthophyta);

euglenic( Euglenophyta);

green( Chlorophyta);

Charovye( Charophyta);

brown( Phaeophyta);

red( Rhodophyta).

In China, marine plants have long been called the magic herbs of life, because they have a powerful healing power, which helps not only to prevent diseases, but also to fight the most serious diseases.

Unicellular algae are often combined with mucus or outgrowth in colonies. Large species of these lower plants, mainly brown, often form whole underwater forests. Most algae live from the surface of the water to a depth of 20-40 m, single types( red and brown) with good water transparency drop to 200 m.

Algae are used in different ways. From the algae are obtained jelly and mucus-forming substances - agar-agar( anfeltia, gelidium), agaroid( phylloflora, gracilaria), carragen( chondrus, gigartine, fucialia), alginates( laminar and fucus), and fodder flour and iodine. In addition to algae, which are processed into gelatin - agar-agar or carrageenan( they are used in milk and chocolate products), there are a huge number of other edible algae. Most often sea food is used for food - sea cabbage, porphyry, ulva.

Chemical composition. Seafood is very useful - they are rich in biologically active substances, macro- and microelements. So, in terms of dry weight protein content in them varies from 5 to 50%, fat - from 1 to 3%, and carbohydrates - from 40 to 70%.Moreover, the digestibility of the protein of the lower marine plants reaches 60-80%( while the protein of meat is 30%), besides it contains a relatively high amount of essential amino acids. Fats of algae are assimilated by 49-55% and, which is very valuable, they consist of unsaturated fatty acids. Contained in algae and a significant amount of specific carbohydrates. A small portion of salad with algae provides a person with a daily norm of iodine, zinc, selenium, iron, copper, magnesium.

Algae that live along the coasts of the northern and eastern seas - aram, noria, fucus, cystoseira, wakame, dulze, hijiqi, kombu or meqabu - are gaining popularity all over the world. Some species participate in the formation of therapeutic mud.

The content of medicinal substances in algae depends on their type and conditions of development. So, wakame and arame contain 10 times more calcium than milk.

In algae, hijikas have 10 times more iron than beef. In kombu and aram, iodine content is 500 times higher than in oysters, and almost 1000 times more than in marine fish. Algae are useful for everyone who wants to lose weight, since the calories in them are at a minimum.

Therapeutic action of algae. If we proceed from the principle expressed by Hippocrates, that food should be a medicine, and medicine a food, then there is no better "helper" than vegetable seafood.

Without shifting your health care to doctors, you can follow your diet, which is the best method of prevention, excluding the appearance of a variety of diseases. For the cardiovascular system, it is very useful to include vegetable seafood twice a week.

Each species of marine plants has some most pronounced effect, you just need to know about this specificity. So, it is useful to use kelp for high cholesterol, combi - at elevated pressure, vakame - for cancer and hemophilia, and noria has antibacterial action.

Among the brown algae, rich in iodine, is fusiform bubbly. It is useful in diseases of the liver, stomach, kidneys, as well as as a diuretic and in malignant diseases of the thyroid gland. Liquid extract is prescribed in goiter and atherosclerosis, asthma with shortness of breath. Preparations based on fucus promote weight loss, increase metabolism, remove heavy metals and radionuclides from the body, eliminate symptoms of dizziness, migraines and insomnia.

However, the fusiform bubbly lives in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean Sea and this explains the limited use in our country.

True, fucus is quite possible to replace the brown alga cystose with beard that is widespread on the Black Sea coast, which has the same medicinal properties.

Many algae contain substances that have a rejuvenating effect on the cells of the tissues of the gastrointestinal tract and lungs.

Still, most often for medicinal purposes use algae - kelp and agar-agar.