Researchers report that eating vegetables and adding a daily chlorophyllin supplement helps relieve IBD symptoms. Chlorophyllin supplements also significantly reduce the risk of IBD-related deaths, Neuroscience News reported, citing the American Journal of Physiology, Gastroenterology, and Hepatology.
According to researchers from the Diabetes and Metabolism Research Center at Sichuan University in China and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, the nutritional supplement chlorophyllin relieves IBD, including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Chlorophyllin also significantly reduces IBD-related mortality, weight loss, diarrhea, fecal occult blood, intestinal epithelium damage and inflammatory cell infiltration.
Gastrointestinal disorders
Chronic gastrointestinal disorders such as IBD affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide, and IBD can cause a global health burden due to the high cost of treating the condition.
While the exact cause of IBD isn’t fully understood, some contributing factors include stress, environmental and lifestyle and dietary choices, such as high consumption of meat or fish.
Chronic inflammation, the body’s process of clearing damaged cells to make room for newer, healthier cells, and lysosomal stress, the dysfunction of a cellular organelle that leads to inflammation, is also associated with an inflammatory bowel condition.
current treatments
Current treatments for IBD include medications that suppress the immune system and surgery. However, long-term use of immunosuppressive therapies can lead to severe effects and consequences, including opportunistic infections and even organ failure.
chlorophyllin supplement
In the new study, researchers discovered that oral supplementation with chlorophyllin, a compound derived from the green pigment found in plants, reduces colitis and abnormalities in the intestinal epithelium in lab mice. Consumption of leafy greens, along with a supplement of chlorophyllin, was also beneficial in IBD recovery, in part by relieving inflammation and removing toxic molecules and organelles.
The researchers concluded that the green pigment found in vegetables and supplements could start sending a nutritional signal to modulate autophagy in cells, dampening IBD symptoms. The researchers suggest that the new findings could be an innovative path for a non-surgical treatment of severe cases of IBD. Professor Xiaofeng Zheng, one of the researchers involved in the study from Sichuan University, said: “Eating vegetables or supplements with green pigment such as chlorophyllin can help patients with Inflammatory bowel”.