October 5, 2021
Chlorophyll is vital to the health and wellbeing of plants worldwide.
But what exactly is it?
In this article, we’ll talk about what chlorophyll is and how you could benefit from supplementing your diet with a little bit of it.
What Is Chlorophyll
Chlorophyll is a catch-all term for a variety of chemical compounds you can find in different leafy green plants. What do these compounds share in common? A greenish pigment. Chlorophyll plays an essential role in a plant’s ability to perform photosynthesis. In other words, a plant can’t turn sunlight into energy without its chlorophyll.
In the past, chlorophyll could be found in a wide variety of products such as mints, toothpaste, and even toilet paper. That’s because people believed that chlorophyll had natural deodorizing and cleaning characteristics to it. But by the 1930s and 1940s, people started replacing chlorophyll-heavy products with other antibacterial products. Antibiotics became more widespread and people felt like they needed natural solutions to their health problems less and less.
People started to forget about the way we often used chlorophyll. But in 2005, German scientists essentially rediscovered chlorophyll and found new benefits to consuming it that were unknown before. Now, in 2021, chlorophyll supplementation has turned into an entire trend on various social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok as people are trying to once again reap the many health benefits that come from chlorophyll.
And while the popularity of social media trends come and go, the benefits of increasing your chlorophyll consumption will not. As long as eating fruits and vegetables is good for your health, consuming chlorophyll will be good for your health as well. Because chlorophyll is a major reason why those fruits and veggies are so healthy in the first place.
Benefits Of Chlorophyll
Here are some of the most-talked-about benefits of chlorophyll.
Chlorophyll Helps With Blood Production
Chlorophyll compounds actually look pretty similarly chemically speaking to human blood. And there’s a lot of evidence that an increase in chlorophyll results in healthier blood production. Which makes sense seeing how a lot of the individual chemicals that make up chlorophyll play a vital role in blood production. And healthy blood can act as a tide that lifts all other health-related boats.
Chlorophyll Supports Immune Health
Another important role your blood plays is the role of protector. Your blood contains platelets that help close wounds to prevent germs from entering your body and causing an infection, and it also contains white blood cells which seek after germs, bacteria, and other infectious agents to neutralize them before they become too big of a threat. Having a healthy blood supply gives your body an equally healthy number of platelets and white blood cells that’ll help support your immune system and overall health.
Chlorophyll Helps Give You Energy
Chlorophyll helps plants turn the sun’s rays into food that plants can use for energy. Consuming these chemical compounds can provide us with a consistent source of energy too. And unlike caffeine that provides us with temporary, jittery energy, green leafy veggies provide long-term sustainable energy and an added sense of wellness.
Chlorophyll Can Help Improve Your Hair, Skin, & Nails
Your body takes care of itself using a certain order of operations. Obviously, the brain and other vital organs take precedence, followed by other, less vital-for-survival parts of the body. Hair, skin, and nails are some of the final parts of your body to receive the nutrients and care necessary to function as optimally as possible. That’s why so many people who are not getting the right amount of nutrition start seeing wrinkles, brittle nails, and hair-related problems at an earlier age. That being said, improving the overall health of your blood may help your body deliver nutrients and oxygen to your entire body more efficiently. Including your hair, skin, and nails.
Chlorophyll Helps Aid In Digestion
The more efficient your body is at delivering nutrients where they’re needed, the more efficiently the different parts of your body can perform their various roles. That includes your digestive tract. Adding more chlorophyll to your diet creates a compounding effect as chlorophyll helps your digestive tract by maintaining intestinal flora and stimulating bowel movements.
Although these are some of the most-talked-about benefits of chlorophyll, there are still other benefits yet to be fully explored.
Chlorophyll And Your Liver
As we’ve mentioned already, healthy blood encourages healthy organs, and healthy organs may lead to a healthy you. This is also true for your liver, which is tasked with the important job of regulating different chemical levels in your blood and creating bile to help remove waste products from your system. Using chlorophyll to help support your liver function is a great way of making sure it’s doing its job optimally every time it encounters waste that needs to be removed from the body.
There are so many benefits to chlorophyll for both the liver and the rest of the body that we’re just now discovering.
What Are The Risks Of Chlorophyll
You can’t just look at the benefits of a decision. You have to consider the risks too.
So what are the risks of chlorophyll?
There aren’t many.
Some people have experienced a bit of an upset stomach, especially those that are not used to regularly having ample amounts of daily greens in their diets. When selecting to add more chlorophyll to your diet it's best to look for natural sources such as green vegetables or supplements that actually list chlorophyll in the supplement facts label instead of chlorophyllin because chlorophyllin is semi-synthetic.
If anything, the biggest risk is the possibility that someone who’s consuming chlorophyll-rich supplements may use it to justify letting go of other health habits. It’s important to remember that health supplements are just that. They’re supplements aimed at supporting your current healthy habits.
You can’t replace exercise with chlorophyll. You can’t replace a good diet with chlorophyll. While taking a green supplement may help you enhance your current wellness regimen, it cannot replace it either partially or completely.
You still have to do the other things right so your body can be the best version of itself possible.