Weight Loss Doc reviews Sea Moss

Listen to this article on Spotify, or watch it on YouTube.

Sea moss, also known as Irish moss, is a type of algae called Chondrus crispus. If you’re doing any research on the health benefits of sea moss, you might be a little skeptical about all the purported health claims.

How realistic are these claims? Are there any dangers to eating sea moss? And what can you realistically expect if you eat sea moss?

Well I’ve been doing a lot of research on sea moss, and found some interesting things. So in this article, I’m going to answer those questions, and take a comprehensive and realistic view of eating sea moss for health and weight loss.

Nutrition in sea moss

Nutritionally, sea moss contains some carbohydrate, as well as small amounts of protein and fat. It also provides small amounts of vitamins and minerals.

This seems nice, except for the fact that the concentration of all these nutrients are really low. When sea moss is dissolved in water, the resultant gel is mostly water.

It actually has a comparable nutrient density to kale. Kale actually has a better nutrient profile than sea moss, having a greater variety of nutrients, and having more protein and fiber, while having less carbohydrate, which is beneficial to people trying to lose weight.

It does have a large number of different vitamins and minerals, but if you’re going to be eating a lot of this stuff and blending it into smoothies for nutrition, you should know that there’s a potentially serious health issue with eating too much sea moss. I’ll explain why later.

Carrageenan in sea moss

Now sea moss has an interesting property. When mixed with water, it forms a gel-like substance. This is due to a special type of carbohydrate it contains.

The carbohydrate in sea moss is mostly in the form of a specific type of soluble fiber called carrageenan, and about 50% to 65% of the dry weight of sea moss consists of carrageenan.

Carrageenan is actually commonly used in many other foodstuffs, like sauces or ice cream, to help thicken it.

Purified carrageenan is considered generally safe for human consumption, however a growing body of evidence suggests that it may not be as harmless as we once thought.

Health effects of carrageenan?

In research labs, carrageenan is actually used to cause inflammation in animal models for testing anti-inflammatory agents.

While we don’t see direct inflammation in humans, there is evidence to suggest that carrageenan might aggravate those with pre-existing inflammation in the gut, like those with Inflammatory Bowel Disease or Ulcerative Colitis.

So if you have an inflammatory condition in your stomach or gut, carrageenan may worsen your symptoms, and removing it from your diet can help to alleviate your condition.

When we look at carrageenan’s effects on weight loss, three common related health claims appear:

1. The claim that it helps with cholesterol levels
2. The claim that it helps with blood sugar levels
3. The claim that it suppresses appetite as a soluble fiber and helps with weight loss

Let’s see what the research actually says.

Firstly, the evidence for carrageenan helping with cholesterol is extremely weak at best. Most of it was done in mice, and the one small study done in humans found a very weak effect on cholesterol.

Secondly, much of the evidence surrounding its ability to help with blood sugar also involves research in mice, not humans, and even then, the evidence is mixed, with some showing it does help reduce blood sugar, and some showing it doesn’t.

In fact, the research we have in humans regarding blood sugar, shows that removing carrageenan from the diet actually helped reduce overall blood sugar levels. So adding carrageenan into your diet might actually be worse for your blood sugar.

Finally, we have absolutely no evidence that carrageenan helps to suppress appetite or help people lose weight.

I think that many of these health claims may have arisen from the fact that other soluble fibers also tend to thicken when mixed with water, just like carrageenan does.

Some soluble fibers like glucomannan or psyllium husk have some evidence it can help to bulk out your stomach and help suppress your appetite, as well as help with cholesterol and blood sugar control.

Unfortunately, not all soluble fibers are created equal, and while carrageenan might look similar to glucomannan or psyllium husk, it doesn’t seem to possess any of those beneficial qualities.

So carrageenan doesn’t seem to have any reliable beneficial health effects, and might actually have negative effects on health and your ability to lose weight.

That means that the claim that the carrageenan in sea moss can somehow benefit your health is highly dubious.

Health effects of sea moss?

So if carrageenan isn’t really beneficial for your health, what benefits does sea moss have?

A review of the research shows that sea moss lacks good evidence for many of its health claims, like heart health, weight loss, gut health, or immunity.

These benefits are mostly theoretical, and have no actual evidence to back its use. Most of these claims are heavily extrapolated, and honestly it would be a real stretch to make such claims.

For example, just because some soluble fibers might help with weight management, doesn’t mean that all soluble fibers including the carrageenan in sea moss will help as well.

Another example is the claim that it can help with exercise and muscle recovery because it contains some protein. Sea moss contains such a low concentration of protein. If you really want protein for muscle recovery, just take a protein powder or have some chicken.

However, sea moss is a seaweed, and like many other seaweeds, it’s high in iodine. Iodine is a nutrient that’s required for your thyroid to function properly.

Sea moss contains around 4-7 mcg of iodine per gram. For comparison, iodized salt contains around 3 mcg of iodine per gram, so about the same.

This is kinda nice if you’re deficient in iodine, but you could also consume any type of culinary seaweed to get iodine, like nori, kelp, kombu, or wakame.

Heavy metals in sea moss

But a common problem with consuming seaweed, sea moss included, is the presence of heavy metals.

You see, corals and seaweed have a nasty habit of absorbing the heavy metals in the water around them and not letting it go.

As a result, heavy metals like arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury, tend to build up inside over time, and high concentrations may show up in sea moss products, depending on where the sea moss was sourced. Independent testing for these heavy metals is not very common.

A well-known risk of consuming any seaweed products is that you will likely be consuming at least small amounts of heavy metals each time, since heavy metal pollution is so globally widespread.

So getting iodine, or any nutrients from consuming sea moss, particularly if you plan to eat a lot of it, comes with a very real risk of heavy metal contamination.

Should you eat sea moss?

Overall, sea moss feels kind of like a weaker version of kale. It’s not quite as nutritious as kale, and is more difficult and expensive to find.

In fact, if you suffer from inflammatory bowel disorders, or want to avoid ingesting heavy metals as much as possible, I suggest you avoid sea moss.

If you want something like sea moss that might actually benefit your health, kale, collard greens, or spinach are all better alternatives. There’s much more evidence behind their health benefits.

If you want something like sea moss that might support weight loss, use a better soluble fiber like glucomannan, psyllium husk, or chia seeds. At least there’s some evidence that those fibers can help.

At the end of the day, if you like putting a bit of sea moss into smoothies for the texture, that’s fine, it’s probably not going to harm you. But is it going to help you? Probably not.

Top alternatives to sea moss

• Chia seed – 1 to 3 tsp w/ meals
• Glucomannan (caps) – 1 to 3 caps w/ meals
• Glucomannan (PGX caps) – 1 to 3 caps w/ meals
• Glucomannan (PGX powder) – 0.5 to 1 scoop w/ meals
• Glucomannan (powder) – 0.25 to 1 tsp w/ meals
• Inulin – 1 to 3 tsp w/ meals
• Oatmeal – 1 cup / day
• Psyllium husk (caps) – 3 to 12 caps w/ meals
• Psyllium husk (Metamucil) – 1 scoop w/ meals
• Psyllium husk (powder) – 1 to 3 tsp w/ meals

Learn more about

• Dietary fiber: an overview
• Glucomannan / Konjac for weight loss
• Other foods for weight loss
• Other weight loss supplements

See also

• 
  Doctor Reviews: Onnit Alpha Brain
  Onnit’s Alpha Brain lacks effective ingredients and doses for cognitive enhancement, resembling standard L-theanine supplements.
• 
  Doctor Reviews: Boostaro
  Boostaro claims to be a “male intimacy enhancer”, however there is no evidence it works or can help with erectile dysfunction.
• 
  Doctor Reviews: Nutrafol
  Nutrafol is being sued for making false claims about their products being “clinically proven” when their studies are seriously flawed
• 
  Doctor Reviews: ZBiotics
  ZBiotics uses the probiotic Bacillus subtilis ZB183, however there is no evidence it can metabolize alcohol or help in hangovers in humans
• 
  Doctor Reviews: Bee Bread
  Bee bread is fermented bee pollen, and may be quite nutritious, but lacks any researched health benefits in humans.