Beta Glucans
What are they?
Beta Glucans are complex carbohydrates, also known as polysaccharides, they are found in many organic sources, such as yeast, mushrooms, oats and barley.
Carbohydrates appear in two forms, simple and complex. Table sugar is an example of a simple sugar and has been found to have a negative effect on health. They are one, two or three units of sugar linked together. On the other hand complex carbohydrates carbohydrates can be hundreds or thousands of units of sugar linked together to form a single molecule.
Complex carbohrydrates are found in such popular foods as potatoes, mushrooms and beets. These carbohrydrates are easily understood by our body and therefore can be broken down in a effecient and effective manner without the negative side-effects that are seen in simple carbohydrates such as table sugar.
In fact some complex carbohrydrates have been shown to have tremendous benefical effects on the populations health. Beta glucans are one of these complex carbohrydrates.
Beta glucans refer to the glucose linkage. There are many of them. They are as follows;
Some of these beta glucans exhibit different health related benefits while others help establish the existance of the other active, benefical linkages but they in themselves offer no benefit what so ever.
Further, the source used to derive the beta glucan linkages appear to determine what beneficial effect the material will have. For example beta 1 3 glucan, derived from bakers yeast has been shown to be the "mother of all Beta glucan." Not only has it been shown to have benefical effects on cardiovascular health in preliminary independent tests, it has proven to be one of the most effective immune enhancing supplements ever discovered who's reseach dates back to the mid 1940's.
Properly manufactured Beta 1, 3 glucan, more commonly known as Beta 1, 3-D glucan, has only a small amount of the other beta glucans present in the finished material.
These trace amounts of the other glucans help establish a high quality Beta 1, 3-D glucan product.
On the other hand, Beta glucans derived from oats and barley have a higher percentage of the 1, 4 glucan linkage present and have only been shown to provide beneficial effect in cardiovascular health. This may explain the specific health benefits associated with barley and oat derivied glucan products.
On the other hand yeast beta glucan has also been shown to support porper immune system support function, while the barley and oat products have shown is they do not not. To learn more about yeast beta glucan click here.
