Astaxanthin: How much is too much? A safety review
- December 2019
- Phytotherapy Research 33(1)
An interesting paper from Europe that did in-depth analysis on several brands of astaxanthin.
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Any endogenous super molecule found in whole foods (wild salmon), worthy of consideration.
I added 10mg/day Astaxanthin 10mg 180 Softgels by Waka Tani
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Now Foods is also a good brand I’m familiar with and which typically gets good reviews in Consumerlab - and it also works out to about $0.12 per 4mg (for comparison with the above table):
Also at iHerb, $16.13
https://www.iherb.com/pr/now-foods-astaxanthin-10-mg-60-softgels/38292
RapAdmin and anyone else. You taking Astaxanthin and if so, what dose?
Not yet - but probably will. We need to translate the 4,000ppm from the mouse studies to human studies. Perhaps someone can do that and show the calculations.
Here is an example one person did for Meclizine / Dramamine research:
From Louis:
My calculation shows that the ITP fed the mice a human equivalent dose of about 730mg of Dramamine per day for a 70kg person.
Here is the math:
The ITP used 800ppm in food (see attached photo). And 800ppm is 0.08%. A typical mouse weighs about 0.025kg and eats about 4g of food per day, so 0.08% is 3.2mg of Dramamine for the mouse per day. That is a dose of 3.2mg/0.025kg=128mg/kg. Divide by 12.3 to allometrically scale to humans, to get a human equivalent dose of (128mg/kg)/12.3=10.4mg/kg. So for a 70kg human, that would be 728mg of Dramamine per day.
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I have taken /take it on and off, for several year when having any type of X-ray. I have taken/take several grams, yes grams. Several days before, the day and after. Use to purchase the Vitamin Shoppe brand.
FWIW, I recently have been using
Liposomal Astaxanthin Supplement that is 24mg per capsule. The last two bottles cost was less than .25¢ per capsule, 120 capsules was $23.59 with a coupon
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Using the meclizine calculation.
4000ppm / 800ppm
X / 728mg (70kg person)
5 * 728mg = 3.64g/day for a 70kg person ?
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LifeExtension include 2mg in their EPA/DHA fish oil capsules.
If I’m eating the wild sockeye salmon (very pink so high in Astaxanthin) I’d only take two, if not I’ll take three or four each day.
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A typical 10kg wild salmon with approximately 40 mg Astaxanthin/kg flesh, would convert 3.64g/day of Astaxanthin into eating over 9 whole salmons/day.
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Big astaxanthin believer and took it for years prior to rapamycin. Since starting rapamycin I get lower extremity muscle twitches after using it. They go away after stopping the astaxanthin. Some interaction between them. Not certain what’s causing it.
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This study showing PPAR delta as an activator of pancreatic cancer got me wondering if astaxanthin may be problematic. Astaxanthin is a PPAR alpha agonist and I wanted to know if it affected the other PPAR’s as well.
Fortunately it appears that it does not act as a delta agonist, and in fact has no affect.
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What dose of Astaxanthin were you using in this situation?
12mg per day. A fairly high dose so I’m thinking that maybe 4 mg would be okay.
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I get similar random muscle twitching, dramatically worsened by any kind of curcumin supplement (so I avoid curcumin). Took me forever to link it to curcumin, and I still have no idea what the mechanism could be.
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Well, now that you mention it, curcumin also does it as does green tea extract. I have to avoid all of them for the first 3-4 days after my rapamycin dose or the twitching is a real nuisance, and also I start thinking that I have some neuromuscular disease.
What could it be? Is it some kind of excessive neuromuscular activation? What’s the role of rapamycin.
I think curcumin and green tea inhibit mTOR to a certain degree. Does it excessively inhibit muscle cell proliferation when used in combination and the muscles compensate by some sort of hyperactivation?
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I take one of these daily for several years now, never noticed any effect.
Thanks. That could explain it.
FWIW, I have used turmeric in cooking for a while. But my latest blood panel indicated some sort of liver injury (ASAT and GGT values), so I stopped all supplements two weeks back (but in the meantime restored mag and urolithin A). I googled my supplements in cunjunction with liver injury, and found that turmeric products have recently been implicated in over a dozen instances of clinically apparent acute liver injury (May 2021). This effect might be fostered by black pepper, that increases the bioavailability of curcumin:
Importantly, means of increasing the bioavailability of curcumin were developed using piperine (black pepper) or nanoparticle delivery methods to increase absorption. These high bioavailability forms of turmeric were subsequently linked to several cases of liver injury and mentioned as a possible cause of outbreaks of acute hepatitis with jaundice in Italy. The clinical features of the liver injury attributed to high bioavailable forms of turmeric have recently become better defined. The latency to onset of liver injury has varied from a few weeks to as long as eight months but is typically 1 to 3 months. The onset is insidious with fatigue, nausea and poor appetite followed by dark urine and jaundice.
The only symptom listed that I also had was dark(er) urine. Maybe I just took too much of it on a one day or week. For example, I remember having drank a whole glass of hot turmeric in a restaurant (it’s served as a drink, and I found it quite good, actually). I will wait another two weeks and check my liver values again. But I have to say, since two weeks, I’m doing very good.
If it stays that way, I’m going to get rid of a bunch of supplements…
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Your math is right but that feels like a completely insane amount of astxanthin.
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