The science of DrNashGlycoHealth is supported by R&D company PhytoQuest Ltd with over 18 years of pharmaceutical discovery and development and over 200 refereed publications and patents. PhytoQuest are world leaders in the discovery of iminosugars.

Research suggests they are the elusive active components of many if not most herbal medicines (Nash et al., 2011). Iminosugars are natural, stable small carbohydrate analogues with the ring Oxygen replaced by Nitrogen. They are present in many clinically proven herbal medicines but rarely noticed in the past because they are difficult to detect and their effects on sugar biochemistry can be very subtle. They have a wide range of biological effects related to their ability to correct aberrations in sugar biochemistry; such aberrations occur in most diseases and iminosugars offer an exciting new way to control such diseases.

Why Plants Produce Iminosugars and How They Benefit Us

Plants use sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to produce sugars by photosynthesis. The sugars are the starting point for all molecules used for growth by plants and other organisms. Many plants protect these sugars by producing iminosugars that reduce the ability of other organisms to utilise the sugars efficiently. The iminosugars are present in almost all plants but have an enormous diversity of structures and biological activities. Sugars are important to human biochemistry not just for energy but also act as important signalling molecules on cells. The iminosugars are able to regulate sugar biochemical processes in animals in very specific ways. Some inhibit particular enzymes involved in sugar release from foods and the uptake into the blood stream. Others speed up the removal of sugars from the blood and improve control of blood glucose. We are particularly interested in new types of iminosugar that interact with sugar receptors and are effective at very low concentrations without inhibiting enzymes. A few rare compounds can correct defective immune responses.

The detection of iminosugars in plants has been very slow in the scientific literature because the analysis is difficult and most laboratories still do not see or measure them. They are little explored except by the researchers behind DrNashGlycoHealth. The importance of the iminosugars to good health is becoming clear. Many commercial health supplements from plants contain no iminosugars even if the source plant did. It is, therefore, important to ensure the extraction process allows iminosugars to be extracted otherwise the health benefits of the plant may be missing in the final product. Carbohydrates are crucially important to good health and iminosugars offer a unique natural way of regulating vital processes in the body using sugars.

IminoSugar Certified

All products from DrNashGlycoHealth carry the Iminosugar Certified logo. This means the iminosugars of the plant have been retained, measured and the product quality controlled for their concentration.

Iminosugar Science Network (ISN)

The science of iminosugars is a specialised area with few groups able to isolate and identify them in plants and microbial material. DrNashGlycoHealth has an advisory group (ISN) of the major researchers in the field of natural iminosugar isolation, biology and chemistry.

Reference:

Nash, R.J., Kato, A., Yu, C-Y., Fleet, G.W.J. (2011) Iminosugars as therapeutic agents: recent advances and promising trends. Future Med. Chem. 3 (12): 1513-1521.