What are Liposomal Supplements?
October 2016
In order to understand liposomal supplements, you first need to
understand what a phospholipid is, because a liposome is made up of
phospholipids.
A phospholipid is defined as a specific class of lipid, which includes
fats, waxes, sterols and fat soluble vitamins, that has two specific parts: It has a round head that is hydrophilic, meaning
‘water loving’, and it has a tail which is hydrophobic meaning ‘water fearing’.
This makes it unique in that the head turns towards water and the tail
tries to get away from water.
As mentioned earlier, a liposome is a made up of a large amount of
phospholipids which arrange themselves into a spherical nature when introduced
in water. They will attract to and surround
many different nutrients forming a phospholipid layer around the nutrient
itself. See figure below.
Due to the size and stability of the
phospholipids used they are able to successfully travel through the digestive
system without getting degraded by enzymes, carrying the nutrient through the
intestinal membrane.
Although research has not clearly shown how
the nutrients in a liposome are actually released, there are a couple of
theories. One theory suggests that the phospholipids are processed in the liver
as fats and that this process releases the nutrient. Another theory proposes
that cells all over the body, hungry for phospholipid materials to repair cell
membranes and other cellular structures, "steal" these materials from
the liposome allowing their contents to leak out.
Either way, the liposome covering allows
the nutrient to pass through the intestinal membrane intact making the nutrient
more bioavailable to the body.
It used to be that this delivery technology
was only used in the pharmaceutical industry to deliver drugs more
effectively. In recent years some
supplement manufacturers have utilized this unique technology to make nutrients
such as vitamin C, CoQ-10 and glutathione more bioavailable to our body.
Brenda Valen, BS, CNC, CNHP
Gulf Coast Nutrition
