Spirulina: Tiny Water Creatures as Green Powder

1. What Is It Actually?

Spirulina are tiny little living beings that live in the water. They are so small that you cannot see them without a microscope. Their name reminds you of the word spiral, and that is exactly how their shape looks: like a small twisted cord.

Like a plant, they make their own food. For that they need light. They take in sunlight and build their own building blocks from it. Colours appear in the process: lots of green and a bluish tone as well.

When people harvest Spirulina, they dry it and grind it into a fine powder. The powder is dark green, smells a bit like a meadow and tastes clearly of plant. Many people stir it into juice, yoghurt or muesli.

The powder does not contain just one single thing. It is a mixture of many substances: protein building blocks, vitamins, minerals and colourants. That is why people sometimes call Spirulina a superfood. It sounds big, but it only means: many nutrients are together in one tiny little heap. Whether and how this mixture helps your body is a separate question — and that is exactly what is being researched.

2. Where Does It Come From?

Spirulina grows in water. It needs lots of light and warmth, so it feels at home in shallow, sunny waters. There it floats in the water and shimmers green when the sun shines on it.

In nature it grows in small amounts. So that there is enough for powder and tablets, it is cultivated in shallow basins and ponds — similar to lettuce in a bed, only in water. Experts call this cultivation; you can picture it as a garden under the open sky.

Once it has grown large enough, the water is drained and the fine green mass is taken out. Afterwards it is dried and ground. What remains is a dark green powder that stands on the shelves in jars or as small tablets.

Its home is therefore the water and not the bed in the garden.

3. What Are the Researchers Investigating?

Researchers have already often studied with people what Spirulina does in the body. They looked, for example, at how well the body uses sugar from food, how blood pressure behaves and how the blood vessels react. They did this with people who were overweight or had high blood pressure.

In other studies the focus was on older people and how their blood and defence cells are doing. Yet other investigations looked at whether athletes feel fitter with Spirulina or can keep going longer. Colourants and defence substances in the blood were also measured.

In some investigations measured values changed, for example in blood pressure or in the blood pigment. Researchers are not finished yet, however. Many studies are small, and their results do not always match. That is why one cannot say: whoever eats Spirulina automatically becomes healthier. The question of how much of it really reaches the body and for whom something changes is still open. New investigations are meant to clarify this.

4. An Experiment to Think About

Get a glass of clear water and stir a little green powder into it — ask an adult first whether you may do that. Watch how the colour spreads: from one tiny little heap an entire glass turns green.

It is just as difficult to measure what such a little heap achieves in the body. It is inside a person who is still eating, drinking, sleeping and moving. Everything acts at the same time.

That is why researchers divide people into two groups. One group receives Spirulina, the other receives something that looks the same but contains no Spirulina. Afterwards they compare. This way they can see whether a difference really comes from the small green powder. How would you compare the two groups?

For adults and professionals: the detailed page on Spirulina.