Layne Lowery

Abnormal blood clots can form in large veins, then travel through your system. When a clot lodges in the blood vessels of your heart, lungs or brain—it can cause a health disaster!

Doctors often prescribe blood thinners to keep existing blood clots from growing and to prevent new clots from forming. Heparin is a blood thinner derived from animal tissue that is frequently prescribed to dissolve blood clots that can occur during heart surgery and kidney dialysis. Medical professionals also use it to clean surgical intravenous (IV) lines.

Recent discoveries of contaminated Chinese heparin imports raised serious concerns about continued use of the drug. But a group of chemists has reported significant progress toward developing a fully synthetic version of heparin—which they say could significantly reduce health risks!

At an August 2008 meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), scientists said the purer, non-animal-derived version could improve the drug’s safety—and boost regulations controlling its production.

According to an ACS statement, heparin imports are produced from pig intestines processed in small workshops in China. These shops are often unsupervised—and are not regulated by pharmaceutical industry standards.

“With the problems associated with contaminated heparin produced from pig tissues in China, a non-animal source of this essential drug is gaining importance,” said study co-author Robert J. Linhardt, Ph.D., a chemist with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Linhardt is working on the heparin development with Jian Liu, Ph.D., a medicinal chemist with the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Jonathan Dordick, Ph.D., a Rensselaer chemical engineer.

The new research has improved upon previous efforts made by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers to develop synthetic heparin. The MIT process produced extremely small batches of heparin that could not be increased for commercial use.

But Linhardt’s team has developed a method that increases heparin production a million times higher than the MIT technique!

The ACS statement said successful testing could result in the synthetic heparin reaching the consumer market in two to five years.

In the meantime—why not consider Mother Nature’s solution for dissolving harmful blood clots. Nattokinase is a natural enzyme that softens and dissolves blood clots and flushes them out of your body before they can harm you.

Nattokinase helps maintain healthy blood flowing to critical organs such as your heart and brain—saving your health and maybe even your life!