In this blog, I will discuss Fucoidan and medication. Most people often ask, is it alright to take fucoidan while taking medication?

As you know, fucoidan is extracted from brown seaweed, so fucoidan is natural food. Hence, I believe you can take fucoidan while you are taking medication.  However, some doctors suggest that fucoidan has an anticoagulant effect. So, if you are taking blood-thinning medication, you should not take fucoidan extracted from some certain type of brown algae.

 Based on the research by Albana Cumash et al., brown seaweeds comparative study of the anti-inflammatory and anticoagulant was conducted. First, they studied the inflammation effect on seaweeds. The most active inhibitors were fucoidan from L. saccharina and F. evanescens, which inhibited neutrophil extravasation by more than 90% as compared to control. Additionally, the fucoidan from C. okamuranus (Mozuku) demonstrated a very potent anti-inflammatory effect, as well.

Secondly, the anticoagulant effect was demonstrated on the seaweeds; the result was that the most active anticoagulants were fucoidan from L saccharina, L. diriata, F. disitchus, and F. serratus. C. okamuranus (Mozuku) was the least anticoagulant active among all the fucoidans and had virtually no anticoagulant effect. And Mekabu (undaria pinnaifida) showed that it does not have anticoagulant activity but slight anti-thrombin activity. That is the reason when you are consuming Mozuku fucoidan or mekabu fucoidan; you can take fucoidan with blood-thinning medications.

When taking blood-thinning medications such as warfarin, it is necessary to make sure that fucoidan is extracted from the type as mentioned earlier of brown seaweed. Even though you think that Mozuku (C. okamuranus) does not have an anticoagulant effect if when you are planning to go for any surgery, it better stops taking Mozuku fucoidan at least 24 hours before the surgery.