Knowledge about knotted wrack is growing daily, are you open to the wonders of knotted wrack?
"Die Kräfte von Mutter Natur, Knotentang, eine braune Meerespflanze..."Knowledge about knotted wrack but also about other weed species is steadily increasing. If you follow the Internet, the non MSM and even the MSM a bit you will see striking developments taking place. Developments appealing to the powers of Mother Nature. For example, the recent report about honey being found in the ETZ (Elisabeth-TweeSteden Hospital) in Tilburg/Waalwijk was successfully used to fight an intestinal infection. The article on this, you can read here.
And more and more is becoming known about what has been withheld from us as humanity for a century and even dismissed as quackery for years. Why? Because the pharmaceutical industry knew that knowledge would create a huge financial risk, perhaps even spell its end. It is an industry originally born of corruption, illegal business practices and organized crime. What we mean by this you can read here for example. This is not to say that everything is bad, but what is bad, and there are plenty of examples of this, will cease to exist. Even on Netflix there are documentaries nowadays, for example the story of the opiate crisis, ‘The Pharmacist’.
But enough about that, we'd like to talk about the brown seaweed, in our case knotted wrack or Ascophyllum Nodosum...the source of Divinitá™. We are happy to share our knowledge about knotted wrack with you. The information below was taken from Wikipedia where the English-language version shows much more information than the Dutch. The german-language by the way, is also more comprehensive.
How can you recognize knotted wrack?
Het knotswier (Ascophyllum Nodosum) is een bruin zeewier met aan de stengels kleine blaasjes met slijmerige inhoud, waarin de voortplantingsorganen zitten. In de stengels zitten ook grote knobbels, gevuld met gas, die ervoor zorgen dat de plant onder water rechtop staat. Het knotswier is olijfgroen tot goudbruin van kleur. Het thallus kan 30-60 cm lang worden en is flexibel om mee te kunnen deinen met de sterke beweging van het water.
Where do you find knotted wrack?
The knotted wrack occurs in the North Sea and on both sides of the Atlantic coast. In Europe, this species is found in Ireland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Great Britain and the Isle of Man, the Netherlands, and North America from the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia, Baffin Island, Hudson Strait, Newfoundland and Labrador. It is also found near San Francisco (California), where it is being eradicated as a potentially invasive species. One might wonder why, given what we know today.
The species attaches itself to rocks in the middle of the tidal zone. When it detaches from the rocks, it can remain alive for a long time. All kinds of other seaweed species also grow under the knotted wrack, which would dry out in the tidal zone at that height without this shelter. They also provide shelter for small marine animals. In Zeeland (both in the Oosterschelde and in the Grevelingenmeer), knotted wrack is very common, as well as on the dykes and in the harbours of the Dutch Wadden Islands.
The knotted wrack used in the production of Divinitá™ comes from Scottish waters.
General knowledge about knotted wrack and its uses.
The use (eating) of Ascophyllum Nodosum has proven dental benefits in humans, dogs and cats. In addition to dental benefits, A. Nodosum can reduce inflammation and speed healing, especially after a serious injury. Brown seaweed contains fucoidans, which are "sulfated, fucoser-rich polymers." Fucoidans block selectins, which are receptors on white blood cells that allow these cells to enter a tissue and cause inflammation there. Because fucoidans block inflammation, A. nodosum can be considered an anti-inflammatory.
In "The effects of Ascophyllum Nodosum, Camellia sinensis-leaf extract, and their joint interventions on glycolipid and energy metabolism in obese mice," it was found that Ascophyllum Nodosum extracts can be used to control body weight in obese mice. There is potential for these extracts to be effective in humans, but most studies focus on the effects in small rodents, so more testing needs to be done.
Ascophyllum Nodosum is harvested for use in alginates, fertilizers and the production of seaweed meal for animal and human consumption. Because of the high content of vitamins and minerals that bioaccumulate in A. Nodosum, it was used in Greenland as a dietary supplement. It was also used for certain herbal teas, particularly kelp tea. It has long been used as an organic and regular fertilizer for many types of crops because of its combination of both macronutrients (N, P and K) and micronutrients.
Knowledge about toxicological uses of knotted wrack.
Because the age of different parts of A. nodosum can be identified from the shoots, it is also used to monitor heavy metal concentrations in seawater. A concentration factor for zinc has been reported of the order of 104. It has been used this way for more than 50 years, and studies have shown that A. nodosum absorbs cobalt, cadmium, lead and indium metal ions from the water. It has also been used to detect radioactivity in the environment.
Is there any more knowledge about knotted wrack?
Yes, tremendously. The Internet is actually full of information and research on this particular brown seaweed. Basically, it is too much to handle all of it in this website. You can read here what we have received from Slovenia, among other places, and found on the Internet in terms of information. Also on our Homepage which is more focused on Divinitá™ contains lots of information. The video is also very interesting. The knowledge about clubweed is growing by the day.
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