sul·fo·raph·ane (noun)
Sulforaphane may be a rising star in the health and wellness space, but a good reputation alone doesn’t necessarily make this powerful super-ingredient any less mysterious. We’re here to go down the list and answer some of your biggest sulforaphane related questions (no biochem PhD required).
Okay, so what is sulforaphane?
In short, sulforaphane is an incredibly helpful chemical that delivers detoxification, inflammation relief, and a healthy gut.
Sulforaphane is what’s known as a phytochemical – a chemical naturally created by plants. In this case, those plants are cruciferous vegetables like cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, and most notably, broccoli sprouts.
These plants exist in a tough spot on the food chain, so they create sulforaphane in order to help them overcome the many dangers that they face. The humble broccoli sprout may not look particularly tough, but sulforaphane turns this little plant into a resilient biological machine that’s capable of repairing damage taken from hungry herbivores and rampaging pathogens. Luckily for us humans, the restorative effects of sulforaphane work for us too.
How does sulforaphane work?
You may not need to worry about grazing herbivores, but you do need to worry about things like whether or not your immune system is working at peak efficiency or whether the collagen in your skin is still doing its job to keep you looking young.
We’re learning more every day about how sulforaphane is able to deliver these exact benefits (and many others), but most current research into how this chemical does what it does has focused on the Nrf2 pathways that sulforaphane triggers within our bodies. Without wading into too much complexity, this pathway is responsible for activating a wide array of cellular defenses and, when triggered, causes a massive reduction in inflammation, oxidative stress, and overall toxic burden in our tissues.
What we end up with is better gut health, better regulated inflammatory responses, and widespread detoxification throughout the body – but those are only the first order effects. Once stabilized, those 3 key pillars of health go on to promote healthy luminous skin, better immunity, mood enhancement, and much more.
How much sulforaphane do I need?
Most experts suggest aiming for between 10-15 mgs of sulforaphane per day if you’re looking to see results in days instead of months. There’s a couple important caveats here though – buyer beware.
First of all, you’d need to eat a LOT of cruciferous vegetables in order to hit that recommended dose… like breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day and you’re still probably not even close. Your more practical option is a sulforaphane supplement, but again there’s some important things to consider.
Stay away from extracts and SGS. There’s a ton of faux-sulforaphane products out there that market themselves as being derived from broccoli sprout extract, broccoli seed extract, SGS, and other sources – most of these are not the genuine article. During their manufacturing, many of these products use a chemical process that separates sulforaphane’s two precursor chemicals and leaves only a chemical called glucoraphanin. Many brands have applied trade names to their glucoraphanin products that sound similar to ‘sulforaphane’ – don’t be fooled. No sulforaphane means no benefits.
If you want to avoid the literal buckets of broccoli and the disingenuous “sulforaphane” products out there, just get Broc Shot. It delivers the perfect dose of pure broccoli sprout sulforaphane every time, guaranteed. For a product that delivers results that you can see and feel in just days, come check us out.