Now, on the face of it, Bromelain pineapple extract appears to be just another one of the supposed wonder treatments for vitreous eye floaters that has a huge claim around it, but very little in the way of substantiated results. Now, while we’ve witnessed a lot of sufferers will go to great lengths to explore options that are non-surgical to treat our floaters, even we won’t try anything for the sake of it.
So if you find yourself in the same boat, then keep reading this blog post to find out why, for top reasons why I’ll be trying Bromelain pineapple extract over the next two months to see whether there’s any truth behind the hype that’s causing all the fuss around Bromelain.
Let’s get started with today’s post all about Bromelain. I purchased the 60 capsule supply of Bromelain from Amazon UK, It contains 1200 GDU of Bromelain per capsule, which is equivalent to 480 milligrams per capsule. GDU by the way, stands for Gelatine Digesting Units. Now they advise on the instructions that you take between one, two, three capsules per day, for my test, I’m going to simply use one capsule per day if it interests you I’ll leave a link to this product or an equivalent product below for you to check out.
So why am I going ahead and using Bromelain?
So why am I going ahead and using Bromelain? Well, first of all, lots of people asking me about it. They’ve been asking my thoughts on it and whether I’ve used it, I haven’t looked into it. I then felt that it’s a safe enough product to use and test out to deal with floaters. Now to be fair, over the next two months, my expectations are not that this is going to be a miracle cure for floaters, but what I do want to see is some kind of glimmer of hope that this could be making some kind of difference to the floaters, whether that’s making them less visible and more translucent than just any kind of indication that it’s worth extending that two months and continuing to use it is really what I’m looking for in this period.
So with that said, here are my four top reasons why I found Bromelain interesting and worth trying out.
- Bromelain has a long history of therapeutic use in traditional and herbal medicine.
Bromelain is an enzyme that’s fine in all parts of the pineapple, also from the stem to the fruit. And in countries such as Central and South America, it’s been used for centuries for medicinal purposes. Now some parts of the world Bromelain have achieved full wide-ranging medical approval as a topical cream for skin burns because of its ability to remove dead skin cells.
The range of things that people use Bromelain for is quite wide-ranging but the common applications are for inflammatory conditions like arthritis, sinusitis, bronchitis, as well as these anti-inflammatory benefits of Bromelain. People perceive it to also have benefits in helping with cardiovascular conditions or if you are somebody who is at risk of heart attacks, stroke, angina, then that’s one of the applications that people will usually turn to Bromelain for. If you are somebody who’s already taking prescription medications from your doctor to thin your blood, then you don’t want to start on Bromelain without consulting your doctor because it can make your blood dangerously thin and that can lead to unwanted problems and complications.
So this is why the use of bromelain and this established use of bromelain over time assures me that it’s a safe product to use and that’s important because it means then that it’s not just a novel product with unknown risks.
- Bromelain is a protein-digesting enzyme.
So why is that important? Well, the main way that it claims that Bromelain can help is by dissolving vitreous floaters. Now, before we can take such a claim seriously, we have to first establish that Bromelain even has that theoretical possibility of being able to dissolve floaters.
We know that vitreous floaters are caused by collagen fibers, which exist naturally in the vitreous anyway, clumping together and causing these thicker clumps of collagen, which then cast shadows on the retina, we perceive that then as these moving floaters in our vision, it turns out that Bromelain is indeed a proteolytic enzyme, which means that it’s able to catalyze, or to speed up, the breakdown of protein chains into their smaller amino acid blocks. It turns out that the collagen fibers that vitreous floaters are made out of are also proteins.
So in theory, Bromelain can break them down and can then I suppose in theory dissolve your vitreous floaters, but it seems that we can tick off reason number two for plausibility. That is, of course, if we can figure out how Bromelain is going to get into the vitreous in the first place.
- Stem bromelain can travel through cell membranes.
We know that the vitreous fluid is encased by the hyaloid membrane, so for Bromelain to be able to access the floaters and to be able to break them down, it somehow has to be able to make its way into the vitreous. So for it to do this, presumably it has to somehow make its way across this membrane into the vitreous humor.
There are two Bromelain enzyme classifications found in pineapple, the first one is called Fruit Bromelain, and which’s extracted from the fruit itself, and the second one is called Stem Bromelain, and which’s extracted from the pineapple stem. Now fruit Bromelain and can break down the proteins, as we talked about so, too does stem Bromelain. To a greater extent, it appears that Bromelain from the stem can interact and affect a greater part of the body than perhaps fruit Bromelain can do so and the reason for this may be that it has either a greater or enhanced ability to pass through cell membranes. Now, this may well be the reason why a lot of herbal and traditional remedies are made out of the stem Bromelain rather than the fruit Bromelain.
The supplement that I have is made out of the stem as well and typically, you just need to look out for the name Ananas Comosus, which is the extract of the stem, the word to describe the vitreous as being a closed system. This is true to the extent that within an intact membrane, the vitreous humor fluid doesn’t get a fresh reproduction of vitreous humor coming in and draining out all the time, it’s essentially a stagnant pool of this fluid.
Now, unlike the Aqueous humor in the front chamber of the eye, the aqueous humor gets freshly produced all the time, so you get new aqueous humor produced by the ciliary processes in the ciliary body and then the old aqueous humor drains out via the trabecular work. This just doesn’t happen, we don’t get that inflow and outflow within the intact vitreous membrane, so therefore it is kind of really an enclosed system in that sense. However, this doesn’t mean that a nutrient can’t necessarily come in and out.
This was what was proposed and suggested by Maurice in 1957, based on his experiments, which appeared to show that his radioactive salt sample was able to work its way from in the vitreous out into the anterior chamber, he concluded that there is a mechanism by which the membrane allows things in and out. He also suggested that this might explain why the aqueous humor and the vitreous humor are almost identical in terms of their make up of the actual fluid part of the vitreous humor and the aqueous humor based on what we’ve said about stem Bromelain and perhaps Bromelain in general.
This ability to be able to penetrate membranes, it may well be that a possible pathway for Bromelain to make its way into the vitreous might be that it works its way into your bloodstream and then it works its way into the aqueous humor, the aqueous humor is actually kind of the fluid is derived from plasma in your blood anyway and is kind of released by the ciliary processes in the ciliary body.
So Bromelain can work its way into the aqueous humor in that way and then based on Maurice’s 1957 theory, then it could be that bromelain can make its way via the anterior membrane of the vitreous into the vitreous humor, once it’s there then of course it may well be able to then digest your vitreous floaters. So that is one that highly theoretical mechanism and pathway that Bromelain can make it’s way into the vitreous perhaps very oversimplified by me and I hope that makes sense and for those who have that question of how it was going to be able to get into this supposedly closed system then hopefully that makes sense as well.
- There is some research and anecdotal evidence to suggest that bromelain may have some benefits against vitreous floaters.
Now it’s always desirable and welcome to have research that supports any possible treatment that you are thinking about in the case of Bromelain, many people will be aware of this Taiwanese based research which suggests that pineapples will have a benefit on vitreous floaters and as well as that there are many people swear by Bromelain for its benefits in pain relief and you know anti-inflammatory properties etc.
I think it’s worth having a healthy dose of reality when it comes to what Bromelain can do and especially with some of the anecdotal evidence that you hear about people saying that it’s beneficial to them and then they’ve noticed something, there aren’t very many people who are saying yes it’s cured my floaters and you know I’m running down the street saying they’re miraculously healed and recovered, there a lot of people who feel that Bromelain hasn’t made any noticeable difference to them whatsoever so it’s worth keeping all that in mind and keeping everything in perspective but all things considered and with the points that I’ve highlighted up above I think bromelain is definitely worth my consideration and for that reason I’m gonna over next two months give it a try, initial try anyway and not gonna get too hung up on the dosages that I’m taking but, I’ll use this 480 milligram kind of capsules that I have and I’m going to take one a day over there certainly over the first month and then perhaps in the second month then I may up that to two capsules a day maybe even three so based on how things go.
That’s how I’ve arrived at my decision to give Bromelain a go, for some of you who might be wondering I’m not just eating fresh pineapples as much as I love pineapples I can only eat so much before it starts to give me acid indigestion so it’s not something that is a realistic option for me. Besides that, I think I want to try the stem extract of bromelain rather than the fruit itself just because I think that possibly could be more effective.
Let me know in the comment section below if you have any questions about whether you’ve used Bromelain yourself?
I’m also going to leave a link below to our Facebook group that I’ve recently joined, I’m not the owner of the group but I think it’s a big group of people who live with floaters a great place and a resource for people who might want to find other people going through floaters and themselves to make a discus share their experiences. So I’ll leave a link to that group below as well as the link to the supplement (Bromelain) or the next kind of best-recommended one that I find.
My recommended other videos: My eye floaters playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…
Want to join floaters facebook group: Floaters action group https://www.facebook.com/groups/eyefl…
Bromelain on Amazon: https://geni.us/bromelain
Thanks for reading and look forward to the next update, take care.
