Nanotechnology: How It Works And Why It's Safe

The rising tide of controversy surrounding and overflowing into All Natural Nanotechnology is, in many ways, unwarranted.

“Following on from genetic engineering, nanotechnology represents the latest high-technology attempt to infiltrate our food supply.”

This quote from “Nanotechnology: The New Threat to Food” appeared in the January -February issue of Nexus 2009. The article, which was written by Georgia Miller and Scott Kinnear in 2007, painstakingly underlines the potential dangers of Nanotechnology such as food fortification, modification and pesticide administration. In that context, the article is a valuable reference. The developing study, which has many applications in device physics and nutritional health, elicits fear because it operates on an extremely small scale – one that is unfathomable and boggling to the human mind. In actuality, a nano-encapsulated nutritional supplement (a rapidly growing trend in commercial products) is only dangerous if its size reaches 50 nanometers or less. Otherwise, a supplement containing reliable ingredients such as Vitamin C, Folic Acid, Selenium, Zinc, etc., can be absorbed faster and deeper into the bloodstream through the help of nano-encapsulation. Products like this, such as dailysource, only use nanoparticles. There is no tampering with unstable technologies like quantum dots or nanowires.

Granted, technology can be scary. The human imagination combined with the fantastical conditioning of dystopian novels and Hollywood blockbusters makes us weary of scientific advancement. That’s understandable. But, the process of nano-encapsulation is really quite simple, and the consumption of related products is completely harmless. Here’s how it works:

Take a nutritional compound with proven ingredients and blend it with an encapsulation material. This is sometimes referred to as a precursor. It basically consists of water, alcohol, and lecithin – a natural phospholipid found in every cell of the human body.

The nutritional blend and precursor are spun together at different speeds. This step not only encapsulates the product or compound, but allows for the control of particle size.

In addition, every nutrient blend requires a feasibility study before encapsulation. Also, the process is GRAS certified meaning that the FDA generally considers all of the involved ingredients to be safe.

Perhaps it is an intelligent defense mechanism to apply cynicism to issues and technologies we don’t understand, but Natural Nanotechnology isn’t just gadgetry and gimmickry for the savvy 21st century. When applied to nutrition and medicine, this new phenomenon is a precise and efficient means of disease treatment and prevention.

As James R. Heath, Mark E. Davis and Leroy Hood explain in “Nanomedicine Targets Cancer” from the February 2009 issue of Scientific American, “That combination of cost and performance opens up new avenues for studying and treating disease by permitting the human body to be viewed as a dynamic system of molecular interactions. Such systems-level measurements are then integrated into computational models, which, in turn, can reveal early indicators of a problem. When these insights are combined with new nanotechnology-based therapies, the treatment can be targeted to the problem and only the problem, thereby avoiding serious side effects.”

We’ve all watched plenty of television. We’ve all seen the cheesy commercials for pharmaceuticals and commercial polymers. But, ask yourself this: When was the last time a pharmaceutical commercial promised no side effects?