Leech is an invertebrate mollusk, which has no skeleton structure and can be used by everyone.
The main components of leech are protein, polypeptide, trace elements and fatty acids.
1. protein: The amino acid content in leech dry powder is as high as 62%, which is 2.7 times that of muscle protein 23.3%; At the same time, in 17 amino acids, glutamic acid, aspartic acid, lysine and leucine are high, which plays an important role in the health care of leeches.
Of the 17 amino acids contained in leeches, 7 are essential amino acids, and their content is 1535mg/ 100g dry weight, accounting for 72% of all amino acids.
2. Polypeptide: Blood-sucking leeches contain low-molecular-weight peptides composed of various amino acids, which are the main active components of blood-sucking leeches to exert their medicinal effects and health care functions.
3. Trace elements: Leech contains eight elements: calcium, chromium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, vanadium and zinc, among which vanadium, manganese, copper, iron and zinc are essential trace elements for human body. The contents of zinc and iron are relatively high, which are 65438 0.4 mg/g and 65438 0.36 mg/g respectively. The content of zinc is 8 times higher than that of soybean and 2 times higher than that of pig liver. It shows that leeches in Philippines have a strong ability to enrich zinc. The content of zinc in nature is relatively small, which is an important element to maintain the normal physiological activities of human body. However, the human body cannot produce it by itself and can only rely on external supply. Studies also show that zinc is widely involved in basic biochemical processes, such as the metabolism of enzymes, sugars, nucleic acids and fats in protein. It is known that the activities of more than 300 enzymes are related to zinc. Zinc can improve human immunity and has anti-cancer effect. With the increase of age, the content of trace elements in human body gradually decreases, especially zinc, which causes the damage of enzyme protein and accelerates the aging process and the occurrence of diseases. Therefore, in order to maintain the proper concentration of trace elements in the body, it is necessary to ingest foods rich in trace elements.
4. Fatty acids: Leech contains 16 kinds of fatty acids, of which saturated fatty acids account for 63.34% and unsaturated fatty acids account for 34.05%. It is found that monounsaturated fatty acids can reduce total cholesterol and harmful cholesterol, but not beneficial cholesterol. In addition, monounsaturated fatty acids have special physical and chemical properties and physiological functions, which can regulate human lipid metabolism and treat and prevent cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.