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16.05.2025

How to remove PFAS from your body with beta-glucans

At the time of writing, the media is reporting with remarkable avidity on the presence of PFAS in fish, coffee, tea, eggs and many other foods. If you take these reports seriously, you might almost decide to stop eating anything at all. Hence our interest in the Canadian study that appeared in Environmental Health in March 2025. According to this study, beta-glucans from oats remove PFAS from your body.

Study
Researchers from Boston University School of Public Health analyzed data previously collected in a Canadian trial, in which 42 healthy men with slightly elevated cholesterol levels dissolved and drank a sachet of oatmeal fiber 3 times a day for 4 weeks. This was done with a meal.

Each sachet contained 2 grams of fiber. Of this, 1 gram consisted of beta-glucans. A control group of 30 men received sachets of rice powder.

The Canadian trial was intended to see whether supplementation with beta-glucans lowered cholesterol levels. This was indeed the case, although the effect was modest.

Cholesterol can leave the body via bile with the stool. A diet rich in soluble fiber - such as the fiber from oatmeal - facilitates this process. The researchers wondered whether the beta-glucans and fibers from oats could do the same trick with PFAS.

PFAS compounds are industrially produced substances that are used for coatings but have also ended up in the environment. These substances tend to accumulate in the body and disrupt hormone balance and metabolism.

Results
As far as we know, the long-chain PFAS compounds are the most risky. These are PFOA, PFNA, PFDA, PFUnDA, PFHxS, PFOS and MeFOSAA. Chemists classify these compounds as NASEM PFASs.

The concentration of NASEM PFASs decreased by a statistically significant 8 percent in the experimental group [OBG]. There was no significant decrease in the control group [RICE].

Click on the table below for a larger version.

Conclusion
"Results from this pilot analysis suggest a potentially practical and feasible intervention that may reduce human body burdens for some PFASs", write the researchers.

"However, studies utilizing a larger sample with a broader range of serum concentrations, longer intervention period, and clinically relevant fiber intakes are needed to determine the efficacy of using gel-forming dietary fibers to increase PFAS excretion."

Source:
Environmental Health 2025;24:10.

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