Food Science · From the archive

It Beat a Statin 3 to 1 on Plaque: 46 Years of Nattokinase Research

In 1980, a researcher placed natto, a fermented soybean food Japan has eaten for about a thousand years, onto an artificial blood clot and watched it dissolve. Forty-six years later, the enzyme he found has 198 studies behind it across 43 diseases, including a randomized trial where plaque shrank 36.6% on nattokinase versus 11.5% on simvastatin. This visual deep dive covers how it works on clotting four different ways, whether it survives digestion, why dose explains the “negative” trial, blood pressure, neuroprotection, the spike protein, and the real bleeding risks when it’s stacked with other drugs.

October 24, 2026
About this episode

Food Science, from Sayer Ji’s channel

In 1980, a researcher placed natto, a fermented soybean food Japan has eaten for about a thousand years, onto an artificial blood clot and watched it dissolve. Forty-six years later, the enzyme he found has 198 studies behind it across 43 diseases, including a randomized trial where plaque shrank 36.6% on nattokinase versus 11.5% on simvastatin. This visual deep dive covers how it works on clotting four different ways, whether it survives digestion, why dose explains the “negative” trial, blood pressure, neuroprotection, the spike protein, and the real bleeding risks when it’s stacked with other drugs.

Published October 24, 2026 · watch on YouTube · read the article with every source.

The research behind this episode

Open each topic on GreenMedInfo to read the study abstracts it draws on.

Chapters
  1. The Undeniable Power of Nattokinase
  2. A Clot Dissolved in a Petri Dish
  3. The 30,000-Foot View of 198 Studies
  4. Four Mechanisms at Once
  5. The Absorption Question
  6. The Plaque Matrix and the Dose Problem
  7. Cholesterol and Inflammation
  8. Hemodynamics
  9. Neuroprotection
  10. The Spike Protein Blind Spot
  11. Safety and the Stack
  12. The Failing Standard of Care
  13. Whole-Food Epidemiology
  14. The Funding Bottleneck
  15. Three Takeaways
Sayer Ji
Sayer JiFounder of GreenMedInfo (2008), the open-access natural-health research database; author of Regenerate (Hay House, 2020) and Shadow Empire: The Epstein Files (Skyhorse, 2026); chair of the Global Wellness Forum; convener of Restore the First.
About Sayer Ji