Nattokinase

If you've been reading about nattokinase, you've probably seen one number come up again and again: 10,800 FU. It comes from the largest human study of nattokinase so far, which followed 1,062 adults for a full year at that daily amount, and it's the number we built our formula around. If nattokinase is new to you, it's an enzyme from natto, a fermented soybean food from Japan, and people take it as a simple way to support healthy circulation.* Because it's an enzyme, what matters is how active it is, not how much it weighs, so its strength is measured in fibrinolytic units, or FU.

That's where many bottles fall short. A lot of nattokinase capsules hold 2,000 FU, which means reaching 10,800 FU takes six capsules every day, and a 60-capsule bottle is gone in about ten days. We wanted it to be simple, so we put the full 10,800 FU into a single capsule. You take one a day, and one bottle lasts 60 days.

Of course, printing a number on the front of a bottle is easy. Proving it is the hard part, so we send every batch to an independent lab before it ships. Our latest batch came back at 12,583 FU per capsule, above what the label promises, and you can read the original report yourself on our Lab results page by matching it to the batch number on your bottle.

Putting all of that into one capsule didn't mean charging more for it. At $30.99 for 60 days, you're paying about $0.52 a day for the full 10,800 FU. If you're comparing brands, that's the math worth doing: divide the price by the number of days the bottle really lasts at 10,800 FU, not by the number of capsules inside.

It's also worth reading the fine print about where a product comes from. Labels that say "formulated in USA" or "tested in USA" only tell you where a recipe was written or where a sample was checked, not where the capsules were actually made. Ours are made in the USA, under FDA cGMP, from globally sourced ingredients, and we say it exactly that way because that's exactly what happens.

As for where nattokinase itself comes from, the story starts with breakfast. For more than a thousand years, people in Japan have eaten natto, soybeans fermented until they turn sticky and stringy, over rice in the morning. It has a strong smell that people tend to either love or avoid, and for most of its history, nobody thought of it as anything more than a meal.

That changed in 1980, when a Japanese researcher named Hiroyuki Sumi was working at the University of Chicago. He was testing more than 170 foods for enzymes that break down fibrin, a protein your body makes and clears every day as part of normal circulation. When he placed a little natto on fibrin in a lab dish, the fibrin around it dissolved, and no other food he tested came close. He traced the effect to an enzyme produced during fermentation and, in 1987, named it nattokinase. That same enzyme is what's inside every VALTH capsule, so you can get it without eating natto every morning.

So if 10,800 FU is the number you came for, that's exactly what we built: the full amount in one capsule, tested by an independent lab at more than the label promises, about $0.52 a day, and made in the USA. We hope it becomes one simple, honest part of your day.

One important note before you start: if you take blood thinners or other anticoagulant medication, have a bleeding disorder, or have surgery coming up, please talk to your doctor first.

If you've read this far, thank you. It means a lot that you took the time. As a small thank-you, use code NATTOSTORY for free shipping on 1 or 2 bottles. If you're buying 3, add a 4th to your cart and use code NATTOSTORY3, and the 4th is on us. One code per customer.

And if you scrolled straight down here, no worries at all. The codes are yours too, and when you have a quiet minute, we'd love for you to read the story above.

Huy, founder