Chlorophyll and Chlorophyllin

Chlorophyll is the green pigment plants use to catch sunlight, and you eat it every time you eat spinach, parsley or broccoli. The “liquid chlorophyll” sold as drops is usually something else: sodium copper chlorophyllin, a water-soluble, copper-containing derivative made from chlorophyll in a factory. Its one strong human result is narrow — in a randomized trial in Qidong, China, chlorophyllin taken with meals cut a urine marker of aflatoxin DNA damage by 55% in people exposed to mold toxins in their food. The popular promises (oxygenated blood, “blood building,” detox, no more body odor, clear skin) are either untested or have been tested and come up short, and whole green vegetables remain the better source.


Table of Contents

  1. What It Is: Chlorophyll vs. Chlorophyllin
  2. A Short History: From Leaf Pigment to Bottled Drops
  3. What Is Actually in It: Green Food vs. the Bottle
  4. The Aflatoxin Trial in Qidong, China
  5. Body Odor and the “Internal Deodorant”
  6. Skin and Acne
  7. Gut Health: What Green Vegetables Do
  8. How People Use It
  9. Myths and Overclaims
  10. Safety, Side Effects and Who Should Avoid It
  11. Key Research Papers
  12. Connections
  13. Featured Videos

What It Is: Chlorophyll vs. Chlorophyllin

Chlorophyll is the pigment that makes plants and algae green. Plants use it to trap the light energy that drives photosynthesis. Its core is a large, flat ring built from four smaller rings — the same family of ring as the heme in your red blood cells — but with a magnesium atom at the center where heme has iron. A long fatty tail (called phytol) hangs off the ring, which makes chlorophyll dissolve in fat rather than water. Two forms, chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b, make up about 99% of the chlorophyll in the plants we eat.

Chlorophyllin is what most people are actually buying. It is a semi-synthetic mixture: manufacturers extract chlorophyll, treat it with alkali to strip off the fatty tail, and swap the central magnesium for copper. The U.S. rule that allows it as a food color describes exactly that — “a green to black powder prepared from chlorophyll by saponification and replacement of magnesium by copper,” with the chlorophyll extracted from alfalfa (21 CFR 73.125). Without its tail, chlorophyllin dissolves in water, which is why it can be sold as a liquid.

What the liquid drops actually contain

According to the Linus Pauling Institute's chlorophyll monograph, natural chlorophyll is less stable and much more expensive than chlorophyllin, so most over-the-counter “chlorophyll” supplements actually contain sodium copper chlorophyllin. Read the ingredient line rather than the front of the bottle: “sodium copper chlorophyllin” or “chlorophyllin copper complex” tells you what is inside.

Chlorophyllin is not one molecule but a family of them. Two of the commonest are copper chlorin e6 and copper chlorin e4, and the exact mix varies from product to product. When food chemists in Spain analyzed commercial green colorants with high-resolution mass spectrometry, they identified more than a dozen chlorophyll compounds that had never been described before, and worked out the chain of chemical reactions during manufacture that produces them (Pérez-Gálvez & Roca, 2023). In plain terms, a bottle of “liquid chlorophyll” holds a set of copper-containing breakdown products of chlorophyll, not the pigment of a fresh leaf.

Why the difference matters

The two behave differently in the body, so evidence about one is not automatically evidence about the other. Natural chlorophyll mostly stays in the gut. Parts of chlorophyllin get into the blood: in the Qidong trial, blood serum from volunteers taking chlorophyllin tablets was visibly green, and chemists traced the color to two copper chlorins that came from the tablets (Egner et al., 2000). And in rats, natural chlorophyll protected the colon lining against the irritating breakdown products of red-meat heme, while chlorophyllin did not (de Vogel et al., 2005). Keep that split in mind as you read the claims below.

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A Short History: From Leaf Pigment to Bottled Drops

No traditional healing system prescribed “chlorophyll” — it is a modern chemical idea. What tradition did recommend, in nearly every cuisine on earth, was eating green leaves and herbs. Evidence tier for that tradition: traditional use only. The chlorophyll story itself runs like this:

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What Is Actually in It: Green Food vs. the Bottle

How much chlorophyll is in green vegetables

Dark leafy greens are the richest everyday source. These figures for raw vegetables come from the Linus Pauling Institute's monograph, which draws on a 2004 food analysis:

How much is in a supplement

The U.S. over-the-counter label for chlorophyllin as an internal deodorant sets the adult dose at 100 to 200 mg a day in divided doses, with up to 100 mg more if odor is not controlled, and never more than 300 mg a day; for children under 12 it directs parents to a doctor (21 CFR 357.850). The Qidong trial used 100 mg three times a day. For scale, 100 mg of chlorophyllin weighs about the same as the chlorophyll in four cups of raw spinach — but it is a different molecule, and it comes without the fiber, folate, vitamin K and other nutrients of the leaves.

How much your body absorbs

Surprisingly little is known about chlorophyll absorption in people. Animal studies suggest only about 1–3% of dietary chlorophyll is absorbed. On the way through, the molecule loses its magnesium and is reworked by gut microbes, and most of it leaves in the stool as breakdown products called pheophytins. For decades, chlorophyll derivatives were thought to work almost entirely inside the gut, by latching onto certain carcinogens there; newer research finds that some derivatives and their metabolites do reach the bloodstream (Hayes & Ferruzzi, 2020). Chlorophyllin is clearly absorbed in part — hence the green serum in Qidong.

The copper question

U.S. specifications set chlorophyllin's total copper at 4–6% by weight, with only a trace allowed as “free” copper (21 CFR 73.125). At the 300 mg daily maximum, that is roughly 12–18 mg of copper, almost all of it held inside the ring. For comparison, the adult upper limit for copper is 10 mg a day (Linus Pauling Institute) — but that limit assumes ordinary copper from food and supplements, and how much ring-bound copper the body actually frees from chlorophyllin has not been well measured; the gaps are laid out in a 2021 review (Zhong et al., 2021; PMID: 33548074). The practical upshot: stay within the label, do not stack several “green” products, and if you have been told to limit copper, skip it.

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The Aflatoxin Trial in Qidong, China

This is the strongest human evidence for chlorophyllin, and it is about a very specific problem. Aflatoxin B1 is a poison made by molds that grow on corn, peanuts and other crops stored warm and damp. The liver converts it into a form that binds DNA and causes mutations, and in hot, humid parts of Asia and Africa a diet high in aflatoxin — especially combined with chronic hepatitis B infection — drives high rates of liver cancer (see Liver Cancer and Mold and Mycotoxins).

The mechanism: a molecular sponge in the gut

Chlorophyll and chlorophyllin are large, flat molecules, and they form tight complexes with other flat molecules — including aflatoxin, some of the heterocyclic amines that form in well-done meat, and the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in tobacco smoke. A toxin held in that embrace is less likely to cross the gut wall. In rainbow trout and rats, chlorophyllin given alongside aflatoxin sharply reduced DNA damage in the liver and, in trout, liver tumors; natural chlorophyll also reduced aflatoxin-induced cancers in rats. Evidence tier: laboratory and animal.

The human trial

Residents of Qidong, in Jiangsu Province, China, are at high risk of liver cancer, partly because their staple foods are contaminated with aflatoxin. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, 180 healthy adults there took either 100 mg of chlorophyllin or a placebo three times a day, with meals, for four months (Egner et al., 2001). The researchers measured a urine marker called aflatoxin-N7-guanine — the fragment the body excretes after repairing aflatoxin-damaged DNA, and a marker linked to higher liver-cancer risk. After three months, the chlorophyllin group's median level was 55% lower than the placebo group's (P = 0.036). Adherence was excellent and no adverse events were reported. Evidence tier: RCT in humans, biomarker outcome.

A later study went a step further. Four volunteers swallowed a tiny, ethics-board-approved trace dose (30 nanograms) of radioactively labeled aflatoxin so that researchers could follow it through the body with an ultra-sensitive method; three of them repeated the experiment with 150 mg of purified natural chlorophyll or chlorophyllin in the same capsule. Each one impeded aflatoxin absorption and lowered peak blood levels, reaching statistical significance in one or more of the three volunteers (Jubert et al., 2009). Evidence tier: tiny crossover pilot — but notably, natural chlorophyll had the effect too, not just the supplement form.

What this does and does not show

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Body Odor and the “Internal Deodorant”

Deodorizing is chlorophyllin's oldest medical use, and the only health claim U.S. regulators allow on its label: reducing odor from a colostomy or ileostomy, and fecal odor due to incontinence (21 CFR 357.850). The label carries one warning — “If cramps or diarrhea occurs, reduce the dosage.” The evidence behind the claim is thinner than its long history suggests.

What the studies found

Everyday body odor and bad breath

For healthy people hoping a daily shot of chlorophyll will stop underarm odor or bad breath, there is essentially nothing to go on. A PubMed search turns up reports from around 1950 and one Japanese experimental study from 1981 — but no modern placebo-controlled trial. Underarm odor is made by skin bacteria breaking down sweat on the surface, which gives a swallowed pigment no obvious way to act, and most bad breath starts in the mouth (see Halitosis). If chlorophyll drops seem to help you, that is low-risk, but it is not a proven effect.

Bottom line: for colostomy, ileostomy or incontinence odor, chlorophyllin is a legal, low-risk option that some people find helpful, but both controlled trials failed to beat placebo. For trimethylaminuria it is worth raising with the specialist. For ordinary body odor it is unproven.

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Skin and Acne

Skin claims come in two kinds: drinking chlorophyll to “clear your skin from the inside,” and putting chlorophyllin on the skin. Only the second has any data.

Why the pilots are weak: acne waxes and wanes, people tend to join a study when their skin is at its worst (so it tends to improve anyway), and simply starting a gentle twice-daily routine can help. Without a comparison group using an identical gel minus the chlorophyllin, a three-week improvement cannot be credited to the chlorophyllin. The Linus Pauling Institute's verdict is the fair one: placebo-controlled trials are needed. For treatments with real trial evidence, see Acne.

One skin warning runs the other way: chlorophyll drinks and algae tablets have been linked to sun-triggered blistering in a handful of people (see Safety).

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Gut Health: What Green Vegetables Do

Most of the chlorophyll you swallow never leaves your gut, so if it does anything useful, the gut is the place to look. The most interesting findings involve heme, the iron-containing pigment in red meat — and they point to the vegetable, not the bottle.

Bottom line: the best gut-health argument is for eating green vegetables — especially alongside red meat — not for drinking chlorophyllin. In the one direct comparison, the leaf pigment did what the bottled form could not. The bigger picture is on our Gut Health page.

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How People Use It

Food first

If you use chlorophyllin

Chlorella and spirulina are sometimes sold as “chlorophyll sources.” They are whole algae with their own evidence and risks — see Chlorella and Spirulina.

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Myths and Overclaims

Popular videos about liquid chlorophyll mix a few real findings with a lot of borrowed authority. Here is where the common claims stand.

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Safety, Side Effects and Who Should Avoid It

At ordinary doses chlorophyllin has a good safety record: the Linus Pauling Institute notes that no toxic effects have been attributed to it in more than 50 years of clinical use, and the 180 adults in the Qidong trial reported no adverse events over four months. Natural chlorophyll from food is not known to be toxic. The “bizarre side effects” in the videos are mostly real but harmless — with two exceptions worth knowing.

Expected and harmless

It can fool a stool blood test

In a laboratory study of more than 100 foods, drinks and drugs, chlorophyll tablets produced false-positive results on guaiac cards, the older chemical test for hidden blood (Gogel et al., 1989; PMID: 2787993). If you are asked to do a stool test for blood, mention any chlorophyll product you take.

Sun sensitivity and pseudoporphyria

This is the one serious reaction on record. When chlorophyll breaks down and loses both its magnesium and its tail, some of the products — such as pheophorbide a — absorb light and can pass that energy into the skin, causing damage where the sun hits.

These cases are rare, but they are why anyone who notices blistering, fragile skin or unusual sunburn on the hands or face while taking chlorophyll drinks or algae tablets should stop and get it checked. As a sensible precaution, people with a porphyria, or who already take medicines that cause sun sensitivity, have extra reason to steer clear. Background on the look-alike condition: Porphyria Cutanea Tarda.

Who should avoid it or ask first

Two unknowns are worth stating plainly. Supplements vary in what they contain, and nobody has carefully tested whether chlorophyllin's knack for binding flat molecules in the gut also reduces the uptake of nutrients you want (Linus Pauling Institute).

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Key Research Papers

  1. Egner PA, Wang JB, Zhu YR, et al. (2001). Chlorophyllin intervention reduces aflatoxin-DNA adducts in individuals at high risk for liver cancer. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. — PubMed PMID: 11724948
  2. Jubert C, Mata J, Bench G, et al. (2009). Effects of chlorophyll and chlorophyllin on low-dose aflatoxin B(1) pharmacokinetics in human volunteers. Cancer Prevention Research. — PubMed PMID: 19952359
  3. Egner PA, Stansbury KH, Snyder EP, Rogers ME, Hintz PA, Kensler TW (2000). Identification and characterization of chlorin e(4) ethyl ester in sera of individuals participating in the chlorophyllin chemoprevention trial. Chemical Research in Toxicology. — PubMed PMID: 10995263
  4. Hayes M, Ferruzzi MG (2020). Update on the bioavailability and chemopreventative mechanisms of dietary chlorophyll derivatives. Nutrition Research. — PubMed PMID: 32828967
  5. Pérez-Gálvez A, Roca M (2023). Comprehensive chlorophyll composition of commercial green food colorants and coloring foodstuffs by HPLC-ESI-QTOF-MS/MS: Chlorophyllins. Food Chemistry. — PubMed PMID: 36863233
  6. de Vogel J, Jonker-Termont DS, van Lieshout EM, Katan MB, van der Meer R (2005). Green vegetables, red meat and colon cancer: chlorophyll prevents the cytotoxic and hyperproliferative effects of haem in rat colon. Carcinogenesis. — PubMed PMID: 15550456
  7. de Vogel J, Jonker-Termont DS, Katan MB, van der Meer R (2005). Natural chlorophyll but not chlorophyllin prevents heme-induced cytotoxic and hyperproliferative effects in rat colon. The Journal of Nutrition. — PubMed PMID: 16046728
  8. Balder HF, Vogel J, Jansen MC, et al. (2006). Heme and chlorophyll intake and risk of colorectal cancer in the Netherlands cohort study. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. — PubMed PMID: 16614114
  9. Nahata MC, Slencsak CA, Kamp J (1983). Effect of chlorophyllin on urinary odor in incontinent geriatric patients. Drug Intelligence & Clinical Pharmacy. — PubMed PMID: 6628224
  10. Christiansen SB, Byel SR, Strømsted H, Stenderup JK, Eickhoff JH (1989). [Can chlorophyll reduce fecal odor in colostomy patients?]. Ugeskrift for Laeger. — PubMed PMID: 2675439
  11. Yamazaki H, Fujieda M, Togashi M, et al. (2004). Effects of the dietary supplements, activated charcoal and copper chlorophyllin, on urinary excretion of trimethylamine in Japanese trimethylaminuria patients. Life Sciences. — PubMed PMID: 15043988
  12. Stephens TJ, McCook JP, Herndon JH Jr (2015). Pilot Study of Topical Copper Chlorophyllin Complex in Subjects With Facial Acne and Large Pores. Journal of Drugs in Dermatology. — PubMed PMID: 26091384
  13. Rossi E, Borchard K, Cole JM (2015). Pseudoporphyria following self-medication with chlorophyll. The Australasian Journal of Dermatology. — PubMed PMID: 25123581
  14. Choudhary DR, Naithani R, Panigrahi I, et al. (2009). Effect of wheat grass therapy on transfusion requirement in beta-thalassemia major. Indian Journal of Pediatrics. — PubMed PMID: 19205635

PubMed Topic Searches

  1. PubMed: Chlorophyllin and aflatoxin
  2. PubMed: Chlorophyllin as an internal deodorant
  3. PubMed: Chlorophyll and pseudoporphyria

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Connections

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