Various kinds of chitosan are used in health foods. One difference is its deacetylation rate (DAC) mentioned last time. There is another difference that makes a dramatic functional difference - that is molecular weight.
In fact, chitosan is a long chain of glucosamine, more specifically D-glucosamine, which is often used for knee joint pain. Then, you may wonder how long the chain is. Because the molecular weight of high-molecular chitosan exceeds 1 million, based on the molecular weight of D-glucosamine at 179.17, 1 million divided by 179.17 gives 5581.29. That is to say that high-molecular chitosan contains more than 5,500 molecules of D-glucosamine.
Chitosan can be broadly classified into 3 groups: high-molecular, middle-molecular and low-molecular chitosan. From the names, you may assume that high-molecular chitosan is high-end and the low-molecular chitosan is inexpensive. However, it is actually the other way around. The smaller the molecular weight (the smaller the molecule) is, the higher the price.
Next, I will talk about high-molecular chitosan.