Seaweed and It's Health Benefits
Seaweed has always been used for their great health benefits for many, many generations. Sea vegetables are packed with vitamins and minerals, especially when compared to land vegetables. All sea vegetables contain a significant amount of protein and both soluble and insoluble dietary fiber. Kelps, large brown seaweeds such as wakame and kombu, contain alginic acid which have been found to remove heavy metals and radioactive isotopes from the digestive tract and radioactive strontium from the bones.

These sea vegetables have traditionally been consumed in Asia, where it is used to treat hypertension, cancer, heart disease, and thyroid problems. One theory even suggests that the consumption of kombu causes a lower breast cancer rate in post-menopausal woman in Japan. More promising research is still underway on the benefits of seaweed and their exact mechanisms.

Seaweeds usually contain vitamins A, B, C, and E as well as proteins and carbohydrates. They also have an abundance of minerals, which give them the quality of healing. These minerals include potassium, calcium, phosphorous, magnesium, iodine, iron, sodium, and chloride. Minerals play a key role in many of the human body's activities. Magnesium is vital in calcium absorption, iodine helps in thyroid function, chromium in blood sugar balance, and iron in blood oxygen.

The power of seaweeds are far-reaching. They have been used for thousands of years and are rapidly moving from Asian cultures into the Western world. Historical documents have showed that seaweeds were consumed by the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Polynesians, Hawaiians, Europeans, Australians, and North and South Americans. Recent studies have showed that in areas where large quantities of seaweeds are consumed, people have lived longer and had a lower rate of hypertension and arteriosclerosis, particularly in Japan.

Sources
http://www.loveseaweed.com/health.html
http://sundancenaturalfoods.com/Seaweed2.html