Excerpts From My Book: 'Good Choices'

The following is a bit technical but I want to illustrate that modern science is coming around to the understanding that prescriptions and chemical choices of the past were a progression of learning as a society. We now know that we must go beyond that and realize our part in the natural world. Nature is what will cure us and guide us, not chemicals.

“Leave your potions in the chemist’s crucible if you can handle your patients with food.”
Hippocrates (Father of the Hipocratic oath)


Food as Medicine
Nutrigenomics, has been defined as the application of high-throughput genomic tools in nutrition research. It can also be seen as research to provide people with methods and tools who are looking for disease preventing and health promoting foods that match their lifestyles, cultures and genetics.


Nutrigenomics: concepts and applications to pharmacogenomics and clinical medicine.
Kaput J, Perlina A, Hatipoglu B, Bartholomew A, Nikolsky Y.
Source
Department of Surgery, University of Illinois Chicago, 909 South Wolcott Street MC 958, Chicago, IL 60612, USA. jkaput@uic.edu

Abstract
The maintenance of health and the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases are influenced by naturally occurring chemicals in foods. In addition to supplying the substrates for producing energy, a large number of dietary chemicals are bioactive--that is, they alter the regulation of biological processes and, either directly or indirectly, the expression of genetic information. Nutrients and bioactives may produce different physiological phenotypes among individuals because of genetic variability and not only alter health, but also disease initiation, progression and severity. The study and application of gene-nutrient interactions is called nutritional genomics or nutrigenomics. Nutrigenomic concepts, research strategies and clinical implementation are similar to and overlap those of pharmacogenomics, and both are fundamental to the treatment of disease and maintenance of optimal health.


PMID: 17391074 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Rationale and aims of nutrigenomics
In nutrigenomics, nutrients are seen as signals that tell a specific cell in the body about the diet. The nutrients are detected by a sensor system in the cell. Such a sensory system works like sensory ecology whereby the cell obtains information through the signal, the nutrient, about its environment, which is the diet. The sensory system that interprets information from nutrients about the dietary environment include transcription factors together with many additional proteins. Once the nutrient interacts with such a sensory system, it changes gene, protein expression and metabolite production in accordance with the level of nutrient it senses. As a result, different diets should elicit different patterns of gene and protein expression and metabolite production. Nutrigenomics seeks to describe the patterns of these effects which have been referred to as dietary signatures. Such dietary signatures are examined in specific cells, tissues and organisms and in this way the manner by which nutrition influences homeostasis is investigated. Genes which are affected by differing levels of nutrients need first to be identified and then their regulation is studied. Differences in this regulation as a result of differences in genes between individuals are also studied. [2]

It is hoped that by building up knowledge in this area, nutrigenomics will promote an increased understanding of how nutrition influences metabolic pathways and homeostatic control, which will then be used to prevent the development of chronic diet related diseases such as obesity and type two diabetes. Part of the approach of nutrigenomics involves finding markers of the early phase of diet related diseases; this is the phase at which intervention with nutrition can return the patient to health. As nutrigenomics seeks to understand the effect of different genetic predispositions in the development of such diseases, once a marker has been found and measured in an individual, the extent to which they are susceptible to the development of that disease will be quantified and personalized dietary recommendation can be given for that person.

The aims of nutrigenomics also includes being able to demonstrate the effect of bioactive food compounds on health and the effect of health foods on health, which should lead to the development of functional foods that will keep people healthy according to their individual needs.

Nutrigenomics is a rapidly emerging science still in its beginning stages. It is uncertain whether the tools to study protein expression and metabolite production have been developed to the point as to enable efficient and reliable measurements. Also once such research has been achieved, it will need to be integrated together in order to produce results and dietary recommendations. All of these technologies are still in the process of development.


Supportive statistics can be found anywhere but the purpose of this book is to encourage people to make healthier choices as easily as they choose a certain chemical to solve a problem in their homes.