Nutraceuticals and Nutrition Supplements

Biography

Biography: KP Mohana Kumar

Abstract

Many molecules contained in our daily intake of food act as nutraceuticals, and its concentration, time of intake and duration for which it is available in the body are critical to influence human health. Diet-rich in nutraceuticals or supplementation of identified nutraceuticals in the diet along with yoga, exercise, increased outdoor activities and maintenance of a reasonably balanced body weight will maximise a healthy mind and body with reduced disease risk. It is amazing how health prospects are bettered by simply changing food habits, increasing availability of nutraceuticals in the diet either with nutraceutical supplements or introducing nutraceutical rich diet or increasing fermented foods. A healthy mind is integral to a healthy body, and considering genetic predisposition of an individual, nutraceuticals will act as substrates of biochemical reaction, co-factors or inhibitors of enzymes, absorbents that binds to undesirable molecules in the GI tract, scavengers of toxic molecules and free radicals, enhance of absorption of micronutrients, help to balance micro-biome of the gut, and maintain a healthy brain-gut axis, resulting in variable reversal of traumatic, inflammatory, toxic, immune and vascular damages to nervous tissue. However, chronic neurological diseases, which results from many causes and risk factors such as genetic predisposition, advanced unhealthy lifestyle, exposure to toxins/toxic chemicals, infections, immuno-deficiencies, adverse environment causing epigenetic mechanisms going haywire, and co-morbidities from diabetes, and cardiovascular complications cannot be cured or addressed successfully with diets, nutritive supplements, or herbals or phytochemicals, but should be treated with prescription drugs. The nutraceuticals while interacting with prescription drugs, do they synergize with modern drug molecules to provide better health prospects or do they complicate the drug effects to worsen the side effects situations over long-term is a major issue? This is important since more than 10% of all apparent decline in neurological disorders, such as cognition, sensory and motor functions, GI track immobility, etc are resulting from iatrogenic effects due to the overuse of OTC or prescription drugs. Neuro-nutraceuticals are the new horizons that might just help to address this issue. Evidences are getting accumulated to support the notion that even the primary drug effects could be synergized by neuro-nutraceuticals, solving the issues of tolerance and toxicity due to higher drug doses. Neuro-nutraceuticals might work through specific messenger molecules that cross over from the regulation of GI tract and immune functions to neuronal function, and vice versa. It has become a way for neurologists to treat CNS diseases and neuropsychaitric conditions (eg. hepatic encephalopathy, inflammatory disease, obsessive compulsice disorders,attention deficit hyperactive disorders, depression, several neurodegenerative diseases, etc.) with 'functional foods', and this has turned its focus on botanicals and/or nutritional phytochemicals, essential fatty acids or its natural sources, biologicals such as phosphatidylserine, acetyl-l-carnitine, vinpocetine, vitamins, glutathione, α-lipoic acid, n-acetyl-cysteine, bioflavonoids, flavone glycosides, phytooestrogens, coenzyme Q10, s-adenosyl methionine, etc. Not but the least, habit of tea or coffee or wine drinking is also shown to synergize with neurological drugs to provide better therapeutic outcome, and in significant cases it has helped to reduce the dosage of prescription drugs.