Functional Food Complementary to Medicine

Importance of an adequate Functional Food and its efficacies as complementary/adjunctive to medicine are described succinctly in this mini review. This Functional Food not only capable of preventing postprandial inflammation, but also has proven to be effective in controlling blood sugar and diabetic peripheral neuropathies in synergy with metformin, without any undesirable side effects.


Introduction
It begins with the quote of Hippocrates, the father of Western modern medicine, "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food". A nutritious food is essential for maintaining good health and sustaining life, while a medicine is necessary to prevent and/ or treat an illness. When food cannot be considered as medicine, there exist possibilities for its use as complementary/adjunctive with medicine in our healthcare. In the absence of such treatment procedures in our current healthcare modalities, this mini review will try to shed some light on the potential applications of nutritious food in combination with medicine. Food value is, of course, dependent on its quality and quantity in terms of its energy and nutrient content to provide adequate nutrition and energy to improve health and wellness [1]. In fact, minerals and vitamins constitute the nutritional value while carbohydrate, protein and fat, are the sources of energy for oxidative metabolism, i.e. resting metabolic rate (RMR), also popularly known as "cost of living" [2].
About 50-60% of this energy comes from carbohydrate, supplied from three main cash crop cereals, namely wheat, rice and maize [3]. In order to make these crops most palatable to human taste they usually go through various milling processes during which the outer bran and germ portions are removed.
Such processes leave a starchy end product which has lower fiber content as well as lower content of anti-inflammatory vitamins and minerals, but with high Glycemic Index (GI) (ranging from 55 to 109% depending on the variety) [4]. Consuming processed carbohydrates (GI >60%), as currently widely used, is linked to obesity leading to chronic life-threatening diseases like Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and cardiovascular (CVD) [5]. Although food quality nutritionally is virtually nonexistent, energy content, however, varies significantly between carbohydrates (4kcal/g) and fats (9 kcal/g). In early 90's, we, therefore, conducted a human study [6] on a diet composition with an isocaloric, isonitrogenous high carbohydrate (66%) and low fat (20%) diet (HC) versus a high fat (56%) and low carbohydrate (30%) diet (HF) to investigate any significant effects on human health, by measuring diet-induced postprandial thermogenesis (DIPT) and inflammation. Healthy, never-obese, postmenopausal, Caucasian female subjects (n=12) participated in this study for 3 weeks each in a crossover design.  These two food-borne toxicities are, therefore, should be targeted in the management of chronic diseases, particularly like T2DM and CVD. Inflammation is, in general, well-known to play a devastating role in human health and wellness [8]. The European Consensus, therefore, developed the concept of Functional Food that should be capable of preventing the formation of postprandial inflammation and thus enhance the health beneficial effects, beyond that of basic nutrition, to prevent/cure chronic diseases [9]. initially establish its efficacies in controlling IR by inhibiting the formation of those food-borne toxicities as cited above. This product was tested initially in an anecdotal study by supplementing to some pre-diabetics (n=10), whose fasting blood sugar ranged between observational study. Five most deserving T2DM patients volunteered to participate and they were explained the purposes of this short study, for a month only. They were suffering from various neuropathies, particularly diabetic-nerve pains, tingling and numbness in legs and feet, including leg cramps and spasms at night, sleep disorder, anxiety and burning sensations. All of them were taking Metformin for more than a year. After giving their consents, each of them was given this Functional Food product to take 2 tablets twice a day, at breakfast and at dinner for a month only. They were asked to report to the clinic a couple of weeks after starting the product. All of them reported back as asked and indicated a great satisfaction in the relief of their illnesses, without any undesirable side effects. One of these patients, a female had an intense pain induced contortions in her feet, which had to be straightened by family member and severely lowered her quality of life, who after 2 weeks reported improvement in her leg cramps, having had one episode since beginning the treatment. The overall outcome of this short observational study warrants prospective validation of this Functional Food, which appears to hold a great promise for T2DM patients with uncontrolled blood sugar and particularly suffering from peripheral neuropathies.

Conclusion
Efforts have been made in this mini review to succinctly illustrate food value we consumed today, which is mostly devoid of important nutrients, particularly anti-inflammatory, but with high GI values.
Consuming such food not only produces postprandial inflammation initiating the formation of food-borne toxicities but makes our body susceptible to many life threatening chronic diseases, like T2DM, CVD, arthritis, cancers etc. Introduction of Functional Food appears to be capable of preventing postprandial inflammation, making it effective as complementary/adjunctive with medicine to achieve desirable treatment outcomes, thus fulfilling Hippocratic quote on food and medicine as cited earlier.