Topic: Drug-nutrition interaction continued (Article.2 is a must read!)

Link to Article.1:  Drug and nutrition interactions not just food for thought article

\”Ongoing advances in knowledge
about drug and nutrition interactions have potential to improve
patient care. Drug-nutrition interactions need to be better
recognized, understood on a mechanistic basis, predicted, and
managed as necessary\”, (Boullata 2013, pg.1)

I found this commentary piece really interesting because it gives a broader perspective on how food and pharmaceutical drugs can interact.  It\’s a short article that touches on how pharmaceuticals, their pharmaco-kinetics/dynamics, are affected by things like one\’s body weight, malnutrition, or specific food components, but also describes these in opposing terms. The author gives the perspective, for example, that pharmaceutical drugs can cause side effects rendering someone unable to cook food for themselves, thus causing malnutrition.  Give this one a read and start to think about how pharmaceuticals and nutrition interact, not just as a drug + food = side effect, but as a more dynamic interaction on one\’s total health and well-being.

****Link to Article.2:  Developing a Molecular Roadmap of Drug-Food Interactions article

\”To the best of our knowledge this
is the first time of such a scale integration of data from the literature and online, publicly available  databases coupled with gene expression analysis, for studying the effect of natural bioactive  compounds from foods on proteins related to drug bioavailability and therapeutic effect\”, (Jensen et al. 2015,  pg.11)

\”We also point out a large
number of food components that are potentially involved in yet not documented drug-food
interactions supporting the notion that ignoring the complete chemical content of a food is
a missing link for obtaining a holistic view of the effect of diet\”, (Jensen et al. 2015,  pg.11)

This is one of the most interesting pieces I have come across recently!  Somewhat an opposite direction of Article.1, but giving an amazing scientific perspective into holistic/nutritive health.    I am absolutely floored by the detail put into this research.  This article dives right into the molecular level of phytochemical interactions with cellular proteins, and compares how they effect these proteins just as similarly, if not (some) better, then pharmaceutical drugs themselves.  It also compares pharmaceutical molecules and phytochemicals in relation to gene expression.  This article literally embodies the quote, \”let food be thy medicine and medicine by thy food\” ——Hippocrates

Refs:

Picture:  http://sweat.com/improve-your-health-by-eating-these-colorful-foods,  by  Kelsey Marcus

Article:  J. I. Boullata, 2013, \”Commentary:  Drug and nutrition interactions: not just food for thought\”,  Journal of Clinical Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 2013, 38, 269–271, viewed April 18th 2016.

Article.2:  Jensen, K, Ni, Y, Panagiotou, G, & Kouskoumvekaki, I 2015, \’Developing a molecular roadmap of drug-food interactions\’,  Plos Computational Biology, 11, 2, p. e1004048, MEDLINE Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 19 April 2016.