functional medicine and nutritional genomics - American Association ...
functional medicine and nutritional genomics - American Association ...
functional medicine and nutritional genomics - American Association ...
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AAPI’S NUTRITION GUIDE TO OPTIMAL HEALTH: USING PRINCIPLES OF FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE AND NUTRITIONAL GENOMICS<br />
Obesity will take nine years off the life of the<br />
average person, v<br />
<strong>and</strong> obesity in adolescents<br />
creates the same risk of premature death as<br />
heavy smoking. vi<br />
Diabesity, along the entire<br />
continuum of metabolic dysfunction, is the main<br />
driver of cardiovascular disease, vii<br />
diabetes,<br />
dementia, viii<br />
cancer ix<br />
<strong>and</strong> most chronic disease<br />
mortality, x <strong>and</strong> our decreasing life expectancy. A<br />
recent 40-year prospective study of 4857 Pima<br />
Indian children found that the most important<br />
predictor of premature death was insulin resistance,<br />
not hypertension or hyperlipidemia. Those in the<br />
highest quartile of glucose intolerance had a 73%<br />
increased death rate compared to those in the<br />
lowest quartile. xi<br />
Risk Factors or Causes: Changing the Focus of<br />
Clinical Intervention<br />
Focus has been on pharmacologic or bariatric<br />
surgical approaches to correct downstream risk<br />
factors to address this epidemic <strong>and</strong> its chronic<br />
disease sequelae (heart disease <strong>and</strong> diabetes) at<br />
great cost <strong>and</strong> little or no benefit. The recent<br />
ACCORD xii<br />
<strong>and</strong> NAVIGATOR trials documented that<br />
aggressive pharmacologic intervention for lipids, xiii<br />
glucose xiv <strong>and</strong> blood pressure xv did not decrease<br />
cardiac or overall mortality, <strong>and</strong> in some cases<br />
increased adverse cardiac events <strong>and</strong> mortality.<br />
Surgical approaches of cardiac bypass xvi<br />
or<br />
angioplasty xvii<br />
fared no better. However despite a<br />
rich evidence base, xviii<br />
little attention has been<br />
placed on the lifestyle, biological, social <strong>and</strong> policy<br />
drivers of obesity <strong>and</strong> overweight.<br />
Network or systems <strong>medicine</strong>, of which the best<br />
clinical model is Functional Medicine, provides a<br />
new framework for addressing the causes, rather<br />
than the risk factors of this epidemic. The<br />
dynamic interaction of the social, business <strong>and</strong><br />
policy systems, lifestyle <strong>and</strong> environmental toxins<br />
drives our exp<strong>and</strong>ing phenotype.<br />
Chronic disease <strong>and</strong> obesity is the result of a<br />
complex network of biological disturbances driving<br />
systemic neuroendocrineimmune dysregulation<br />
induced by the effects of diet, levels of stress, our<br />
social environment, physical activity <strong>and</strong> exposure<br />
to environmental toxins affecting gene expression.<br />
Isolating one risk factor, or even separately<br />
treating multiple risk factors, will fail until it is<br />
45<br />
done in the context of addressing the upstream<br />
drivers of disease. Distinguishing between risk<br />
factors <strong>and</strong> causes is necessary for effective<br />
primary prevention <strong>and</strong> treatment of chronic<br />
disease. xix<br />
Treatment must focus on the system, not the<br />
symptom. Obesity <strong>and</strong> its chronic disease<br />
consequences, commonly referred to as ‚risk<br />
factors‛, dyslipidemia, hyperglycemia <strong>and</strong><br />
hypertension are only downstream symptoms of<br />
upstream biological causes. They are the smoke,<br />
not the fire. Unless <strong>medicine</strong> refocuses on treating<br />
the system rather then symptoms (risk factors)<br />
through a comprehensive clinical <strong>and</strong> social<br />
systems approach that addresses diet, exercise,<br />
stress management <strong>and</strong> treatment of environmental<br />
toxic exposures, <strong>medicine</strong> will fail to stem the<br />
impending tsunami of obesity <strong>and</strong> chronic disease.<br />
Whole systems approaches of lifestyle interventions<br />
reduce incidence of cardiovascular disease xx <strong>and</strong><br />
diabetes by over 90%. xxi<br />
These studies are part of<br />
a large evidence base documenting how lifestyle<br />
intervention is often more effective in reducing<br />
cardiovascular disease, hypertension, heart failure,<br />
stroke, cancer, diabetes, <strong>and</strong> deaths from all<br />
causes than almost any other medical<br />
intervention. xxii<br />
Despite the difficulty of behavior change <strong>and</strong><br />
lifestyle <strong>and</strong> environmental treatment, it is the only<br />
proven model for preventing chronic disease. Risk<br />
factor treatment must be replaced with elimination<br />
of the drivers, triggers <strong>and</strong> causes of chronic<br />
disease based on the network model of disease<br />
<strong>and</strong> obesity. Metabolic, disease <strong>and</strong> social<br />
networks predict disease <strong>and</strong> outcomes more<br />
effectively than risk factors. xxiii<br />
A person's chances<br />
of becoming obese increased by 57% if he or<br />
she had a friend who became obese in a given<br />
interval. Among pairs of adult siblings, if one<br />
sibling became obese, the chance that the other<br />
would become obese increased by 40%. If one<br />
spouse became obese, the likelihood that the<br />
other spouse would become obese increased by<br />
37%. Newer tools supporting behavior change with<br />
regular feedback metrics <strong>and</strong> social networks have<br />
proven successful <strong>and</strong> should be widely adopted in<br />
policy <strong>and</strong> medical practice. xxiv<br />
2012