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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

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