FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE BLOG
Includes over 800 monographs reporting on emerging studies in the medical and scientific literature of practical clinical importance, easily searched for content.
Glaucoma neurodegeneration ameliorated by mitochondrial support
...dietary supplementation with a single molecule (vitamin B3/nicotinamide), or Nmnat1 gene therapy, significantly reduces vulnerability to glaucoma by supporting mitochondrial health and metabolism...By providing a new molecular and metabolic link between increased neuronal vulnerability with age and neurodegeneration these findings are of critical importance for glaucoma and possibly other age-related diseases.
Ketone supplementation and the ketogenic diet for cancer
"The emerging role of metabolism in many types of cancers provides a novel target for new therapeutics. A possibility is dietary therapies that are designed to take advantage of the unique energetic needs of tumor cells. One such option is the use of a very high-fat and low-carbohydrate diet (90%:5%, respectively) called the Ketogenic Diet (KD). This diet has been used to treat epilepsy for nearly 90 years, and recently its application as a cancer therapeutic has been explored. Although preclinical studies demonstrate its efficacy and clinical case reports support its feasibility, the KD is difficult to implement due to its stringent nature. Here, we report the development of an sHFLC, which mimics the main physiologic effects of the KD, namely reduced glucose and increased ketones. In addition, the sHFLC diet is able to reduce glioblastoma (GB) tumor cell proliferation and extend lifespan in GB animal models."
Fatigue: inflammation and autoimmunity
Severe fatigue, associated with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) or another disorder, has as a core underlying cause chronic inflammation...there are sufficient robust multiple lines of evidence to support the proposition that the severe fatigue and profound disability experienced by people with the neurodegenerative, neuro-immune and autoimmune diseases discussed here is largely driven by peripheral immune activation and systemic inflammation either directly or indirectly by inducing mitochondrial damage.