Food can have very specific medicinal powers, researchers at Utrecht University have researched. This means that we can combat diseases not only with medicines, but also with a tailor-made diet.
It is of course not new that what you eat affects your health. “But that knowledge is very broad. It encompasses the entire diet, including all kinds of food. We now see that some nutrients can attach very specifically to specific receptors of specific cells, just like drugs. It is very surprising that nutrients can push the processes in cells in a positive direction in such a targeted way,” says study leader Dr Saskia Braber. Good news, because that means you can put together specific diets to combat certain conditions.
Research has been done on how nutrients can bind to cells and how these subsequently influence responses of the immune system. Medicines work in the same way:receptors bind to cells, which inhibits an inflammatory or allergic reaction, for example. Inflammatory responses play an important role in non-infectious diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart and lung diseases. These conditions are responsible for 70% of deaths worldwide.
That food can act as medicine is an insight that, according to Braber, has long been ignored by pharmacologists, or the scientists who study the effect of medicines. In any case, more and more is known about the influence of nutrients on your physical and mental health. How healthy your gut is, for example, has a huge influence on your brain and mood.
However, food is not by definition a substitute for medicines. This has to do with the fact that a pill contains exactly the right substances in the right dosage, says Braber. To achieve this with food is a lot more difficult. Nutrition is therefore a support for medication, not a replacement, according to the researcher.
Text:Emma Verweij / Image GettyImages
