Effect of long-term selenium yeast supplementation on biomarkers of oxidative defence in healthy elderly volunteers

Dietary intervention to prevent, mitigate, or cure disease stretches back over 5000 years for the Chinese. Chinese Nutrition, follows the basic theories of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), is presently taught as a multidisciplinary system in China. This short article attempts to introduce the history, etiology, pathology and treatment principles of disease of TCM and linking its similar concept that ‘‘understanding human health depends on the holistic description of human biology and environmental cues that constant exposed’’ with the two recent emerged multi-disciplinary systems-systems biology and Nutrigenomics. The Chinese believe that ‘food and medicine originates from the same source ’ and diet therapy is a common practice in daily life. Chinese nutrition, follows the basic theories of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), is established around the 11th century /771 B.C. and presently taught as a multidisciplinary system for the medical students in China (Zhang et al., 1990, Cai 1996). Chinese medicine views etiology, pathology and treatment of disease differently from western medicine. The occurrence and evolution of disease is believed to be a process of the loss of harmony between yin and yang a philosophical concept of the dichotomous nature of everything in the universe, e.g. day/night, man/woman, excess/deficient, summer/winter, hot/cold (Liu 1998, Wu and Zhongbao 2000). Yin and yang represent opposing aspects within a single object and applies the concept to the human body, there is yin and yang at all levels: from the body as a whole, down to the level of molecules and genes., i.e. arteries (yang ) and veins (yin ); glucagons and testosterone are yang ; insulin and estrogen are yin ; RNA is yang , and DNA is yin . In all situations, they are interdependent and in opposing each other, create unity. A preponderance of yin and yang would result in disease and treatment principle is to restore their balance. The application of antagonistic or allopathic therapy is emphasized by using medicine and food with the opposite nature to that of the illness. For instance, for severe cases of hot diseases, ‘cold’ remedies are given, while for mild diseases, ‘cool’ remedies are indicated (Liu 1995, Wu 2000, Cai 1996). In TCM and Chinese nutrition, herbs and foods are classified by their ‘‘basic nature’’, ‘‘flavor’’, and ‘‘effect’’ (Cai 1996, Zhang et al., 1990). Each food is considered to have a particular nature (cold, cool, warm and hot); a unique favor (sweet, sour, salty, bitter, or pungent), a specific organ/ meridian target and dynamic force (i.e., cause energy to ascend, descend, to move inward or outward). Incorporating the yin and yang concept for classification, foods that are pungent, sweet, with ascending, floating and dispersing effects are yang ; and foods that are sour, bitter or salty whose effects are descending, condensing and astringent are yin . Among the common foods, for examples, coriander, walnut, lobster, mutton, wine, vinegar, peach, onion, pumpkin are ‘warm’; pepper, chili, ginger are ‘‘hot’’; eggplant, soybean, lettuce, celery, apple, pear, tea, pear are ‘‘cool’’ and chrysanthemum, bitter melon, crab, salt, tomato, kelp, watermelon, banana, cucumber are ‘‘cold’’ in nature. Vegetables and fruits, with few exceptions, are cool and sour. According to TCM, eating chicken, pepper, dried ginger, (warm or hot nature), will worsen an illness of a ‘‘hot’’ nature (e.g. hypertension). For diseases of ‘‘cold’’ nature (e.g. winter flu, anemia, and hypoglycemia), the consumption of cold nature foods such as sugar cane, bitter melon, water chestnut, watermelon should be limited. Foods are also classified according to ‘‘favor’’. The five favors are sweet, sour, pungent, salty and bitter. Foods with sweet favor (e.g. milk, cream, mushroom, maize, soybean) are good for treatment of deficiency disease if to be consumed with limited amounts; sour foods (e.g. pears, vinegar, red bean, hawthorn, orange, tomato, grape) exhibit astringent action, help promote blood circulation and control excessive body fluid lost dues to diarrhea or excess sweating; bitter foods (e.g. bitter melon, wine, tea, liver) stimulate appetite and also antipyretic; and pungent foods (e.g. celery, ginger, onion, pepper, garlic) are capable of dispersing of vital energy thus often applied at the initial stage of the common cold. Each ‘‘favor’’ is associated with its own targeted organs/meridians. Foods with the sour, bitter, sweet and pungent favor are identified to be beneficial to the liver, heart; spleen and lungs, respectively. Whether the yin and yang concept of disease and the biologic functions of foods/herbs describes by TCM will be ultimately explained by science awaits further investigation. Nonetheless, the ‘‘hot nature and pungent’’ principles of some species (Kawada et al., 1988, McNamara et al., 2005) can be attributed to their ability to activate the adrenal medulla to secrete catecholamine (regulates heat production and pain sensation). The antioxidant, hypolipidemic, and hypoglycermic evidence on tea (Cooper et al., 2005), and hawthorn (Rigelsky 2002) helps in explaining their heartorgan target specificity (i.e. prevention of heart disease). To give just one clinical example, garlic’s health benefits have been elevated from folklore to clinical study. The antiinflammatory mechanisms of garlic include suppression of TNF-alpha and interleukin-6 production, suppression of nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) activity, during bacterial infection (Makris et al., 2005). Nutrigenomics and Health / From Vision to Food