Resurrecting Hippocrates: Food as Medicine Meets Modern Science

1. Presented by SayerJi, Founder of NANP Annual Conference Tuscon, AZ, April 27th Resurrecting Hippocrates: Food as Medicine Meets Modern Science “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” ― Hippocrates

2. The Return To The Thing Itself What Is Food? • Etymology of Food = nourish = suckle, support, preserve • Food = that without which we can not live (the molecular of our body is woven from food); it holds our genetic/epigenetic infrastructure together • At least 100,000 food compounds identified • Sacred/sacren (to make holy) • Holy/whole/health/heal

3. The Root Meaning of Health Etymological origin of Health: Whole, Holy, Heal

4. What Is Medicine? The Return To The Thing Itself Are pharmaceuticalsmedicine? • Etymology: Latin arsmedicina, ‘the art of healing.’ Asclepius, Greek god of medicine. • Etymology: "Pharmaceutical" derives from the Greek term "pharmakeus" which refers to "a drug, spell-giving potion, druggist, poisoner, by extension a magician or a sorcerer." A pharmakós

5. The Death of a Healing Art The Rise of ‘Evidence-Based’ Biomedicine Only what is measurable/visible is considered real Disease as biometric deviation/visible lesion

6. Coming Full Circle Nutrition As the Past, pResent, and future of medicine • Not a single disease caused by a lack of a chemical/drug/xenobiotic • Many diseases precipitated by a lack of nutrients and/or inadequate nutrigenomic energy/information (e.g. non-ancestral diets) • Vegetable/fruit deficiency and/or chemical poisoning is being treated with chemotherapy • The disease model is broken. Food is not medicine, ideally; rather, that which makes medicine unnecessary

7. The Original RX (Latin “recipere”) Recipes = ‘medical prescriptions’ 1580s, "medical prescription," from Middle French récipé (15c.) • Recipes/cultural dietary patterns – are epigenetic inheritance systems • The oral/brain circuit – the inbuilt wisdom of the senses/’intuition’ • Green tea – a medicine that turned into a beverage • Self-medication through psychotropic foods

8. Information at the Speed of Light Modern Science Meets Ancient Medicine 23,000,000 Million Studies

9. The Limits of Our Knowing The Confused State of Nutritional Science The Finger Pointing at the Moon is not the Moon

10. Food Science (Fiction) Real Food vs. Food facts COMPLEX SIMPLIFIED

11. Reductionism’s Original Sin The Matter/Energy Duality • Caloric Content • Macro-/Micro-nutrients The world’s first ice-calorimeter, used in the winter of 1782-83 The infinite complexity of food reduced to 2 dimensions: “matter” and “energy.”

12. The Infinite Complexity of Food Strawberryvs. Ascorbic Acid Take a ‘nutrient’ out of the context of Food and it becomes ‘chemical like’

13. Real Food Is Whole Food Take a ‘nutrient’ out of itscontext as food and it becomes chemical-like.

14. Philosophy of Nutrition Whole Food vs. USP Isolate • Vitamin C ‘activity’ is not reducible to Its chemical structure • Whole food is bound to lipids, sugars and proteins USP isolates may cause cannibalism of cofactors

15. Pharma Envy? The “nutraceutical” model • Monochemical/isolates (semi- synthetic) • Palliative • Modeled after similar economics and placebo dynamic. • Reductionism/positivism/myopia

16. The Intelligence of Food The Intelligence of Food • Intelligere"to understand, comprehend," • from inter- "between" (see inter-) + legere • "choose, pick out, read” • Food as the ultimate nutritional delivery system • Gut-Food dialog (metabolome)

17. Reductionist Tendencies How Do We Measure What’s Really Important? “Nutrition Facts” – Molecular Weight

18. The Infinite Complexity of Food The Intelligence of Food Example: Selective Cytotoxicity 177 actions; 600+ diseases [GreenMedInfoTurmeric Database]

19. NOT Food Information But…. Food As In-form-ation“To Put Form Into”

20. Epigenetics Food As Information • Cells share the same genome • The epigenome is what differentiates cells (post-genomic era) • Secondary overlay (Metazoa 2.0) • which represses immortalityin exchange for terminal differentiation • Accomplished through inherited epigenetic data, • but also through ‘epigenetic inheritance systems,’ • related to diet, cultural patterns, microbiome, • psychogenic patterns.

21. Epigenetics Food As Information • Reversibility • Transgenerational • Larmarkian • Fragility • Environmentally • driven • Germline • subcontracted • Mind-body • connection

22. Epigenetics Food As Information

23. We Are What We Eat Rice MicroRNA Regulates Expression of Mammalian Genes MicroRNA: small, non-coding RNA molecule found in plants and animals that mediate the post-transcriptional silencing of an estimated 30% of protein-coding genes in mammals. Plant miRNAs in food (rice) can regulate the expression of target genes in mammals. [Nutrigenomics]

24. RNA Interference Systems Food As Mis/Dis-Information Biotech corporations are focusing their efforts on RNA-based gene suppression (gene silencing) technologies Monsanto Dow Syngenta There are thousands of RNA/genome homologies in major food and feed crops

25. The Central Dogma Overturned Food As Information Prions Exemplify How Information Can Be Transformed Through Proteins Without Nucleic Acids Another example: Retroviruses (reverse transcriptase)

26. Protein Folding Mysteries We don’t even know how a protein (in food) folds Hint: It takes a massive amount of Inform-ation!

27. The Protein Folding Mystery How Does It Fold? • Levinthal Paradox: There is not enough time in the universe for a polypeptide to pass through all the degrees of freedom available to it to reach its native folded state. But someone how it does, and in milliseconds!

28. Food as a “Delivery System” Nutrient Co-Factors: Protein Chaperones Günter Blobel is a German American biologist and 1999 Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology for the discovery that proteins have intrinsic signals that govern their transport and localization in the cell.

29. No Bottom Up Explanation “Signal” patches are impossible to predict The protein folding problem is to predict the three-dimensional structure of a protein based on the sequence of the amino-acids that constitutes it.

30. A Central Truth Food As Information The biospheric ‘womb’ which birthed our species contained Intricately woven relationships between the environment, the microbiome, the metabolome, the epigenome and genome. Modern techniques: agrochemical dependent GM farming, Irradiation, stress-free food production, etc., have radically altered this supportive ‘embrace,’ rendering us untethered. Issues such as ‘biopollution’ or the extinction of microbial strains of food importance in the soil and food grown within it exemplifies how we are at a tipping point.

31. Nutrigenomics Food As Information Nutritional genomics, or nutrigenomics, is the study of how foods affect our genes and how individual genetic differences can affect the way we respond to nutrients (and other naturally occurring compounds) in the foods we eat.

32. Food Affects Gene Expression Nutritional Transcriptomic Effect: Bioactive food components can alter the genetic expression of a host of cellular events The world’s first ice-calorimeter, used in the winter of 1782-83

33. The Mystery of Curcumin How Could This Be? Curcumin 175 physiological actions [GreenMedInfo]

34. Interdepenence Interdependence/Co-Evolution: e.g. Co-Development of Angiosperms and Mammals e.g. ancient cells produces polyphenols Curcumin Aborealfrugivores (eyes; opposable thumb) developed features To accommodate fruit-bearing trees

35. Could this explain xenohormesis? The concept of xenohormesis—the process by which one organism benefits from the stress response of another

36. The Poetry of Nature Could this explain the doctrine of signatures?

37. Amazing Benefits of Curcumin An Explanation for Curcumin’s Health Benefits Curcumin Research indicates it may be beneficial for 600 diseases

38. Corrective Potential Addressing ‘Irreversible’ GeneDefects Via Diet • Genistein, Curcumin • e.g. Cystic fibrosis; CFTR gene product misfolded; corrected/rescued Source: www.potentiate.com

39. Preventive Potential Natural Compound Prevents Breast Cancer Gene (BRCA1) Malignancy Natural Compound Prevents Breast Cancer Gene (BRCA1) MalignancyBRCA-1 promoter hypermethylation and silencing induced by the aromatic hydrocarbon receptor-ligand TCDD are prevented by resveratrol in MCF-7 Cells." J Nutr Biochem. 2012 Oct ;23(10):1324-32. Epub 2011 Dec 23.

40. The “Meta Organism” The Gut “meta-organism” • The gut bacteria as a ‘fully formed organ.’ • The gut bacteria as the ‘live bridge’ to environmental/planetary health • Produce B-group vitamins; antibiotics; immunomodulatory compounds

41. Additive Potential Probiotics break down Xenobiotics Lactobacillus strains identified within fermented foods like kimchi have been found to break down toxic compounds such as organophosphorous pesticides, glyphosate, bisphenol A.

42. Additive Potential Colonization of oral cavity/gut withgluten-digesting bacteria Our inability to digest certain ‘foods’ is attenuated through commensal bacteria. They make it possible to ‘be human’; survive certain foods

43. Replacement Flaxseed & The Metabolome Enterodiol/enterolactone Metabolome: the complete set of small-molecule metabolites to be found within a biological sample, such as a single organism

44. Complementary Potential Nutrigenomic Compensation • SNPs – Methyl Cycle • Folate – active form 5-methylenetetrahydrofolate

45. Regeneration: our default mode Average of the cells in the human body are 7 to 10 years. • Gut epithelial: 5 days • Muscle cell of ribs: 15 years • Cells from cerebral cortex and visual cortex: Don’t renew • Skin cells: 14 days • Red blood cells: 120 days • Skeletal system: 10 years

46. Regeneration: our default mode Tissue Regeneration via Nutrition • Heart - neocardiogenic • Brain - neuritogenic • Skin – re-epithelization • Pancreas – beta cell regeneration

47. ‘Cephalic Phase’ of Nutrition Experience vs. ‘Evidence’ Nocebo/Placebo Dynamics • Your ‘subjective’ experience of food, is as real in a nutrition sense as • the ‘objective’ or molecular composition of your food • (phenomenology vs. chemistry). • The placebo effect, based as it is in giving oneself permission to • heal via a proxy authority figure or belief in a ‘magic bullet,’ is the • subtext of healing through nutrition. • Related issues: Orthorexia, Fear of Mortality, Joylessness.

48. The Goal…. Immersing Your Genes/Epigenome inWholesome Energy/Information Food: that which makes ‘medicine’ unnecessary