Dietary phenolic compounds have an impact on noncommunicable diseases

What is it about?

Non-communicable chronic diseases (NCDs) are nowadays the principal cause of death, especially in most industrialized nations. These illnesses have increased exponentially with the consumption of diets very high in fat and sugar, not to mention stress and physical inactivity among other factors. The potential impact of suboptimal diets on NCDs’ morbidity and mortality rates brings to the forefront the necessity for a new way of improving dietary habits. The literature provides extensive scientific work that presents evidence that phenolic compounds from diets have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antiproliferative activities that impact human health. Gut microbiota modulation by some phenolic compounds leads to favorable changes in abundance, diversity, and in the immune system. However, polyphenol’s limited bioavailability needs to be overcome, highlighting their application in new delivery systems and providing their health benefits in well-established ways such as health maintenance, treatment or adjuvant to conventional pharmacological treatments. In this context, novel dietary approaches, including new food supplements, have emerged to prevent diseases and preserve health.

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Photo by Lucas MARULIER on Unsplash

Photo by Lucas MARULIER on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Given the enormous human and economic toll of diseases related to unhealthy diets, longevity of modern populations, sedentary behaviors, pollution, etc., the development of measurable and reliable quality dietary habits and supplementation could be used for nutrition guidelines across various regions of the world. Phenolic compounds are found across a wide diversity of foods available for the human diet. Phenolic compounds act as antioxidants, protecting human tissues against oxidative stress and conditions associated with this condition. These compounds can provide an excellent model for the development of more effective and, most importantly, safe future chemopreventive compounds. Food compounds have also a key effect on the gut microbiota, influencing its composition in terms of diversity and abundance. Dietary habits can intensely influence gut microbiota composition, which impacts the healthy state of individuals. A new nutritional approach may be adopted by constructing a personalized diet following the microbiota analyses, in order to modulate and repair a healthy gut microbiota. The new delivery systems within the field of nanotechnology could provide bigger efficiency of dietary compounds as phenolic compounds when ingested by humans, providing their health benefits in well-established ways of prevention, treatment or adjuvant in addition to conventional pharmacological treatments.

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