Nutraceuticals

What are nutraceuticals?

The term nutraceuticals refer to any product derived from food sources, which hold extra health benefits in addition to their basic nutritional value. They’re biological therapies that can be used to promote well-being, prevent malignant developments, and control symptoms. The benefit of nutraceuticals in the role of human nutrition hold wide-ranging implications for regulators, food producers and distributors, consumers, and health-care providers.

What are the categories of nutraceuticals?

Nutraceuticals can be classified based on their natural sources, pharmacological conditions, and chemical makeup of the products. The categories that they are usually grouped into are as follows: dietary supplements, functional food, medicinal food, pharmaceuticals.

• Dietary supplements: A product containing nutrients pulled from food products. Often concentrated in liquid, powder, capsule, or pill form.
• Functional food: Includes whole foods with fortified, enhanced or enriched dietary components. These whole foods can reduce the risk of chronic diseases while providing health-benefits beyond the traditional nutrients it contains.
• Medical food: Created for consumption or administered internally by a physician. The intended use for medical food is to manage specific diseases or conditions require distinctive nutrition.
• Pharmaceuticals: The term combines the words “farm” and “pharmaceuticals.” It includes components produced from modified agricultural crops or animals.

What are the potential health benefits of nutraceuticals?

Nutraceuticals have long been advertised for their therapeutic effects from safe, nutritional supplementation potential. They play a role in a large majority of biological processes, including antioxidant defenses, gene expressions, cell proliferation, and safeguarding of mitochondrial integrity. What this means is that nutraceuticals can be used for the improvement of health, prevention of chronic diseases, and postponing the aging process.

Nutraceuticals can also support functions of the body, which can prevent life threatening diseases like diabetes, renal and gastrointestinal disorders, and different infections. Most nutraceuticals have been shown to help with diseases related to oxidative stress such as allergies, Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, eye conditions, Parkinson's diseases, and obesity.

Contact Dr. Alex Ferro at New Image Medical Aesthetics & Wellness for more information on how nutraceuticals can help you.