This is a very interesting news segment on glyconutrients and some of the benefits people have experienced supplementing with them.

http://www.newsok.com/video/1751861

I think the news report could have pointed out better that these are nutrients and are therefore a little different that "taking something" like a poisonous medication or a toxic herbal. These are natural sugars which have had extensive toxicology studies showing them to be non-toxic. The PDR even lists that. Supplementation is simply about helping to support the body nutritionally. It's a tool in the toolbox and often an overlooked one.

It's nice to watch the video though. It makes me happy to be someone who has shared the education about these nutrients for the benefit of others.

The International Association of Dental and Medical Disciplines®, a professional association of dentists and physicians, comments on New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo's recent allegations toward Ingenix. IADMD® advocates for optimum care and affordability for all patients and has a universal health care remedy for America's ailing health care system. (PRWeb Feb 21, 2008)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/universal_health_care/doctors_web_site/prweb701883.htm

Your body has an amazing capacity to manage many forms of stress that you experience regularly throughout your life.  This includes the stress caused by hostile environments, chemical exposure, malnutrition, physical injury, illness and psychological pressures.  Even exercise causes stress to your body which it must manage.  Long-term exposure to the stresses can depress the immune system and increase our susceptibility to viral and bacterial infections.  Understanding how our body manages stress, as well as how to support its mechanisms for dealing with stress, can help us improve our quality of life. 

During stress, resources are diverted from our normal digestive, immune and reproductive functions to allow the body to deal with survival and other reactive responses to cope with the stress.  These resources are the nutrients which we should be receiving in our diets every day.  Because of this diversion of resources, numerous studies have documented that stress can lead to increased vulnerability to infection, ulcers, cardiovascular disease and even some forms of cancer.  Modern lifestyles tend to expose us to stress more regularly than in decades past so nutritional support to help sustain an adaptive response to stress, and minimize some of the effects of stress, should have obvious benefit.

In the body, structures called glycoconjugates act as the “cell-to-cell communicators” and play a key role in modulating our response to stress. These structures are built by our cells in response to various forms of stress. To deal with toxins, your cells build a molecule called p-glycoprotein to act as a pump through the cellular membrane. This same structure has been found in bacteria, which provides acti-bacterial drug resistance by pumping the toxins from the cell. Another family of glycoconjugates called heat shock proteins (HSP) are believed to protect and repair cells when exposed to heat stress.  Another glycoprotein has been identified in the eye and is believed to protect various enzymes from inactivation by certain chemicals or heat.  Some of these chemicals are found elevated in the blood of patience with diabetes and kidney failure and are considered risk factors for cataracts. Glycoproteins have also been identified in their roles during psychological stress and in the coordination of hormonal and autonomic responses to stress.

Other glycoproteins are constructed by your cells to deal with the important activity of repair.  One such glycoprotein binds endothelial cells with neutrophils and platelets as a repair response to certain types of injury. Another glycoprotein orchestrates the adhesion and aggregation of platelets to aid the clotting response. This can have important benefits during surgery and in surgical recovery.

An example of the protective aspects of glycoconjugates is found in the mucosa lining the stomach, esophagus, intestines, and airway passages. The consistency of mucous is regulated through sialic acid, a glyconutrient also known as N-Acetyl-Neurominic Acid. A similar compound formed from sialic acid and fat molecules is secreted by skin epithelial cells and is believed to play a major role in protecting your skin from external elements.

The extensive scientific research on how cells of the body manage stress responses shows that these glycoconjugates play a major role in supporting optimal health.  The construction materials for these glycoconjugates come from diet and are therefore important that we feed our body properly.  The first choice for improved diet should always come from improved food choices. Supplementation Including glyconutrients can help ensure that we receive the necessary building blocks required by all functions of our cells on a daily basis. 

The skin of most fruits and vegetables, and the portion just below the surface, is the area where most of the nutrients are located. Yet many people peel their produce, leave the skins on the plate and basically neglect the most nutritious portions of the food they're eating. Given the challenges we face in getting sufficient nutrition from our food supply, it is important to be aware of what foods have a high concentration of nutrients and where those nutrients are concentrated in the food. It doesn't do much good to improve your diet by eating better foods but throw away the good portions.

While we often associate malnutrition with people in developing countries, where the food supply is inadequate, malnutrition occurs with people of developed countries as well. Knowing more about what the body needs for proper nourishment and how we are challenged to receive adequate nutrition can help us prevent malnourishment in ourselves and in those we know and love.

Biologically, we are intended to eat from a wide variety of foods, but the typical person consumes a very narrow selection of foods. These foods are often highly processed and stripped of many vital nutrients. In addition to this, medications, stress, environmental toxins and tissue injury can further increase the need for nourishment.

An extreme lack of a specific nutrient will result in disease. For example, scurvy is the disease which results from severe lack of Vitamin C. Such diseases are what most people associate with malnutrition. Less acute deficiencies can still affect proper functioning of the body such as in the brain, eyesight, height, weight, the functioning of various organs, as well as the development and formation of body parts, especially in unborn babies, newborn babies, and young children.

How do we protect ourselves from the dangers of malnutrition? We can first turn to the Food Pyramid for a bit of guidance. For fruits and vegetables, the Food Pyramid suggests that we eat about nine servings of a variety of fresh, raw fruits and vegetables each day. Unfortunately most people aren’t eating this minimum and a recent report from the economic research arm of the USDA stated that we would need an additional six million acres of farmland to grow enough of this produce to support this minimal need for the American diet. This suggests that we are most certainly not getting sufficient nutrition from food alone.

A second option to improve nutrition is to add freshly made juices to your diet. Juice extractors are very affordable and work by grinding away the extra fiber and cellulose from a fruit or vegetable and channeling the juice into a container. The juices are naturally sweet. Even a juice made from celery and spinach has a sweet flavor. Making your own juice provides better nourishment than pre-packaged juices and isn’t likely to contain added sugar, or preservatives, unless you’re adding those yourself. The downside to juicing is that juice extractors tend to make a mess, and must be cleaned immediately after use.
 
The third option is to supplement the diet with food-based, standardized nutritional supplements. This means supplements which are made by concentrating nutrients from food sources and are then tested to ensure that the final product provides those nutrients in a consistent fashion. Unfortunately, most nutritional supplements do not meet these standards so it is important that if you are going to use dietary supplements, to fill in the holes of your diet, you must find ones that are effective instead of reaching for the cheapest, mega-sized bottle of chemically manufactured multivitamins you can find.

Studies have shown that people who are well-nourished tend to get ill less often and recover quickly from injury and disease when such events occur. A good diet is good when you eat more whole foods, ensure that there are no gaps in vital nutrients from day to day and also limit your exposure to things which can harm you. This can certainly be a challenge, but the more we are aware of how these different factors can affect our lives, the more we can make choices which provide us with the maximum benefit.

A variety of sources are now reporting on the "news" that the amount of nutrients in our food supply has decreased over the past 50 years.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=1671868

I find this fascinating, because I've been telling people about this in my nutrition lectures for years. Would you like the most obvious alert? Compare the food pyramid today from the one originally published about 20 years ago. The intake recommendedation raw fruits and vegetables had increased every time an update to the food pyramid has been released. This is because the amount of measured nutrients in our raw food supply is decreasing.

Of course, that's for raw food. How much raw food are you eating. You also know that cooking depletes many nutrients and therefore increases the amount of food you need to satisfy your nutritional requirements, right? Either that, or take supplements to supplement your nutrient intake.

ABCNews reports that using data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Davis concludes that recently grown crops have shown decreases of up to 38 percent in protein, calcium, vitamin C, phosphorus, iron and riboflavin when compared with produce from past decades.

The main problem is attributed the needs of the modern world. There are more people to feed so fertilizers and other "techniques" are being used to increase crop yield and speed the growth of the plants. Unfortunately, the plants can't keep up with the demand and the amount of nutrients distributed to the fruits and vegetables have decreased as a result.

Let's not forget green harvesting…but that's another blog.