13/06/2022
Why Dietary Polyphenols Matter,
And How to Perfect Your Diet
While it has been long discovered and widely agreed that healthy diets like the Mediterranean diet help in preventing and managing most lifestyle diseases, why this is so has so far been inconclusive at best, with multiple hypotheses being proposed by various studies. The point of confusion, of course, was how a diet rich in fruits and vegetables can be beneficial against diverse diseases. And also, the converse of this, why such diets are not protective for all people.
Now, a new international study led by Spanish entities, University of Barcelona and CIBER-FES, with inputs from research teams in the UK, Italy and other countries, finds that why such diets rich in fruits & vegetables work is due to their high polyphenol content. While this in itself is not a new discovery, the current study went further and identified how the polyphenols are exerting this beneficial effect.
Polyphenols are natural compounds found in abundance in certain fruits and vegetables and are considered as prebiotics as they can interact with some beneficial bacteria in the gut, thus helping them proliferate. These beneficial bacteria in turn produce powerful postbiotics, and the current study identified Indole 3-Propionic Acid (IPA) as the most powerful and beneficial postbiotic.
IPA was found to prevent chronic inflammation in the body, which is a root cause of many common lifestyle diseases. Besides this, IPA was found to have antioxidant, neuroprotective & anti-aging action, and beneficial for improving the health of the intestinal wall. The results from this study showed that a diet rich in polyphenols generated positive changes in the gut microbiome, significant increase in the blood IPA levels and a decrease in inflammation levels.
Polyphenol rich fruits and vegetables include tea, coffee, apples, pomegranate, grapes, citrus fruits, blueberries, cocoa, onions, soybeans, chili peppers, strawberries, raspberries, oats, sesame seeds etc.
While polyphenol rich foods can thus be protective and preventive against various lifestyle diseases, this cannot be your only strategy against such diseases, as other factors like exercise, sleep, de-stressing, meditation etc are very powerful against developing various lifestyle diseases. Diets itself can be fine-tuned by personalizing them based on each person’s geno-metabolic differences.
EPLIMO is one of the handful of such solutions in the world, that can run geno-metabolic assessments based on which disease susceptibilities can be identified and personalized lifestyle modifications spanning diet, nutrition, supplements, exercise, sleep, yoga, breathing exercises, meditation etc can be suggested to keep lifestyle diseases at bay.
EPLIMO uses an easily administered saliva based genetic test, and a detailed metabolic assessment, which are combined using Artificial Intelligence, with the results and the personalized lifestyle modifications delivered for the user through the EPLIMO smartphone app for iOS and Android devices. Know more: http://eplimo.vieroots.com/
