What is the meaning of the word “nutraceutical”?
The word “nutraceuticalNutraceutical is a syncratic neologism from "nutrition" and "pharmaceutical" coined by Stephen de Felice in 1989. Nutraceuticals are those nutrients contained in foods that have beneficial effects on health, their effectiveness has been proven by clinical trials.” is a neologism coined in 1989 by Stephen DeFelice, a US physician and founder and president of the Foundation for Innovation in Medicine. The term nutraceutical comes from the fusion of the words “nutrition” and “pharmaceutical”.
What are nutraceutical products?
Nutraceuticals, also known as nutraceutical products or nutraceutical supplements, are a new generation of dietary supplements and contain substances mostly of natural origin, found for example in foods or in some plants, which are able to support the body’s physiological processes.
What are nutraceutical supplements for?
Nutraceuticals, as explained by the Italian Society of Pharmacology, are not drugs and are therefore not products to which pharmacological effects can be attributed. The purpose of nutraceutical supplements is instead to support the normal functioning of the body by supporting its physiological balance, thus promoting health and helping to prevent conditions linked to inflammatory phenomena and to the passing of time.
An example of a nutraceutical product is SoLongevity’s CellFasting, which contains the precursors of three substances naturally present in our body or in some foods: Glutathione, NADNAD (Nicotinamide adenindinucleotide ) is a co-enzyme essential to the metabolism of the cell, intervening in the activity of more than 200 enzyme proteins that govern the energy process of the cell itself. With age, one becomes deficient in this co-enzyme by altering cell catabolism. and ResveratrolActive ingredient of natural origin with recognized antioxidant capacity (stilbene polyphenol). It is found in plants such as vines and in fruits such as cocoa and blackberries.. CellFasting was designed to support the rebalancing of the cellular processes necessary for proper metabolic functioning and for the stimulation of sirtuinsSirtuins are proteins expressed by SIRT genes that perform an enzymatic activity, which means they stimulate chemical reactions essential for the body. Their function has been ascertained by several studies, although there still seems to be a lot to know about them. SIRTs in short:
• are proteins with enzymatic properties
• regulate the metabolic processes related to insulin resistance
• have a control over immunity
• have a fundamental role in epigenetics
• are involved in defences against cancer
, the longevity genes.
The development of nutraceutical products
As the Italian Society of Pharmacology also points out, placing nutraceutical supplements on the market involves a different process from that required for the approval of drugs, which requires a long phase of clinical trials. In the case of nutraceuticals this phase is not required, but a notification to the Ministry of Health is nevertheless required, through which the manufacturer communicates information relating, for example, to the preparation and production process of the nutraceutical, the substances it contains, their traditional and historical use, and so on.
SoLongevity’s approach
SoLongevity’s nutraceutical supplements, in addition to the requirements set by law, follow a development and validation process similar to that of drugs. To this end, SoLongevity Nutraceuticals has designed tests aimed at verifying the efficacy of its nutraceutical products, measuring the presence of the active ingredients in the blood of subjects taking a given supplement, or the presence of other molecules derived from taking the supplement.
For CellFasting, for example, a group of healthy volunteers was involved who underwent three capillary blood samples (finger-prick sampling) before, after one month and after three months from the start of intake. A technology called LC/MS-MS (liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry) then made it possible to detect the blood concentrations of molecules such as Glutathione and NAD. The results showed a remarkable sensitivity of the method used and also that taking CellFasting is sufficient to rebalance the blood levels of reduced Glutathione, NAD and Cysteine, the three most important molecular species in oxidative metabolism.
