Читать книгу Textbook of Lifestyle Medicine - Labros S. Sidossis - Страница 85

Nutrition epidemiology examines the correlations between dietary patterns, human health, and disease occurrence. In the past, the focus was on the effects of essential nutrient deficiency on health, since most diseases arose from malnutrition or “defective nourishment,” e.g., ascorbic acid deficiency causing scurvy and deficiency of the B‐complex vitamins causing pellagra and beriberi. However, nowadays most major diseases in the developed countries are lifestyle‐related chronic diseases – heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc. These diseases, unlike nutritional deficiencies, have a chronic development or result from a relatively short exposure to etiological factor(s) that may have occurred many years before diagnosis. Furthermore, they may not be reversible and they don't have single specific etiologic pathways.

Even though observational studies have suggested a link between specific nutrients and development of chronic diseases, clinical intervention studies do not confirm these associations. The reason may be that nutrients are ingredients of foods, and other aspects of the diet may confound the observed associations. Furthermore, it appears that examining the relationship between a single dietary factor and disease is not enough, since chronic diseases have multiple causes, including genetic makeup and occupational and other lifestyle factors. These factors act either independently or in sync with each other to affect our health. Therefore, examining whole food classes, whole diets or dietary patterns, and, lately, lifestyle patterns is more appropriate in order to investigate positive or negative effects on the development of specific chronic diseases.