Obesity, a causative or promoting factor of various cardiological, neurological, endocrine and psychiatric disorders, being considered as a global epidemic by WHO since 1997 is still a hard to tackle health problem, with around 500 million adults being obese worldwide as per the WHO estimation in 2008.
Stressful sedentary lifestyle with easy access to energy dense foods play important role in establishment of obesity, with Insulin—regulator of carbohydrate and fat metabolism, Leptin—hormone synthesized by fat cells called as adipocytes inducing satiety in feeding control area of brain, ghrelin—a hunger stimulating peptide secreted by stomach, and neuropeptides controlling food intake such as NPY, POMC, αMSH, MCH, AgRP via their action in hypothalamus of brain through their receptors MC3R and MC4R playing a major role in adipocyte physiology. Hepatic lipogenesis, estimated by studying levels of PPARγ, CPT-1 and acetyl-CoA carboxylase, can be used to study effects of various treatments on adiposity.
People being less inclined to traditional weight management techniques like exercise and weight reducing diet programs, alternative approaches are being tried out with herbal extracts and nutrients being safer than though equally effective as weight reduction drugs. As quoted by the father of medicine, “let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food,” ingredients extracts and nutrients from plant and animal products, collectively called as ‘neutraceuticals’ in some parts of the world, have traditionally been used for treating various diseases, and are now being tried for controlling obesity.
Extract of Seabuckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides L) has been shown to be effective in reducing body weight gain after intake of high fat diet, improving serum leptin profile and hepatic lipid profile, reducing fat accumulation in liver along with reducing adipose tissue mass. Gynostemma pentaphyllum extract (actiponin), in a clinical trial, has been shown to be effective in reducing total abdominal fat area, body weight, body fat mass, percent body fat, and BMI in obese subjects without causing significant adverse effects measured by clinical and laboratory measurements. Kimchi fermented with Weissella koreensis OK1-6 as starter, has been shown to be effective in ameliorating serum and hepatic lipid profile, insulin, leptin concentration and expression level of lipid anabolic genes, while decreasing body and edpididymal fat pad weight in high fat diet induced obese mice.
Emu oil, an animal based product known for its anti-inflammatory activity, while being studied for its cardiovascular benefits can also be used in fabricating emu oil blended nanofibrous membranes scaffolds capable of supporting long-term cell growth, forming three-dimensional networks of the nanofibrous structure, and providing good antibacterial activity making them suitable for applying on wounds to aid healing.
Tags:
Physiology : Cellular Bioenergetics, Lipid Metabolism
Target Organs : Heart, Liver and Adipose Tissue
Pathology : Cardiomyopathy, Fatty liver, Inflammation, adipocyte hyperplasticity and hypertropy
Cellular Mechanism : Lipid and glucose transportation, adipogenesis, lipogenesis, lipolysis
Disease : Metabolic Syndrome
Mode: Phytotherapies, functional food, nutrients
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