Metabolic Strategies in Healthcare: A New Era

Abstract

Modern healthcare systems are founded on a disease-centric paradigm, which has conferred many notable successes against infectious disorders in the past. However, today's leading causes of death are dominated by non-infectious "lifestyle" disorders, broadly represented by the metabolic syndrome, atherosclerosis, cancer, and neurodegeneration. Our disease-centric paradigm regards these disorders as distinct disease processes, caused and driven by disease targets that must be suppressed or eliminated to clear the disease. By contrast, a health-centric paradigm recognizes the lifestyle disorders as a series of hormonal and metabolic responses to a singular, lifestyle-induced disease of mitochondria dysfunction, a disease target that must be restored to improve health, which may be defined as optimized mitochondria function. Seen from a health-centric perspective, most drugs target a response rather than the disease, whereas metabolic strategies, such as fasting and carbohydrate-restricted diets, aim to restore mitochondria function, mitigating the impetus that underlies and drives the lifestyle disorders. Substantial human evidence indicates either strategy can effectively mitigate the metabolic syndrome. Preliminary evidence also indicates potential benefits in atherosclerosis, cancer, and neurodegeneration. Given the existing evidence, integrating metabolic strategies into modern healthcare systems should be identified as a global health priority.

Keywords: atherosclerosis; cancer; carbohydrate-restricted diets; fasting; health; metabolic syndrome; metabolism; mitochondria dysfunction; neurodegeneration.

Figure 1.

Comparing the impact of hunter-gatherer versus modern dietary lifestyles on metabolism and mitochondria function in humans.

Figure 2.

Health-centric paradigm portraying the lifestyle disorders as a series of hormonal and metabolic responses to a singular, lifestyle-induced disease of mitochondria dysfunction.

Figure 3.

Health-centric paradigm portraying the impact of metabolic strategies on metabolism, mitochondria function, and the lifestyle disorders.