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Micronutrients
Published in Chuong Pham-Huy, Bruno Pham Huy, Food and Lifestyle in Health and Disease, 2022
Chuong Pham-Huy, Bruno Pham Huy
Briefly, micronutrients play important roles in our body such as enzyme activation, hormone production, cell homeostasis, and organ maintenance (immune system, brain, nerve, heart, bone, muscle, fetus, etc.). However, micronutrients yield no energy. Adequate micronutrient intake throughout one’s life course is essential for the maintenance of health. Micronutrients are generally not produced by the human body, necessitating an adequate daily intake at levels that have been recommended by various governing bodies. The Institute of Medicine of the USA provides a set of reference values called dietary reference intakes (DRI) that are used to plan and assess nutrient intakes of healthy people, based on age and gender. These values include the recommended dietary allowance (RDA), which is the average daily level of intake that is deemed sufficient to meet the nutrient requirements of nearly all (97%-98%) healthy individuals (2). The adequate or average intake (AI) is a recommended intake value, based on experimentally derived intake levels or approximations of observed mean nutrient intake by a group of healthy people that are assumed to be adequate (2). The tolerable upper intake level (UL) is the highest level of nutrient intake that is likely to pose no risk of adverse health effects for almost all individuals in the general population. As intake increases above the UL, the risk of adverse effects increases (2–3). It should be noted that these values cited previously are recommended to avoid deficiency and toxicity.
Methods of nutritional assessment and surveillance
Published in Geoffrey P. Webb, Nutrition, 2019
The RDA in the USA is the suggested average daily intake of that nutrient that is sufficient to meet the needs of nearly all healthy people in that age and sex grouping. It represents the best estimate of the requirement of those people in the population with a particularly high need for that nutrient. The RDA does not represent the minimum requirement when it is used to assess the diets of individuals. Rather, it should be thought of as lying within a “zone of safety”; if the further intake is below the RDA, the greater is the risk of deficiency, and the further above the RDA the greater is the risk of toxic effects.
Vitamins
Published in Frank A. Barile, Barile’s Clinical Toxicology, 2019
Vitamin A, and its derivatives, is essential for proper maintenance of visual acuity, dental development, skeletal muscle and bone growth, corticosteroid synthesis, and embryonic development and reproduction. Vitamin A also influences the differentiation of epithelial membranes, particularly the corneal, gastrointestinal (GI), and genitourinary epithelia. Derivatives of vitamin A include retinol, retinal, retinoic acid, and β-carotene (a precursor). These physiologically important factors support proper functioning of the reproductive cycle, visual acuity, somatic growth and differentiation, and visual adaptation to darkness, respectively. β-Carotene is a naturally occurring vitamin A precursor, found primarily in dark green and yellow-orange vegetables, and possesses antioxidant and immunostimulating (anticancer) activity. A balanced diet including fish, liver, meat, carrots, and dairy products provides the RDA for vitamin A.
Psyllium seed husk regulates the gut microbiota and improves mucosal barrier injury in the colon to attenuate renal injury in 5/6 nephrectomy rats
Published in Renal Failure, 2023
Dongmei Hu, Wenbo Liu, Wanlin Yu, Lihua Huang, Chunlan Ji, Xusheng Liu, Zhaoyu Lu
All statistical analyses were performed using R software (version 3.5.0; R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria). α-diversity (Shannon and Chao indices) determination and partial least squares discrimination analysis (PLS-DA) were performed at the genus level. 16SrRNA gene sequences were analyzed using the vegan package, which was also used to perform permutation multivariate ANOVA of dissimilarity matrices to assess the effect of 10,000 permutations. A linear discriminant analysis of effect size (LEfSe) was used to analyze group characteristics and the effect sizes of significant differences between groups. EnvFit analysis was used to determine the effect sizes and significance of the covariates in each group of 999 permuted plasmids. A redundancy analysis (RDA) was performed using the vegan package. Correlations between genera and covariates, adjusted for groups, were identified by general linear modeling. The false discovery rate was used to assess the significance of differences, with q < 0.1. Based on the MetaCyc database, pathoLogic (part of the Pathway Tools software) was used to predict the metabolic network. MetaFlux (Pathway Tools) was used to convert those tools into a metabolic model, which was then used to compare the metabolic pathways of different groups.
Nutrients in prevention, treatment, and management of viral infections; special focus on Coronavirus
Published in Archives of Physiology and Biochemistry, 2023
Fatemeh BourBour, Samaneh Mirzaei Dahka, Maryam Gholamalizadeh, Mohammad Esmail Akbari, Mahdi Shadnoush, Mohammad Haghighi, Hamidreza Taghvaye-Masoumi, Narjes Ashoori, Saied Doaei
This review indicated that some nutrients including dietary protein, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin B1, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, vitamin C, iron, zinc, and selenium have important effects on the immune system (Figure 2). These nutrients increase the body’s ability to coping with viral infections. High doses of vitamins and minerals do not yet have a proven protective effect in prevention of infectious diseases in healthy people. However, supplementation according to the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) is recommended for most of healthy people who do not have sufficient intake of nutrient rich sources. On the other hand, some studies demonstrated that supplementation with these nutrients can significantly improve the health-related outcomes in patients with COVID-19.
Working Memory and Inadequate Micronutrient Consumption in Healthy Seniors
Published in Journal of Nutrition in Gerontology and Geriatrics, 2019
Elle Goldberg, Shannon Kindilien, Melissa Roberts, Deborah Cohen
The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) levels issued by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) clearly demarcate micronutrient ranges by age and gender.15 However, investigators to date have been inconsistent in stratifying by male and female senior citizens and have rarely used the IOM demarcation points to assess inadequate intake.16 While it has been suggested by previous research that falling below 67% of the average RDA increases the risk of micronutrient deficiency,17 it is not equally likely that higher consumption of the individual vitamins and minerals is associated with a proportional increase in benefit.18 Indeed, levels of some micronutrients (e.g., the Upper Limit of pyridoxine) have adverse effects and therefore may become harmful to cognitive functioning.19