Anti-inflammatory foods: human food patterns, bioactive principles and mechanisms of action

With the increase in life expectancy accompanied by the gradual decrease in the birth rate as well as the greater income distribution associated with the quantitative increase in the minimum wage above inflation and the increase in its purchasing power, today the Brazilian population shows a moment exactly opposite to that found in the last century both in epidemiological terms and in the nutritional pattern. Brazil is currently experiencing the same pattern of mortality as developed countries: the majority of chronic non-communicable diseases are the main cause of death associated with an established model of obesity and sedentarism. These factors incline the scientific community and health professionals to turn their efforts to find food solutions that ease this epidemiological picture and it is in this context that anti-inflammatory foods have gained prominence. The following describes the main compounds that fit this magnitude of effect and their mechanisms of action

Nutritional physical examination: historical, methodological and applied approach

The historical interest in the use of physical evaluation skills in clinical settings gained new notoriety at the end of the 20th century with evidence that patients in intensive care units experienced increased morbidity and mortality related to poor nutritional status before and/or during their admission. This awareness of the adverse effects of malnutrition led to the need for screening and evaluation tools to identify nutritional risk. no clinical finding of EFN should be considered a diagnosis per se. It is academic, scientific and clinical consensus that its results should be interpreted as suggestive, being crucial to consider the other methods of clinical evaluation of the patient\u27s nutritional status for the correct global nutritional diagnosis. However, the systematic and periodic repetition of the test may help to follow the evolution of the individual\u27s nutritional status, especially in the long term. In summary, although it requires specialized training and continuous practice of the evaluator and/or the team – in addition to requiring complementary nutritional information – the physical nutritional examination can still be considered an effective adjuvant method in the clinical evaluation of the patient’s nutritional status

Endocannabinoid system: conceptual parameters, history and therapeutic possibilities

Among the drugs considered illicit in the West, the Cannabis sativa plant is the most consumed: around 4% of the adult population, 10% of these users are in a situation of dependence. However, the medicinal use of this herb dates back to the early days of the emergence of our own species: some anthropologists theorize that some of the genus Homo has progressed in the struggle for survival with other hominids precisely because of the advanced knowledge – kept to the proper proportions – it possessed of plants like Cannabis. Millennia later, science – even focusing intensely on the chemical characterization of its more than 530 bioactive components – was still not able to generate verifiable hypotheses in order to explain two of the most remarkable characteristics of the recreational use of this plant: because small chemical changes potentiated the effect of the drug up to 100 times and, mainly, because it would be virtually impossible for an individual to suffer a lethal overdose of the substance. To overcome this paradigm, some compounds derived from delta-ninetetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC) - the main component of cannabis – were radioactively marked in an experimental study and, after their induction, it was discovered that they had tropism by brain membranes and that their binding was saturated and stereosleptic. Such evidence strongly suggested the existence of endogenous receptors for the drug and it was these findings that led to the discovery of the Endocanabinoid System (SEC): a physiological apparatus made up of endogenous receptors and binders, philogenetically conserved, responsible for several controls related to neuronal homeostasis