Let food be thy medicine, and let thy medicine be food, Hippocrates.

No phrase could be truer, as any honest doctor will tell you. Here we will examine glyconutrients, and how they can help supplement your diet program,improve health and prevent disease.

Glyconutrients are large sugar polymers containing monosaccharides

A monosaccharide is a carbohydrate consisting of one simple sugar. These monosaccharides are important elements used by the body to create glycoproteins.

What are they?

In turn, glycoproteins are the molecules that act as a cellular code for cell to cell communication. In fact, the majority of proteins in our bodies are glycoproteins.

Today there is an entire branch of medicine now called Gycoscience, based on glyconutients, and more there is an associated new (re-discovered) discipline in medicine called Orthomoleculogy.

Orthomolecular medicine describes the practice of preventing and treating disease by providing the body with optimal amounts of substances which are natural to the body.

The principle idea here is that genetic factors affect not only to the physical characteristics of individuals, but also to their biochemical potentials.

It is believed that biochemical pathways of the body have significant genetic variability and diseases such as atherosclerosis, cancer, schizophrenia or depression are associated with specific biochemical abnormalities which are causal or contributing factors of the illness describes.

From the above, the whole industry and habit of taking food supplements have arisen, and now it is commonplace to find food supplements in almost every pharmacy and supermarket. The supplements themselves are almost always glyconutrients, and usually glycoproteins.

How they work and what they can do for you

Lets see how they work, and what they can do for you. Since the topic is much to large to cover in any single article we will use the B-vitamin supplements as an example.

The B-vitamins are working best when taken in a group, but even given singly have good and well documented results. B-6 taken alone helps all the symptoms of PMS (pre-menstrual syndrome), an essential (now widely accepted practice) addition to any woman taking oral contraceptives, as it is a possible stroke preventative (women taking oral contraceptives are 3 times as likely to suffer stroke than women who do not).

B-3 (Niacin) also has been used for a very long time by psychiatrists as it is an effective alternative treatment for severe depression, psychotic behavior, and schizophrenia.

Additionally Niacin has finally gained popularity as one of the cheapest ways to lower serum cholesterol. It must be mentioned again, as above, that the B-vitamins work well when taken together, and somehow even better with other glyconutrients such as Vitamin C.

There is a very good effect on organs such as the liver, which means if you drink alcohol to any extent, you need to be taking these supplements.

Assuming Orthomolecular medicine will be gaining credence in the near future, we may discover how to treat and even prevent all our illnesses with diet and natural cures.

The problem is perhaps the huge pharmaceutical industry that makes hundreds of billions of dollars early by providing expensive drugs and may or may not work. Also a doctor would have a real problem with collecting high fees by prescribing eating an apple a day.

The key then will lay in the real education of the general public.

An article such as this should also contain a detailed explanation of how the glyconutrients work, and what they do. In the future, we hope that all interested people will demand such an instruction and explanation. Todays basic biology classes are going into more detail than ever before and this too is a good sign.