Medical nutrition on DAO deficiency
“Let your food be your medicine”, that is the formula that is attributed to the father of medical science, the Greek Hippocrates.
However, today the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that between fifty and seventy percent of chronic diseases are related to food, taking its origin in a poor diet or getting worse with an unhealthy diet.
The scientific community that is investigating methods of prevention notes that the developed up to the present attempts to change the style of life of society and eating habits have failed. This fact is consistent with the requirement of some scientists and entities of the need for States to intervene by imposing the obligation to indicate the nutritional value of the food by means of symbols in the form of traffic lights (red, yellow, green) on the label, or by imposing new taxes in foods with additives or harmful amounts of certain components that may supose a risk to health: as sugar, fats, histamineand certain amines or alcohol.
Thus, it is considered that the nutritional or dietary managements remains an important challenge and are more justified than ever.
In the case of the pathologies caused by DAO deficiency, all of them are caused by an alteration in the metabolism of histamine and other biogenic amines, standing out migraine and other vascular headaches, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue and muscle pain, gastrointestinal disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), the dermatological disorders such as atopic skin and dry skin, and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Histamine and other biogenic amines are present in most foods in varying quantities or are produced in the process of digestion. Its absorption and subsequent accumulation in blood, organs and tissues causes all the variety of pathologies mentioned above, provided that exists a deficiency in the main enzyme of its metabolism: the diamino oxidase (DAO).
Medical Nutrition: dietary management and diagnosis of DAO deficiency and its associated pathologies
Functional foods and nutraceuticals used in medical nutrition are nutritional compositions specifically designed to respond to the needs of different groups according to their age and different medical conditions. In this way, its use is in the intervention and dietary management of diseases contributing to the correct development of the therapeutic regimen, and improving the symptoms and general conditions of patients.
Medical Nutrition is an essential part of the medical care, with important nutritional benefits, functional, economic and clinical trials for patients and health systems.
Within the medical support that develops the medical nutrition are different services, such as the dietary advice, the strengthening of food and supplementation of the diet with oral supplements. In the case of the dietary management for the DAO deficiency and its associated symptoms, the oral supplements with which is supplemented the diet of patients are food compounds by the enzyme Diamine Oxidase (DAO). In addition, these foods, according to the medical indication for that are prescribed, contain adjuvants for the correct dietary management of each pathology and its symptoms in a specific way.
Among the functional foods for nutrition therapy for DAO deficiency also found probiotics. Today is already known that the microbiota plays an extremely important role in many ailments of rheumatoid arthritis, allergies, in Crohn’s Disease and irritable bowel syndrome, as well as neurological ailments such as migraine headache, multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s disease.
In addition, scientific and clinical evidence have highlighted the role of the intestinal microbiota in the metabolism of histamine and the biogenic amines derived from the diet. This knowledge has made it feasible to perform the maintenance of a correct metabolism of the same using probiotics to activate or increase production of DAO, or to descend the production of the same by the bacteria of the intestinal microbiota.
A good nutritional care on DAO deficiency also includes nutritional screening with identifying those patients at risk for or who present a DAO deficiency, which have developed diagnostic tests of the activity of diamine oxidase (DAO) in patients. In this way, having determined the genetic variants that present susceptibility of developing an activity of DAO deficiency, as well as the values of reduced activity of DAO in plasma, have created genetic test and analysis of activities with the DAO in plasma with which is diagnosed in an objective manner this metabolic deficiency and considers the probability of inheritance in the families of this alteration and its associated pathologies.
In this way, the nutritional therapy does not require taking medicines, injections or apply subject to any one operation. It does not oblige us to find extra time, nor to spend extra money. The only determining factor is how and what we eat, and how we maintain the proper metabolism of foods.
Access here to scientific and clinical evidence on DAO deficiency and its associated pathologies.
