From Pegan Diet to Functional Medicine and Botanic Remedy

There are many different diets offered today. A Mediterranean-style diet has been widely studied, and a new concept is the so-called pegan diet, which is combined paleo and vegan two words and led to a new hybrid model, the pegan diet, which is gaining worldwide attention. (1)

As the name suggests, the Pegan Diet concept is a hybrid diet, combining the paleo diet and the vegan diet (although it goes a step beyond this). Paleo is focused on whole foods that are like those that our ancestors ate, for example, fruits, meats, nuts, while a vegan diet involves only plant-based foods, excluding dairy and meat. The pegan diet is less strict than vegan and encourages the practitioner to eat about 75% of plant-based foods and 25% of animal-based foods, but fully forbids dairy and gluten. (2)

The roots of this diet can be traced to a 1985, S. Boyd Eaton and Melvin Konner published a landmark paper in the New England Journal of Medicine titled  “Paleolithic Nutrition: A Consideration of Its Nature and Current Implications,” and this work postulated that an increase in the prevalence of chronic disease among modern humans is the result of a dietary composition that was not compatible with both our genetic ancestry and natural metabolic function. (3) This laid a foundation for the paleo diet that tries to focus on foods that are like those that people could eat since the beginnings of their evolution. At the same time, another camp has been promoting a vegetarian and, more recently, a fully vegan diet on grounds of both ethics and health, suggesting that the optimal human diet should be plant-based. Thus, Chinese herbal extracts are becoming more and more popular these days.

As a hybrid model, what are the health benefits of the pegan diet? It is not as well-tested as other diets because it’s a relatively new approach. However, it has some strong advantages. The pegan diet emphasizes nutrient-rich fruits, vegetables, and healthy fats, which is generally good for health and can have a variety of positive effects on the body. It may also help prevent chronic disease, promote heart health, and reduce inflammation, in particular, the cardiovascular and digestive systems. (4)

The findings from one study indicated that only 12% of Americans are metabolically healthy. 75% of us are overweight, 42% are obese, and one in two Americans have pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes. (5) The pegan diet appears to be especially good for people with metabolic and chronic health conditions. Therefore, individuals with diabetes or pre-diabetes might find this diet more helpful.

As the pegan diet creator, Dr. Mark Hyman said: “we now know that food is medicine—perhaps the most powerful drug on the planet—with the power to cause or cure most disease”. (6)  In accordance with this, food has been called “Functional Medicine, Eat Your Medicine” which is the science of creating health, of creating resilience, and making your system an inhospitable place for disease  to support longevity, energy, mental clarity, happiness, and much more as well as uncovers and addresses the root cause of chronic disease through the power of functional medicine (foods)—the only way to actually cure and reverse chronic diseases. (7)

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), chronic diseases are defined broadly as conditions that last one year or more and require ongoing medical attention or limit activities of daily living or both. It is well established that chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer are global epidemics in developed countries. CDC data shown these chronic diseases are the leading causes of death and disability in the United States. They are also leading drivers of the nation’s $3.8 trillion in annual health care costs. (8)

Traditional functional medicines used for centuries often have tangible physiologic and therapeutic value. Therefore, dietary contributions to health and chronic conditions, such as obesity, metabolic syndrome, cancer and cardiovascular disease, are of universal importance. Functional medicine will be forged through our understanding of how each of these dietary variables influence metabolism and their relationship to genetic individuality for many chronic diseases.

For instance, in a recent large collaborative study, the impact of this Mediterranean/Pegan-type diet approach on 1098 individuals was evaluated using deep phenotyping through metagenomic sequencing, as well as fasting-and post-prandial cardiometabolic blood biomarkers. The study results, which were published in Nature Medicine in 2021, demonstrated that application of this diet had a favorable influence on intestinal microbiome composition and was associated with healthy cardiometabolic biomarkers. (9)

Another study from Chinese group demonstrated that 27 commonly used wild food-medicine plants were recorded and analyzed. These botanical species can be classified into 8 categories: treatment of the damp-heat syndrome, digestive diseases, urologic diseases, arthropathy, respiratory diseases, gynecological diseases, snake or insect bites, and uses as a tonic. (10)

Specifically, today, more than 8000 phytochemicals have now been identified in functional foods and botanical agents (11) , some of them with anti-viral and immune-boosting herbs and spices have been used as part of the Functional Medicine approach to the SARS-CoV-2 virus indicates they may have a role in the pre-exposure and early phase of COVID-19. These botanicals included but not limited to Ginger, Garlic, Turmeric, Rosemary, Chili pepper, and Oregano, (5) as well as Curcumin, Quercetin, Zinc acetate, citrate, picolinate, or glycinate; zinc gluconate, N-Acetylcysteine (NAC), Vitamin A, C, D, Melatonin, Elderberry (Sambucus nigra), Green tea or epigallocatechin gallate  (EGCG), Resveratrol, Beta-glucans, Medicinal mushrooms and Licorice root (standardized to glycyrrhizin). (12)  Likewise, these agents can be considered as functional medicine, botanic remedies, immunoadjuvants, protease inhibitors, angiotensin-converting enzyme II (ACE2) modulators, zinc ionophores, and anti-inflammatory agents for promising prevention approaches and therapeutic (functional medicine and botanical) interventions.

Therefore, some functional food aforementioned  potentially can be developed as botanic medicine for the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases and change patients’ lives and improve their quality of life.

Notably,  these recommended interventions are only intended to identify functional medicine and botanical agents that may boost your immune system. It is not meant to recommend any treatments, nor have any of these been proven effective against the COVID-19. For up-to-date information of prevention and treatment on COVID-19 pandemic, please refer to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at www.fda.gov and www.cdc.gov, respectively.

References

1.  WebMD (2021)https://www.webmd.com/diet/pegan-diet-what-to-know#1

2. https://teakoffee.com/uncategorized/pegan-diet-everything-you-need-to-know/

3.  N Engl J Med. 1985 Jan 31;312(5):283-9.

4.  https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/paleo-diet-meal-plan-and-menu

5. https://drhyman.com/blog/2020/04/01/a-functional-medicine-approach-to-covid-19/

6.  https://drhyman.com/about/

7.  https://proweb.myersinfosys.com/kcpt/airlist/19.1/713174/detail

8.  https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/programs-impact/pop/index.htm

9.  Nat Med. 2021. February;27(2):321-332

10. Journal of Evidence-Based Integrative Medicine Volume， 2020， 25: 1-13

11.  Integrative Medicine, 2021,  April, Vol. 20, No. 2

12. https://www.ifm.org/news-insights/functional-medicine-approach-covid-19-additional-research-nutraceuticals-botanicals

About the Author

Lin Zhang, M.D., senior director of a health care industry company in the United States. With the experience in clinical medicine, biotechnology, health industry and other fields, he is responsible for the research and development of plant medicine, functional food and health products. He was a clinician and worked for the National Cancer Institute, FDA and the National Cancer Center of Japan for many years.