Food fermentation - Significance to public health and sustainability challenges of modern diet and food systems.

Current modern dietary patterns throughout the world have resulted in adverse health implications. On the other hand, current agricultural practices and methods employed in food industries lead to the exploitation of the environment and generate nutrient-rich waste, which is underutilized. The simple answer to both these problems could be the adoption of fermentation technology. Due to the presence of functional microorganisms, fermented foods possess unique properties like probiotics properties, antimicrobial, antioxidant, peptide production, etc., imparting health benefits to consumers. Moreover, agricultural and food processing waste fermentation could generate value-added healthy foods and sustainable food sources. Not only this, fermented food products can be an essential source of generating livelihoods by producing necessary food ingredients through fermentation of commonly generated organic wastes in rural areas and encouraging and promoting traditional fermented recipes that are also healthy. This review discusses how reviving and promoting food fermentation technology can help reduce these two problems related to health and sustainability. Furthermore, the role of lactic acid bacteria and fungi like yeast, Penicillium, Acetobacter etc., in producing beneficial metabolites and their impact on controlling various lifestyle disorders and aging have been discussed. In addition, fermented foods also enrich gut microbiota, which imparts health benefits.

New Insights into Molecular Links Between Microbiota and Gastrointestinal Cancers: A Literature Review.

Despite decades of exhaustive research on cancer, questions about cancer initiation, development, recurrence, and metastasis have still not been completely answered. One of the reasons is the plethora of factors acting simultaneously in a tumour microenvironment, of which not all have garnered attention. One such factor that has long remained understudied and has only recently received due attention is the host microbiota. Our sheer-sized microbiota exists in a state of symbiosis with the body and exerts significant impact on our body's physiology, ranging from immune-system development and regulation to neurological and cognitive development. The presence of our microbiota is integral to our development, but a change in its composition (microbiota dysbiosis) can often lead to adverse effects, increasing the propensity of serious diseases like cancers. In the present review, we discuss environmental and genetic factors that cause changes in microbiota composition, disposing of the host towards cancer, and the molecular mechanisms (such as ß-catenin signalling) and biochemical pathways (like the generation of oncogenic metabolites like N-nitrosamines and hydrogen sulphide) that the microbiota uses to initiate or accelerate cancers, with emphasis on gastrointestinal cancers. Moreover, we discuss how microbiota can adversely influence the success of colorectal-cancer chemotherapy, and its role in tumour metastasis. We also attempted to resolve conflicting results obtained for the butyrate effect on tumour suppression in the colon, often referred to as the 'butyrate paradox'. In addition, we suggest the development of microbiota-based biomarkers for early cancer diagnosis, and a few target molecules of which the inhibition can increase the overall chances of cancer cure.

Yoga as an intervention to manage multiple sclerosis symptoms.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune, demyelinating, inflammatory disease of central nervous system (CNS) which is characterized by spasticity, fatigue, depression, anxiety, bowel and bladder dysfunction, impaired mobility, cognitive impairment etc. and affects approximately 2.5 million people worldwide. Disease modifying therapies for MS which help in preventing accumulation of lesions in white matter of CNS are costly and have significant adverse effects. Therefore, patients with MS are using complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and Yoga is one of the most popular form of CAM which is being used immensely to reduce or overcome the symptoms of MS. In the current review attempted to present the potential impact of yoga practices on reducing MS related symptoms.