Abstract
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the global nutrition report shows that whilst part of the world’s population starves, the other part suffers from obesity and associated complications. A balanced diet counterparts these extreme conditions with the proper proportion, composition, quantity, and presence of macronutrients, micronutrients, and bioactive compounds. However, little is known on the way these components exert any influence on our health. These nutrients aiming to feed our bodies, our tissues, and our cells, first need to reach mitochondria, where they are decomposed into CO2 and H2O to obtain energy. Mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell and mainly responsible for nutrients metabolism, but they are also the main source of oxidative stress and cell death by apoptosis. Unappropriated nutrients may support mitochondrial to become the Trojan horse in the cell. This review aims to provide an approach to the role that some nutrients exert on mitochondria as a major contributor to high prevalent Western conditions including metabolic syndrome (MetS), a constellation of pathologic conditions which promotes type II diabetes and cardiovascular risk. Clinical and experimental data extracted from in vitro animal and cell models further demonstrated in patients, support the idea that a balanced diet, in a healthy lifestyle context, promotes proper bioenergetic and mitochondrial function, becoming the best medicine to prevent the onset and progression of MetS. Any advance in the prevention and management of these prevalent complications help to face these challenging global health problems, by ameliorating the quality of life of patients and reducing the associated sociosanitary burden.
Highlights
In the last decades, global dietary patterns have experienced a transition towards increasinglyWesternized and less healthier diets
Vitamin B7, biotin deficiency has been linked to impaired glucose tolerance, hyperglycemia, and decreased glucose oxidation in animal studies [168] and a cross-sectional study showed that high levels of vitamin B12 are protective to metabolic syndrome (MetS) [169]
In vitro studies usually work with higher concentrations that significantly differ from those that are reached in human interventions and must be considered as models to understand molecular mechanisms difficult to approach in vivo
Summary
Global dietary patterns have experienced a transition towards increasingly. Micronutrients (the ~40 essential vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, and amino acids) and bioactive compounds, must be considered in a balanced diet to get an optimal cell–mitochondrial–metabolic axis function [10] These dietary considerations are closely related to the manifestation of the most common NCDs [11], including MetS [12], where the mitochondrial dys(function) can be considered a common hallmark. The aim of this work is to review the role of some nutrients, incorporable in a balanced diet, over mitochondrial (dys)function and its impact on MetS. For this purpose, we have reviewed data extracted from experimental and clinical studies published in PubMed and Google. From inception to July 2020, to document the principal examples of nutrients’ effect on mitochondrial activity and their influence on MetS
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