The Impact of RDNs on Non-Communicable Diseases: Proceedings from The State of Food and Nutrition Series Forum.

In the United States, nutrition-related morbidities are rising steadily at rates corresponding to increasing overweight and obesity in the population. Such morbidities take huge tolls on personal health and impose high costs on health care systems. In 2019, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (Academy) and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation (Academy Foundation) embarked on a new project titled "The State of Food and Nutrition Series" to demonstrate the value of nutrition interventions led by registered dietitian nutritionists for individuals with the following 3 high-priority non-communicable diseases that affect many in the United States and globally: type 2 diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, and hypertension. Poor nutritional status contributes to disease onset and progression in these non-communicable diseases, and appropriate medical nutrition therapy can prevent or delay worsening and ameliorate poor health outcomes. However, many people who have these conditions do not have access to an registered dietitian nutritionist, and consequently do not receive the nutrition care they need. On February 19-20, 2020 in Arlington, VA, as the first stage in The State of Food and Nutrition Series, the Academy and the Academy Foundation gathered health care policymakers, clinicians, and researchers from across the country for the State of Food and Nutrition Series Forum, where Academy leaders sought input to build a comprehensive research strategy that will quantify the impact of patient access to registered dietitian nutritionist-led nutrition interventions for type 2 diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, and hypertension. This article summarizes the findings of that forum.

Probing the Qi of traditional Chinese herbal medicines by the biological synthesis of nano-Au.

Herbal medicines with different Qi properties (the primary proxy of their therapeutic effects) are used in traditional Chinese medicine to maintain the harmony of vital forces in a human body. In the Western medicinal practice, the classification of Qi into four major families ("Si Qi" in Chinese Pinyin) is a challenging endeavor, especially by a simple non-reductionist approach. The method presented here is however able to distinguish the Qi of herbal medicines based on the measurements of several Qi-related features in a biological synthesis of nano-Au in herbal extracts: solution color, surface plasmon resonance properties, reaction time and nano-Au morphology. These Qi-related features on their own do not form sufficiently distinct clusters that are useful for the classification of the Qi-properties. The power of differentiation, however, is significantly improved when all the Qi-related features are considered together. The statistics of differentiation is encouraging, enabling us to develop a scheme which can classify all of the tested TCHMs into their respective Qi families. While this classification method was developed using a limited number of herbal medicines with known Qi properties, it has the potential to be applied as a scientific quick test to determine the Qi of new herbal medicines or herbal concoctions. It is our aspiration that this study can generate more interest in the development of non-reductionist approaches to modernize the understanding of TCHMs.