Food as Medicine for Brain and Other Tissues
A special issue of Nutrients (ISSN 2072-6643). This special issue belongs to the section "Nutrition and Public Health".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 May 2026 | Viewed by 981
Special Issue Editors
Interests: precision ketogenic therapy; food as precision medicine; nutritional biochemistry; carnitine function and metabolism; pig model for human metabolism
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Food to treat and prevent disease has been practiced for millennia in most of the world’s cultures. “Let thy food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” is a quote often attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Hippocrates (400 BC). A century ago, the first papers describing the ketogenic diet as a dietary therapy for epilepsy were published. Many versions of the ketogenic diet designed to prevent and treat seizures and symptoms other than seizures have been published with the assumed mechanism of supplying ketones as an alternate fuel for glucose. The current literature documents many metabolic functions of ketone bodies in addition to being a fuel source. Thus, the mechanism of ketogenic therapy is much more than the supply of an alternate fuel. As with other nutrients, the use of a nutrient in food as medicine has led some investigators to use direct administration of the ketone body nutrient as a chemical drug. Brain tissue is very sensitive to nutrient availability from in utero throughout the lifespan. Brain tissue is also very sensitive to the metabolic products of other tissues comprising the body’s metabolic web.
The objective of this proposed Special Issue on “Food as Medicine for the Brain and Other Tissues” is to publish selected papers studying the clinical role of food containing a complex chemical matrix to prevent and treat neurological symptoms using today’s precision medicine approach and papers investigating the metabolic mechanism of the physiological role of food in maintaining or returning metabolic homeostasis to normal. Papers documenting the role of food intake on the efficacy of other currently used medical therapies and the role of food intake on the metabolism of organs throughout the body that affect brain function are welcome.
Dr. Peggy R. Borum
Dr. Steven Parrish Winesett
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- dietary therapies for epilepsy
- ketogenic diet
- food is medicine
- food as precision medicine
- brain metabolism of macronutrients
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