Health booster from soya

CEBU, Philippines - Filipino research scientist Dr. Alfredo F. Galvez, from The Center  of Excellence in Nutritional Genomics at University of California in Davis, visited Cebu to share on his discovery on naturally occurring soy peptide.

It is said to be one of the most heavily researched and scientifically supported compounds available today, with more than 50 published papers  from more than 25 research institutions.

Dr. Galvez is working with 25-year-old Reliv International to produce products using the most pure and concentrated lunasin supplement ever produced and is now available in the Philippines. Lunasin, a patented name, is derived from the Filipino word “lunas” (treatment or cure). He found, by accident, that the peptide in soya affects gene expression and promotes optimal health at the epigenetic level.

But wait… epigenetics, what? To talk about it is to bring the subject to fifth-grade level.

Epigenetics is a little something like this: suppose who you are is written in both pen and pencil. Things written in pen you can’t change; that’s DNA. But things written in pencil you can; that’s epigenetics. As a student of genetics and plant physiology earlier on in life, Dr. Galvez already knew plants are a powerhouse of healing substances.

Thus, in his discovery on the lunasin, he expounded on what drugs can do to the genes, and what superfoods can do to epigenes to promote bioactivity that leads to overall health and wellbeing.

According to him, the epigenome acts like a dimmer for lights, controlling which genes are used, when they are used, and how much they are used. He stressed that our genome is like computer hardware, the actual components that perform specific functions. Our epigenome, meanwhile, is like software, the programs that tell the hardware which functions to perform.

Every cell in our body contains DNA – half from our mom, half from our dad. That’s our genome: the genetic blueprint that makes us, Us! Or that makes you, You!

Scientists, mostly of the Darwinian-Natural Selection side of the community, believe there was little to nothing we can do to affect genes inherited from our parents.

Until recently, when this ages-old field called epigenetics went mainstream scientists have realized that we have more control over health and nutrition than we think we do.

This is because within each of our cells is a higher level of complexity called the epigenome. According to Dr. Galvez, who was born in La Union and an Outstanding Alumni in Molecular Biology of the University of the Philippines Los Baños, the epigenome acts like the “boss of the cell, instructing the genome which genes to turn on and off. This is why different cell types — eye cells, skin cells, liver cells, among many others — can have the same DNA but perform vastly different functions.

Dr. Galvez expounded that the epigenome can also determine how well a cell functions, and that’s where we – as individuals – come in. Good lifestyle choices turn healthy genes on and unhealthy genes off. While bad choices do just the opposite and can lead to serious health concerns.

Peptide and high tide

Delving into the peptide thingy takes on a surge of technical terms. So to make matters simpler to understand, Dr. Galvez cited a Hippocratic tenet: to let food be our medicine.

Lunasin peptides are the active component in soy protein responsible for its LDL-cholesterol lowering property and the reduction of cardiovascular disease risk. This work led to the development of lunasin-optimized soy protein extracts for the nutraceutical and functional food industry which are now commercially available as dietary supplements.

Peptides are built in among plants. That is natural law. Such peptides he discovered are found in miniscule quantities in soybeans and function to block cell division and effectively turn down the dimmer switch in our genetic material. In layman’s terms: it makes cells less receptive to disease. Such mechanism has already been included in prestigious journals like the Journal of Cancer Research and Cancer Metastasis Reviews.

To this Dr. Galvez underlined that he has been excited for years about the enormous potential of the Lunasin peptide, but it’s the bioactive Lunasin that has opened the door to a broad range of dramatic health benefits and that he is glad to have been helping the world with affordable solutions.

However, the truth about pharma wars and doctors’ varied views on alternative medicine could bar the solutions from trickling down to the masses who are the ones most in need of health protection and financial stability.

“I’m most aware of that. In fact, I’m long been warned to watch out for those behind my back,” this Director of Research of the Missouri Plant Science Center in Mexico, Missouri shared furthermore.

With continued indifference by some, hurting as this may, Dr. Galvez pointed out courageously that “drugs is not the solution to everything.”

Illustrated through Glasbergen-ic humor, a physician’s point of view on conventional measures leads to a last, desperate option of putting alternative medicine offering a 96-percent success rate. The comic strip successfully brought the house down, and nailed the point that nutraceuticals should be given a chance as complementary meds to achieve real results.

Dr. Galvez is currently extending his work at the UC Davis to “understand the chemopreventive mechanism of action of the lunasin peptide against prostate cancer and build on previous results from whole genome expression studies and novel discoveries.”

“I am currently involved in multiple projects to identify novel health effects of formulaic compounds using lunasin-enriched soy extracts and other bioactive nutrients. I am also working on the developments of putative modified peptides as potential anti-cancer therapeutics,” he went on.

When teased that Angelina (Jolie) should have sought his sound advice first, as, on that light, her double mastectomy could have been unnecessary, if not totally absurd, this Balik-Scientist Program grantee in 1996, opined with a smile and reiterated the idea of his works in the most apt of metaphors: “It’s really just a matter of planting the right seed.”(FREEMAN)