DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS: TYPES, HEALTH BENEFITS, AND ROLE IN DISEASE MANAGEMENT

Abstract

With the growing awareness of preventative health care, nutritional adequacy and disease prevention, dietary supplements have come to play an ever-growing role in the contemporary healthcare and nutrition practice. They include vitamin based, mineral based, herbal preparations, probiotics, fatty acid-containing, protein supplements and other types of bioactive compounds that are commonly used to benefit physiological processes and health outcomes on the whole. The increasing global market of dietary supplements reflects the novel trends of consumerism, rise in the prevalence of chronic disease, ageing as well as an increase in the interest towards the personalisation of nutrition and wellness framework. This is what the review article aims at achieving, under the critical review of the major classes of dietary supplements, evaluation of reported health-benefits and dissection of how they can be used in conjunction with managing a disease, with new scientific knowledge. The review is based on the literature review design of narrative review and generalisation in the findings which is based on the peer-reviewed scholarly research, publications on healthcare and other credible sources of nutritional information. The available information demonstrates that dietary supplements can enhance the state of nutritional status, the health of the immune system, the metabolic state, oxidative stress, cardiovascular, skeletal, gastrointestinal, and neurological health problems when used properly. The role of dietary supplements in management of the major health conditions is given special attention which include cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, obesity, immune-related disorders and bone health conditions. Biological processes that are a part of supply action are also discussed in the review, and it has proved to interact nutrient intake and metabolic activities on clinical outcomes. Though the supplements may be used as a therapeutic supplement and complement to their conventional treatment therapies, there are some concerns on improper intake of supplements, overdose, product quality and an antagonistic interaction and absence of clinical data of some products. The results show that diet supplements in lieu of balanced nutritional foods and medical therapy are not possible but can be used as an aid to therapy under scientific evidence and medical guidelines. This review concludes that more regulatory checks, evidenced-based consumer education and ongoing clinical research are required to ensure that maximum benefits and minimum risks are achieved with the use of dietary supplement.