ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how systems which connect between bodily functions may depend on, be influenced by and be disrupted by nutritional factors. It identifies nutritional and environmental factors in the risk profile for certain ecohealth disorders as a result of dysfunctional nutritional biological systems. The chapter examines how the function of ‘internal’ systems and that of the cells are incomplete without ‘external’ inputs. It explores the interactions, whether adverse, aberrant or favourable, between nutritional factors and immune function. The chapter explains the importance of hormonal and microbiomic connections as vulnerable to nutritional disturbance. Diabetes mellitus is a disorder of blood glucose regulation characterised by a failure to maintain the blood glucose concentration in the normal range. A person can have no signs or symptoms but have a pre-diabetes condition in which blood glucose concentrations are higher than normal, but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes.
