UGM Press published a book entitled “Antioksidan Dalam Penanganan Sindrom Metabolik” written by a lecturer at the UGM Faculty of Medicine, Public Health, and Nursing (FK-KMK), Prof. Dr. Dra. Sunarti, M.Kes. This work was written to enrich the general public’s understanding of oxidative stress, metabolic syndrome, and local food sources rich in antioxidants.

“I was interested in writing this book because the prevalence of metabolic syndrome has increased from year to year,” Sunarti conveyed in an online book review event jointly held by FK-KMK and UGM Press Thursday (19/5). The World Health Organization (WHO) states that nutritional factors affect more than two-thirds of diseases worldwide. Unbalanced nutritional intake in the body, both in number and type, will trigger the metabolic syndrome. Sunarti explained that the increasing prevalence of the metabolic syndrome is related to changes in diet. “It interferes with metabolism in our bodies, causing metabolic syndrome associated with central obesity, dyslipidemia, hypertension,” he explained.

The speed of changes in people’s lifestyles towards a diet high in fat and sugar and low physical activity triggers a shift in the acceleration of the onset of metabolic syndromes such as central obesity, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, and hypertension accompanied by oxidative stress. It is also a risk factor for type 2 diabetes mellitus, cancer, obesity, stroke, and cardiovascular disease, also known as heart disease. People with diseases related to metabolic syndrome experience oxidative stress due to excessive production of free radicals, so the body’s antioxidant defense system cannot cope. This condition will aggravate the disease and trigger complications, so to overcome it, additional external antioxidants are needed, such as getting nutritional therapy in the form of vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals. He continued those efforts to explore the potential of local food as a source of antioxidants are essential for further studies. This study is expected to be a means to understand the mechanism of oxidative stress and its triggering factors, and the metabolic pathways that are affected. “In our tropical country, there are lots of local food ingredients that contain lots of antioxidants, and there are distinct types,” said Sunarti.

Local foods such as gembili, pumpkin, orange sweet potato, beetroot, soybean, and purple corn can be a source of antioxidants. Pumpkin, for example, is a local food ingredient widely available in the yards of people in rural areas and has not been widely used by the community. Pumpkin is rich in carotene as an antioxidant that can overcome oxidative stress, improve propylene, and blood glucose. Hopefully, we can use these local ingredients to treat metabolic syndrome so that it can reduce the incidence of metabolic syndrome-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease,” said Sunarti.