A Call for a Healthy Lifestyle and Food Sustainability

CAMILLO RICORDI, ONE OF THE LEADING EXPERTS ON DIABETES, CLOSED THE FIRST SEMESTER OF 'BROADEN YOUR FRAME' SEMINARS INTRODUCING STUDENTS TO RESEARCH INTO AUTOIMMUNE DISEASES AND INVITING THEM TO PURSUE A HEALTHY AND SUSTAINABLE LIFESTYLE

The first semester of the Broaden Your Frame seminars, organized by the Graduate School, ended with a lesson by Camillo Ricordi, one of the world's leading scientists in diabetes cure-focused research and cell transplantation. He first introduced the students to the most technical and scientific aspects of the diabetic disease and to the progress made by research for its treatment, without neglecting some historical background - from the discovery of insulin to the first child cured.

He then moved on to broader considerations on the link between some factors - such as vitamin D levels - and the onset of autoimmune disorders, and how the occurrence of some diseases depends only marginally on genetic predisposition. So Ricordi invited the students to engage in a healthy and balanced lifestyle: "Epigenetics, that is, the set of environmental factors, regular exercise, diet, can prevent much more than you think the onset of many diseases, such as diabetes," he says. "Not only is leading a healthy and balanced lifestyle an act of self-respect, but it is also a form of social responsibility, with positive implications for the environment, for the welfare system and for society as a whole,” adds Antonella Carù, Dean of the Graduate School.  The heart of Ricordi's speech was perhaps the question left to the students about the paradoxes of nutrition: "Did you know that people who die from undernourishment and malnutrition in the world are the same in number as the people who die from obesity and over-nutrition?”.

Finally, Ricordi did not forgotten to encourage the public to pursue their goals: "Take John Gurdon, Nobel prize winner and genius on stem cell research: his dream of becoming a scientist could have been dashed by the school report received at 15, which defined his ambition as ridiculous and a waste of time and declared him as the worst among the 250 students in his science course. And a few decades later came the Nobel prize”.

by Benedetta Ciotto