There are eight nutritional whole-food glyconutrients, known to be necessary to create and sustain cellular health that are mostly missing from our contemporary food supply. A growing body of scientific evidence and inquiry demonstrates that introducing a complement of glyconutrients into a balanced nutritional program may have a significant positive impact on the aging process, degenerative disease process as well as many genetically carried health challenges.   These nutrients are necessary for everyone, no matter what their state of health, and it would be advisable to include them in your own and your family’s health regimen as well as for your patients. This information may be new to you as it only in the last decade that basic education has been provided in biochemistry textbooks and in the last 3 years available as continuing education credit programs for physicians. Some background to consider:   The flourishing science of glycomics has established irrefutably that 8 monosaccharides are required for normal cellular function, repair, regeneration, and inter-cellular communication. These 8 monosaccharides include glucose, mannose, galactose, xylose, fucose, N-acetylglucosamine, N-acetylgalactosamine, and sialic acid (N-acetylneuraminic acid or NANA).   Prior to the development of modern farming methods which have led to depleted soils and the introduction of man-made foods and elimination of various nutrients through processing our foods, these monosaccharides or glyconutrients were available in the food supply.   Today, in a typical diet, people get only 1 or 2 of the 8 necessary monosaccharides with very minute amounts if any of the others. In 1996, a research and development team created a 100% natural complex of the necessary monosaccharides and their precursors to provide all 8 monosaccharides.  The researchers created the term, ‘glyconutrients’ to describe the complex of monosaccharides. No combination of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, or herbals can substitute readily for this complex.  The only other way to get a complex of the monosaccharides is to create a mixture of mushrooms and fungi, hoping to get a comprehensive and efficacious mix and one that won’t be problematic for those who are sensitive to fungus.