Modern medicine is divided into different specialties. While well-trained experts can serve the patients better, each medical specialty is isolated to itself. For example, it is a norm for gastroenterology that fasting can lead to gastrointestinal tract (GIT) mucosa atrophy, and make the patient prone to bacterial translocation and sepsis. Yet, physiologists still think that fasting might be a feasible solution for obesity and related illnesses, as it can trigger autophagy which has multiple physiological functions benefiting the body. In this chapter, using the rediscovery of the Luigi Cornaro diet as an example, we demonstrate that scientometrics methods can be a powerful tool to integrate the isolated medical specialties. The Luigi Cornaro diet is able to maintain the homeostasis of GIT mucosa while keeping a serum starvation to fit for a rare physiological condition of fully developed sustained upregulated autophagy (SUA) in the body. Although fully developed SUA is relatively rare, low-grade upregulated autophagy (UA) is quite common, reflected by the prevalence of obesity in population. UA is the main component of our self-healing capacity, and the connector between infection and obesity. Such discovery of scientometrics could be the next generation medical practice.
Part of the book: Scientometrics Recent Advances