Dietary and nutraceutical interventions for functional dyspepsia: A narrative review
Functional dyspepsia (FD) is a prevalent disorder of gut-brain interaction. Commonly, meals may exacerbate FD symptoms like postprandial fullness, early satiation, epigastric pain, and nausea. We narratively synthesize meta-analyses, randomized trials, and observational evidence to outline mechanism-based dietary and nutraceutical options. Evidence favors small, regular, lower-fat meals and adjusting texture/osmolarity to minimize gastric distension. In selected phenotypes-particularly postprandial distress with bloating-a brief, dietitian-supervised low-FODMAP trial with staged reintroduction can define personal thresholds. Among nutraceuticals, peppermint-caraway, ginger, STW-5, curcumin, and selected probiotics show benefit, with melatonin and barrier-forming agents promising in subsets, while safety remains product-specific.
Authors
- Elena Formisano (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2585-4566)
- Giulia Navazzotti
- E V Savarino
- Edoardo Giovanni Giannini
- Vincenzo Savarino
- Elisa Marabotto
- Francesco Calabrese
- Andrea Pasta
Institutions
- University of Padua (IT)
- Ospedale Policlinico San Martino (IT)
- University of Genoa (IT)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Digestive and Liver Disease
- Published
- 2026-04-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dld.2026.03.010
- Primary Topic
- Gastrointestinal motility and disorders
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00