Nutrigenomics is the study of how genes and nutrients interact. We have finally been able to put the science to the idea that we’re all different. We respond in a different way to the environment, to diet, to trying to lose weight, to exercise training. But we never really understood the science behind it. Genetics gives us that information
Nutrigenomics is the study of gene behavior that is driven by diet, lifestyle, environment, drugs, pharmaceuticals, stress. Nutrigenomic education, accreditation, certification is becoming more accepted.
Precision wellness would happen if wellness professionals started looking at somebody’s genomics in a comprehensive way. This would reveal predispositions and where they’re likely to have problems and what issues are likely to arise for them. We can possibly customize dietary recommendations, customize exercise recommendations and customize other behavioral and lifestyle interventions that would be likely to help based on genomics. Wellness professionals could work at the front end and speed up the process of doing the diet, behavioral, and lifestyle interventions when consultations have begun with this information.
Nutrigenomic information never exists in isolation. It needs to be understood in the context of all the lifestyle habits.
The shift in mindset from genetics to genomics is similar to the shift from an allopathic mindset into more of a functional systems-based medicine mindset. Genetics looks at a single layer of information. Genomic impact is where we look at many factors, complex interventions ending with complex results.
People are starting to want to understand themselves. How is it relevant to me? How does it change me? How do I respond?
CHALLENGES
- Ancestry genetics is interesting but the power is in the nutrition and the diet and environment and stress management and movement, changing gene expression, altering epigenetics
- Explosion of genetic tests available in the marketplace. Everyone is kind of on the genetics bandwagon. The concern is about direct-to-consumer, supplement-based testing
- A good genetics test looks at key issues in understanding the kind of functional nature of an individual . This includes, detoxification inflammation methylation
- Consideration has to be given to how people interact with disease information and whether that should be direct-to-consumer.
- it’s so easy to buy a 23AndMe test and it’s so affordable, people line up with kind of a false expectation of what they’re going to do with their data.
- Psychosocial anxiety around the information patients are given. We’re not evaluating patients for their medical and clinical history.
- treating SNPs with particular protocols is over
- It can be used as a way of ignoring or diminishing the importance of changes to diet, lifestyle, and behavior.
- Can be a source of disempowerment and overwhelm that actually paralyzes people and keeps them from taking meaningful actions
