ere are clear steps to increasing longevity, improving body composition, and optimizing cognitive health. Ancient cultures did the best they could with observation, and now we’re rediscovering the art of creating health with individualized precision and the tools and techniques to accelerate the process.
We have the means to know what your body needs on the deepest levels. These tools provide a template to go beyond healthy to optimal. These precision genetic tools allow us to move away from “dieting” and toward sustainable and delicious eating habits that simply become part of everyday life. Feeding your body the nutrition it wants from the ground up makes it easy to sustain those eating habits. Its a positive feedback loop.
How do nutrigenomics and nutrigenetics work?
Our DNA code is built out of pairs of four different molecules called nucleotides. Adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. They’re abbreviated by the letters A, T, C, and G. These letters are arranged in specific patterns that act as an instruction manual to create different proteins, which create the sum total of our biochemistry. We each have 3 billion of these letters in our DNA, and 99% of that code is the same from person to person. The 1% that differs between us gives us our unique differences. Its easy to imagine how different color eyes, skin, or hair can be related to genetic variations. Those are only the differences that show up on the surface, so imagine just how many subtle differences there are in the different biochemical pathways that are responsible for the way we react to different foods and nutrients inside the body.
Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms
Each one of those 3 billion pairs of A’s, T’s, C’s, and G’s has a specific location it occupies within a gene. This allows us to compare one person’s genome to another person’s genome and make note of where the differences exist. The 1% of nucleotides that differ from one person to anther are called “single nucleotide polymorphisms” or “SNPs” for short. These are simply substitutions of one letter for another with for example, a C instead of a T in a person’s code. They are inherited and are not mutations, but rather variations. These tiny genetic differences can have a major impact on a number of different factors from the way we metabolize different nutrients, to how we synthesize neurotransmitters, to how we respond to light, to our hormone production, to our likelihood to develop disease, to our muscle growth, to our sleep quality, and beyond.
Genome-Wide Association Studies and Gene Specific Candidate Studies
So how do we know what these variations actually mean in real life? Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS for short) involve taking a group of people with a specific condition or trait and comparing their genome to a control group of people who don’t have that condition or trait. If they find there are specific SNPs that appear significantly more often in the trait-related group than the control group, it is likely that there is a correlation between that SNP and the condition or trait. For example, in the chart to the left, you can see that the C version of this specific allele appears more often in the group with heart disease. It is important to note that correlation does not necessarily equal causation, but this type of study allows further investigation into the genetic reasons for the difference in outcome. Sometimes, there are very specific reasons we can understand why a SNP produces an outcome, and other times it is simply correlation without a specific cause. Understanding the cause allows us to use precise and targeted interventions to modify the outcome, which is what I focus on.
Gene Specific Candidate Studies are to GWAS similar but are a more narrow approach. Instead of comparing the whole genome of two groups of people, they select a specific gene that they believe might cause a different outcome between the two groups. For example, if a study examines the genetic basis for vitamin D deficiency, they might choose to look at only the differences in the Vitamin D Rece