How to tailor smart foods to your family genogram

By: AnneHart

Sacramento : CA : USA | 3 months ago

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Posted by: AnneHart

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A genogram is a family medical history that goes back several generations. You can make one and put it in a time capsule to offer to the next generation--information about family health history spanning several generations.

Sometimes smart foods may override gene variants. Should you have your genes tested to find out which smart foods you could be eating? Genomic testing--for part of a person's total genome--is possible today. Experts argue about whether we have 30,000 or 70,000 genes, or somewhere in between.

Then again, a few genes tested could give you clues and point you in a direction of what food or medicines that you could find healthful. Intelligent foods are whole foods that do a body good in the long term.

Genotype is the way you identify which genes a person has. You can tailor your foods to your own genetic signature, but unless whole genome testing becomes affordable pretty soon, what you may be told you're at risk for may take a lot more than the few genes of yours that you had tested.

Seeking smart foods is about making informed eating choices to enhance your life. Searching for smart foods is about identifying foods that are better for you. Finding smart foods may help you understand how to change your workout plan to get the best results.

Using smart foods help you target and value your strengths. Smart foods show your weaknesses as something to work at to overcome. If smart foods can do all that, as the genetic testing companies note, how can you identify which smart foods bring balance to you?

It's not your genotype which determines what you need to eat for balance and a chance at being healthier. It is the work that your specific genes do. Think of genotype as the location of exit ramps on an interstate. You need to know where these are, but they tell you nothing about where you are going and what the journey will be like.

To identify these, you study each gene's level of activity, called “gene expression.” When I interviewed the CEO of AlphaGenics back in 2004, gene expression at AlphaGenics was called the Expressitype.

Scientists conclude that gene expresses changes over time for many genes. Childhood, adolescence, and old age are substantially under genetic control. Some people age faster than other. It's in their genes. Right now testing a few genes costs a fair amount. And seldom is gene testing covered by insurance.

Over time, the technology advances will enable very low cost tests. For example, measuring gene expression in several thousand genes can cost from $800 to $3,000, depending on who does it. But in Japan testing sometimes costs less than $100 for 900 or more genes. Costs go down as time moves on.

Some companies offer genetic tests under $1,000 with monthly follow-ups of around $79. The monthly fee lets you contact the company by phone or email anytime to ask whether something you want to eat might help you or not.

You can check out what AlphaGenics is working on nowadays. Back in 2004 they worked with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to develop a small implantable device that measured vital chemicals in the blood, and sent signals outside the body. Such a device helped to track what's happening in a person around the clock, every day, with much more accuracy and less guesswork.

Today, the most important area of research in nutritional genomics today is how the dietary system, interacts with the thousands of genes in the genome to produce health, or illness. The dietary system (systems biology) is composed of hundreds and thousands of chemicals in varying dosages.

Eating one single food isn’t an answer. A balance of what foods you eat over time is what counts, not whether you eat blueberries, bananas or rice.

The study of smart foods is about understanding the dynamics of how changes in diet influence the work each person's genes is doing. The value of systems biology is that ultimately, science will be able to identify individualized responses to diet, based on genetic composition. If you want answers, look to wise food traditions and folklore and study your family history.

Tailor your diet to your family history, to what diseases show up repeatedly in your family. It's important to draw up a genogram, a medical family history and put it in a time capsule or keepsake album to give to the next generation.

Wise food traditions is about recording individual and family responses to food from generation to generation, even if our genes recombine with each generation. For further information on "smart foods," see my other article, "101: Smart Foods," at: http://www.examiner.com/x-7160-Sacramento-Nutrition-Examiner~y2009m7d25-Smart-foods.

The tag, "Smart Foods" is an easy way of explaining what nutritional genomics is about. In the early 1990s when consumers and nutritionists began to research smart foods, a new book on nutrition tailored to metabolic genetics piqued many peoples' interests: The Metabolic Basis of Inherited Disorders, 6th ed. McGraw-Hill, New York: 2649-2680, 1989. You are what you ate. And what you are eats you.

The idea is that your metabolic type (based on chemical, electrical, and genetic tags that switch on and off--the specialty is called epigenetics) is connected to what you eat. The notion of metabolic nutrition being connected to epigenetics led to a search for reading lists. This arena now is a branch of nutritional epigenetics.

Within human ecology, it compares the latest research in nutritional genomics/epigenetics to how smart foods (foods tailored to your genetic signature) influence risk of chronic disease. What you eat shows up in your genetic signature.

The longer science studies the entire genome (rather than the specific SNPs for certain chronic diseases) the more information will be forthcoming on how food and lifestyle influence your health based on the genes you inherited.

According to the National Institutes of Health, “Your lifestyle, the food you eat, and where you live and work can all affect how you respond to medicines. But another key factor is your DNA, which contains your genes. Scientists are trying to figure out how the make-up of your DNA can contribute to the way you respond to medicines, including pain-killers with codeine like Tylenol®#3, antidepressants like Prozac®, and many blood pressure and asthma medicines.

Scientific discoveries made through this research may provide information to guide doctors in prescribing the right amount of the right medicine (or foods, lifestyles, and supplements) for you. According to the National Institutes of Health , the institute "aims to improve the health of all Americans through medical research that solves mysteries about how the human body normally works—and how and why it doesn’t work, when disease occurs. One goal of this research is to help improve the good effects of medicines while preventing bad reactions.”

How do your genes respond to what you eat? Are you getting tired of the slogan "smart foods for intelligent people?" How many diet-by-DNA book titles are there? Books on smarter foods? Tailored menus? Extracts of plants? DNA tests for ancestry? Ancestry and eating?

According to Dr. Fredric D. Abramson, Ph.D, S.M., President and CEO of AlphaGenics, Inc., "Genes are distributed, function, and work in such ways that nearly every reasonable diet could work well in about six percent of the population."

There is a strong connection between nutrition and genotype, especially in regards to your cardiovascular and central nervous system health. So you need to tailor foods intelligently to your genetic expression.

The media buzz about ‘intelligent’ foods or ‘smart’ foods really means eating clean, safe, whole foods based on what your individual genes need to thrive. Not all your genes would be tested.

Or instead of a test, you could go by your body measurements, as outlined in naturopathic doctor, Peter D'Adamo's book, the Genotype Diet. If you're interested in some free food information research, you might start at Food Resource, an online source of science-based and business savvy information for the food industry at Oregon State University.

What happens when diet books for your condition aren’t working for you? Maybe salt restriction isn’t working but exercise is for your condition. How do your genes respond to nutrition and nourishment?

Are your genes intelligent, conscious, and communicating with you about their nutritional needs? If they are, so are the foods you eat. Your genes interact and collaborate as a team.

The language of communication is written in the human genome, in your individual genetic signature—in your DNA, in particular SNPs, and in all your genes and cellular material. Even your blood type is expressed in all the cells of your body. How does all this information signal you about what ‘smart’ foods and nutraceuticals to choose in order to help prevent or delay chronic disease for which your genes may put you at risk?

Nutritional genomics and epigenetics are buzz words in the news. Tiny tags switch good genes on and bad genes off based on what you eat or the supplements you take, according to documentaries on resveratrol and green tea extract (acting as metholizers).

Testing DNA for ancestry and DNA-driven nutrition also bridge gaps in regard to customizing smarter foods to your genotype. Phenomics is about customized healthcare and medicine tailored to your genetic profile. Pharmacogenomics is about tailoring your medicine dosages to your genetic profile, but not all your genes are tested.

The nutrition angle remains to ask the question: how smart do you want your food to be? And what should you know about tailoring your food to your genes or metabolic body type? We all eat on the molecular level, the chemical level, and yes, the atomic level.

Resveratrol is big news. Many people take resveratrol capsules and decaffeinated green tea capsules daily. The Genotype Diet book also mentions resveratrol. Check out some of the reviews on resveratrol and decide for yourself which product meets your requirements for standardization. Look for validation. When you read a review of resveratrol or any other supplement, ask whether it is an objective review or is the review made by someone selling a product? Check it all out.

For more info: browse my book, How to Interpret Family History & Ancestry DNA Test Results for Beginners The Geography and History of Your Relatives or check out the AlphaGenics site.

You might also enjoy these other health and nutrition articles I've written: