It has surely happened to you: that diet that worked wonders for your gym partner didn't work for you. Or that 6 pm coffee that keeps you wide awake, while it has no effect on someone else who sleeps through the night.
Is it willpower? Is it coincidence? No. It is your DNA.
This is where two terms come into play that sound similar, but are two sides of the same revolutionary coin: nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics. Although they are often used as synonyms, they are not the same thing.
What is nutrigenetics?
It focuses on analysing how your genetic variants affect the way your body processes, absorbs and metabolises nutrients. In other words, it explains why your organism reacts in a unique way to food. Nutrigenetics answers questions such as:
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Why does milk make me feel unwell? (Lactose intolerance).
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Why do I not lose weight, even if I reduce fats? (Perhaps your body responds better to a low-carbohydrate diet).
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Why do I get so jittery with coffee? (Slow caffeine metabolism).
What is nutrigenomics?
Nutrigenomics studies how what you eat can "rewrite" or modify your DNA. This discipline analyses how nutrients and bioactive compounds in food influence the expression of your genes. It does not change your DNA (that is immutable), but it can "switch on" or "switch off" certain genetic switches related to metabolism, inflammation or ageing. Nutrigenomics investigates things such as:
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Can antioxidants in broccoli help to "switch off" genes related to cancer?
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How does a diet high in saturated fats affect the expression of inflammatory genes?
The key difference
To ensure you never forget it, visualise it like this:
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Nutrigenetics: Genes ➔ Response to diet. (How does food affect my body?).
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Nutrigenomics: Diet ➔ Gene expression. (How does food affect my cells?).
Both disciplines work together to form what we call precision nutrition. The final goal is no longer to follow the general food pyramid, but to design a plan tailored to your unique biology.
How to apply this with tellmeGen
We live in the era of personalisation and at tellmeGen we want to make it easy for you. You do not need to be a scientist to benefit from this information.
In fact, we believe so strongly in the importance of nutrition that all our DNA tests include a complete section related to nutrigenetics.
The Nutrigenetic Report: Your instruction manual
If your main goal is to optimise your diet, lose weight intelligently or improve your sports performance, our nutrigenetic report based on your DNA test results is the ultimate tool. In this detailed report, we analyse your genetic predisposition to:
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Intolerances and sensitivities: Gluten, lactose, alcohol, caffeine...
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Macronutrient metabolism: How do you process carbohydrates or fats?
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Vitamin and mineral levels: Do you tend to have low Vitamin D or iron due to genetics?
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Appetite control and anxiety: Is your snacking real hunger or emotional hunger?
With this data, you can build (or ask your nutritionist for) a diet plan that does not fight against your biology, but works with it.
Why is this important for you today?
We live in the era of personalisation. Why do we keep eating with generic diets? Thanks to advances in biotechnology, tools like the tellmeGen DNA test democratise access to nutrigenetics. It is no longer science fiction: with a simple saliva sample, you can know:
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Your vitamin and mineral levels.
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Your tolerance to alcohol, lactose or gluten.
Knowing your body at a molecular level empowers you. You stop fighting against your biology and start working with it.
