Precision medicine (PM) and precision nutrition seek to improve disease management. The aim is to treat or prevent chronic conditions based on an individual’s unique characteristics including genetics (DNA), gender, ancestry background, health history, metabolic traits, environmental conditions, microbiome composition and personal lifestyle factors profiles.
Precision nutrition is an evolving research field rooted in nutrigenomics focusing on metabolic variability not only within the individuals but also between them. It aims to create personalized, tailored dietary plans according to the person’s genetic background, optimizing general health and preventing nutrition-related diseases, and a variety of chronic and difficult-to-manage non-communicable diseases (NCD) conditions such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease and even cancer. Precision nutrition therefore can enhance population and public health allowing effective treatment of some comorbidities based specifically on the individual’s behavior, dietary habits and in conditions demanding precise dietary considerations, e.g., Phenylketonuria where genetic information of the patient will help design his dietary requirement plan to avoid serious complications.
While nutrigenomics provides insights into disease prevention and personalized nutrition; nutrigenetics focuses mainly on how an individual’s genetic variabilities affect his responses to different nutrients in his dietary regime, which consequently impact his general health, well-being, and predisposition to certain diseases. Therefore, the need arises to continue establishing multidisciplinary team technologies that can support extracting and processing multifaceted/multidimensional data and help analyse and organise complex human variabilities at a scale that cannot be matched by humans, this includes big data analytics, cloud data storage and computing, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and deep learning (DL).
With advancements in health care, a “healthy long life” rather than only a “long life” has become a rising interest. This involves optimization of all aspects of lifestyle parameters; physical, emotional, social, relational, existential, mental, and environmental, or what so called “deep health”.
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It is well known that the ageing process is driven by metabolism and cognition. With age, the metabolic rate declines; the body tends to lose the bulk of muscles and replace it with fat, leading to lower strength and slower mobility. On the other hand, cognitive functions also are expected to be affected as part of the ageing process. The processes associated with ageing are inevitable, however, it is possible to slow it down by improving modifiable lifestyle behaviours including diet.
What matters is your cells’ age or the individual’s biological age, which is the responsibility of ALL genes in our body like oxidative-stress genes. Hence, it is vital to boost general health to slow the biological ageing process or even attempt to reverse it via precision nutrition.
Therefore, in addition to lifestyle modification advice proposed by wellness experts, precision nutrition works at both individual and group levels.
With advancements in health care, a “healthy long life” rather than only a “long life” has become a rising interest.
At the individual’s level, it evaluates personal information such as DNA characteristics, body microbiota, the metabolic reaction to certain foods or diets, depending on the age and BMI (body mass index), to help generate specific eating/nutrient consumption plan – such as dietary supplements or certain vitamins and minerals- that prevents or mitigates diseases, to achieve an optimum “deep health” state, which improves longevity and ensures healthy ageing process. However, precision nutrition on a group level is considered “personalized, when the group members share the general profile characteristics, such as age, gender, and common comorbidities and in case the biological variability between them is measurable, this includes meal timing and meal contents, i.e., population group stratification.
Another developing field for precision nutrition is the management of children with neurodevelopmental disorders. To manage these children, a multidisciplinary team of paediatricians, social workers, a trained nurse, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, a physical and behavioural therapist in addition to a dietitian are needed to formulate an effective management/behavioural plan.
For nutritional intervention, the concept of one size fits all is not applicable when it comes to managing ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and ASD (autism spectrum disorder). The useful, impactful diet for one child does not necessarily work for another, and it could even worsen their signs and symptoms. In general, it has been reported that a diet high in sugar and salt content and a fried food diet harm children’s cognitive function and behaviour.
Genomics and AI are pioneering health management at both the individual and population levels contributing to effective and efficient healthcare cost administration.
It has been also reported that diet modification can help manage the signs and symptoms of such children. Some autistic children have been noticed to have improved behaviour when certain nutrients are eliminated from their diet, such as gluten-free, casein-free (GFCF) diets. While another group will show improvement when given certain supplements such as Magnesium, vitamins like vitamin B6 and/or certain types of amino acids or fatty acids. On the other hand, other children with neurodevelopmental disorders will react differently to a high-protein diet, as it could either improve their condition or worsen it.
Similar observations have been made regarding mothers’ diets during pregnancy. It has been reported that, in general, children of mothers consuming a Mediterranean-style diet during pregnancy or mothers who were on Omega 3 or folic acid (vitamin B9) supplements during pregnancy and lactation are less likely to develop ADHD or autism later in life. However, there is no known and reliable technique to help determine which diet is the best for an individual. Currently, it is “trial and error” the way to manage the diet of such children. As such, nutrigenomics/precision nutrition profiling can go a long way to assist parents and healthcare professionals in this area. Altogether, prescribing any individual a suitable diet or nutrient menu, requires advances in precision nutrition techniques.
M Walid Qoronfleh, Executive Director, Q3 Research Institute (QRI), Michigan, USA
In summary, nutrigenomics and more broadly precision nutrition is a critical piece in a person’s overall wellness, longevity, and wellbeing. Genomics and AI are pioneering health management at both the individual and population levels contributing to effective and efficient healthcare cost administration. The revolutionary lifestyle medicine approach is the wave of the future for human beings.
