Phase One : PREPARE YOUR TERRAIN
The aim of the first section of your report, is to identify your genetic predispositions towards environmental dietary and lifestyle triggers, which can drive inflammatory processes in your body.
This part of your report will address DNA data-based reasons to justify possible changes worth implementing, in order to get your journey to optimal health started.
The primary goal here, is to decrease the load caused by external factors contributing to inflammation, and by measures which you can immediately start controlling. In short – remove yourself as much as possible from the inflammatory environment or remove the inflammatory environment from your surroundings.
Many diseases stemming from chronic stress and inflammation have early warning signs, meaning some cases can be prevented, or improved with lifestyle changes which help manage stress, diet, daily lifestyle choices, and in general by avoiding the environment that you may not be wired so well to handle.
Food allergy or intolerance symptoms can range from inflammation and swelling, to weight problems, digestive issues, aches and pains, mood and cognitive changes, fatigue and more. Inflammation is your body’s immune defence system working to remove something harmful from your system. This part of your report will highlight for you, genetic factors behind sensitivity to most inflammatory foods or food compounds, such as wheat, lactose, fructose, gluten, peanuts, shrimp and food additives and oxalates.
Results for Variants associated with your body’s ability to handle alcohol, caffeine and coffee could perhaps influence your decision-making process, or prompt you to provide your body with extra support and recovery aids, when you treat yourself with substances or beverages that are intended to provide a level of pleasure, but can in fact be more harmful for some compared with others.
Ketogenic Diet
For some time now, the Ketogenic diet has been touted for its anti-inflammatory properties and effects. Whilst a correct implementation of this regimen can most definitely benefit many undertakers, it can also be a double-edged sword to others, and here, your genes can also play a role. It may however, have to be a personalised decision to figure out if your metabolism needs extra support or maybe another approach altogether.
Glucose, Cholesterol and Triglycerides
High blood sugar and connected metabolic disorders drive up inflammatory conditions. Dysfunctional glucose and fat metabolism can impair our immune systems, cellular energy production and accelerate cellular oxidation and ageing.
Metabolic syndrome, characterised by abdominal obesity, insulin resistance, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia, is considered a major health hazard and has been called one of the great challenges of our times.
The relevant categories we’ve listed here will bring to your attention some possible weaknesses in how your biology is designed to react to sugar, fats and cholesterol content in your diet. It can also help you analyse to what extent your genetic blueprint has equipped you to handle good vs. bad cholesterol, which will hopefully help you establish dietary habits that are more in tune with your body’s capacity to use these molecules to your advantage. Genetic variants linked to Triglyceride status may additionally shed more light on your recent lab results, and help you figure out not only what to avoid, but also what to include, in order to improve your metabolic profile.
Fatty Acids Metabolism
The correct balance between fatty acids as well as their levels have potent anti-inflammatory effects, and they may be beneficial for a range of inflammatory conditions if the right balance is maintained.
Studies show that dietary supplementation with fish oil, lowers the activity of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, including Rheumatoid Arthritis, Crohn’s disease, Ulcerative Colitis, Psoriasis, Lupus Erythematosus, Multiple Sclerosis, and more. On the other hand, imbalanced Omega 3 to Omega 6 ratios, or deficiencies of one or the other, have been implicated in some inflammatory processes and negative outcomes in some conditions. The way your body promotes the production of one fatty acid vs. the other is blueprinted into your DNA, and gaining this information may help you be more precise in using these powerful molecules in a way that will be tailored to your personal needs.
Environmental Exposures
There are a few specific toxic compounds which we were able to tie to genetic variants, and have therefore listed them in your report. We’ve picked these, because our environment and lifestyles mean it is easy for us to consume or interact with them. The available research has naturally turned this section of the report into a valuable source of personalised information, which may be used in prenatal care and family planning.
Pesticides – although our biology is equipped with pathways which handle these toxic compounds, their primary role is not, in fact, to do that. As such, these mechanisms whose primary function would be to ensure healthy cellular procecesses, have to divert their already genetically capped flow, to deal with foreign substances, that do not belong in the cellular environment.
A systematic analysis of the peer reviewed literature, showed an association between prenatal organophosphates exposure and PON1 SNP, with neurobehavioural health outcomes. It linked organophosphate pesticides to neurotoxic and genotoxic effects. Ref.
We have also listed genetic variants connected to poorer cognitive function in people exposed to higher levels of Mercury. Through fish consumption by their mothers, when they were featuses, as well as variants linked to higher mercury levels in pregnant women who consumed fish.
Obviously, there are more routes of mercury exposure, like dental amalgams for example, so this information could be helpful for people contemplating decreasing toxic load on their bodies, by making changes to their dental health.
Similar to pesticides, our bodies were not also designed to have to cope with plastic particles and BPA. The closest chemicals resembling these synthetic structures, are in fact human sex hormones. The pathway that was naturally responsible for hormonal metabolic processes, now has to engage with other chemicals therefore, that do not necessarily belong there. Combine this with polymorphisms, which make some detoxification enzymes in these pathways less abundant, and we may have a recipe for conditions linked to a build up of hormone intermediates, which are toxic and are not being excreted from our bodies at the rate they should be.
Aflatoxin B1 is a highly carcinogenic mycotoxin, which is a product of certain moulds that can be present on some of our favourite snacks and foods like peanuts, sweetcorn and some grains. Children are particularly affected by aflatoxin exposure, which is associated with stunted growth, delayed development liver damage, and liver cancer. An association between childhood stunting and aflatoxin exposure has been reported in some studies. International sources of commercial peanut butter, cooking oils (e.g. olive, peanut and sesame oil), and cosmetics have been identified as contaminated with aflatoxin.
We have listed variants that make one especially vulnerable to DNA damage due to Aflatoxin B1, and the same variant has also been associated with Hodgkin Lymphoma. Ref Ref.
The variant in question belongs to a gene responsible for DNA repair. This information could perhaps be beneficial for people affected by this SNP, in terms of extra steps that need to be taken to improve food preparation hygiene. For example, heating and cooking under pressure can destroy nearly 70% of aflatoxin in rice, compared to under atmospheric pressure only 50% is destroyed.
Closing the first section of your report is a list of genetic variants linked to coping with stress and response to traumatic events.
Stress management can no longer be considered a complementary approach; it is an essential therapeutic strategy, and it is becoming abundantly clear that dealing with past or recent trauma as well as the ability to manage present stress load, absolutely has to go in tandem with any other interventions.
This couldn’t be more important in view of the most recent developments on the world stage.
Anxiety disorders have been associated with immune-inflammatory disturbances Ref..
In a study designed to investigate both pro-and anti-inflammatory cytokines and their balance in patients with General Anxiety Disorders, in comparison to healthy controls, the findings indicated a relatively increased pro-inflammatory response and decreased anti-inflammatory response, which demonstrated an altered cytokine balance in General Anxiety Disorders. Although Cortisol is ordinarily anti-inflammatory and contains the immune response, chronic elevations can lead to the immune system becoming “resistant,”. An accumulation of stress hormones can translate into increased production of inflammatory cytokines, that further compromise the immune response balance. Ref.