Over the last 5 decades, the global number of people suffering from chronic health conditions & quadrupled. In order to bring solutions to our disease worries, many courageous entrepreneurs have come to rescue & tried to find our solution to Chronic diseases but they have been unable to crack the chronic disease code. 99% of these disease management companies just end up working in isolation, focussing on one single biological function & managing & suppressing disease symptoms by just tracking standard of care blood & urine biomarkers that just investigate the after effect of biological functions.
The generic dietary recommendations proposed by these companies fail to investigate the impact of every food on different biological functions taking place inside the body.
In essence these fad diets/generic dietary recommendations & tracking health through blood/urine biomarkers does nothing to cure these dreaded diseases. In fact, such diets which do not consider the unique microbiome each individual has & how each of these foods impact various biological functions can give result to other chronic health conditions.
Needless to mention that doctors are never taught nutrition & cannot cure & reverse chronic diseases. They know only one thing- how to marry symptoms with drugs & hence can only manage & suppress symptoms.
Our health is driven by our dietary choices which are a function of our unique microbiome. Our body is a container of microorganisms living in our large intestine. These microorganisms digest almost everything we eat. In fact, we do not feed our body, we feed microbes living in our gut.
Our gut microbiome performs critical functions including digesting food, regulating metabolism & our blood sugar level, modulating our satiety level, providing our body required vitamins, nutrients & short chain fatty acids, neutralising pathogens & producing neurotransmitters. It says a lot about how our body digest foods, absorb nutrients & how well it fares against chronic diseases. These microbes maintain a symbiotic & co-dependent relationship with the external environment- our body. Our body gives them space to grow & thrive & in return they digest all the food we eat & provide our body essential nutrients for us to strengthen our gut lining. Infact these microbes produce some specific vitamins such as vitamin K that are essential for growth & health of our cells.
Every individual has a different & unique microbiome therefore a diet for Joe will not work for Steve. There is a need to understand the science behind these microbes & decode each individual’s unique microbiome to learn what foods should be part of an individual’s diet & which ones should be avoided. Therefore no can just by looking at your blood or urine biomarkers tell what you should consume. There is a need to digitise the human body to understand how these microbes interact with the food we eat- whether they are giving right nutrients by digesting the food we eat for us to grow & thrive or they are giving us toxins which can lead to inflammation & development of chronic diseases.
Adopting a diet based on your microbial composition & their functions which agrees with your unique biology can ensure a healthy microbiome. With a healthy microbiome, our ability to process foods & uphold the integrity of our intestinal lining increases which stops pathogens & harmful microbes from finding real estate in other parts of the body to which they do not belong.
However, when the gut is not balanced or in a dysbiosis stage, it not only negatively impacts digestion process but also detrimental impact on other biological functions inside the body. It can result in more serious conditions including degrading intestinal lining ( intestinal permeability- leaky gut), promoting inflammation & growth of harmful microbes that drive negative biological consequences. This influences our health by impacting how our body interacts with the food we eat. In many scientific studies, scientists have discovered correlation between nutrition related conditions such as diabetes, obesity & bowel disorders- Irritable bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, crohn’s disease & Ulcerative Colitis
First things first- we should move away from falling into trap of these generic dietary recommendations & disease management companies & start adopting science based dietary solutions. In other words, follow science, not herd! Number of studies has found that imbalance in gut/unhealthy gut is linked to neurological conditions, mood disorders, inflammatory conditions, hypertension, cancer , digestive issues, metabolic disorders & many others. Clearly balancing & optimising our gut microbiome has far more health benefits than we have ever realised.
We at Genefitletics have adopted a system biology approach to precision nutrition using advanced analytics & a team of computational biologists, translational science experts & clinical nutritionists. With our UP THE GUT solution( taking fecal sample to analyse every single biochemical activity taking place inside the body)- we are reinventing & revolutionising how we look at our health & actionable & adaptable plan to improve it.
We not only tell you which foods to consume & which foods to minimise/avoid but also give you deeper insights in your current state of health & dysregulation in your biological functions. Some of the insights which you could learn from our solution include:
- Inflammation from your gut may be impacting other parts of your body:
Our starting point is to understand what is happening inside your gut- who are living in your gut, who are active & what functions they are performing. We not only give you a list of microbes living in your body but also how they are impacting your overall health & level of inflammation. The more beneficial activities are taking place inside your gut by microbes active in your gut, the higher is your gut’s innate ability to release metabolites/byproducts that reduce /overcome conditions that promote inflammation.
When you have inflammation in your gut due to wrong dietary choices &/or antibiotics, it has a bad habit of leaking to other parts of your body & your body can give you indication that something wrong is happening inside the body through various symptoms such as fatigue, headache, brain fog, depression, mood swings, bloating, constipation & skin issues.
Our solution gives you 18 different pathway scores that tell you the current state of your overall health which includes your level of inflammation ( chronic inflammation score).
- Inflammation may be caused by some specific sources
Sometimes food we eat, which we assume or are told to be healthy & nutrition, can have negative effects on our body & cause body wide circulating inflammation. If our body does not have the right kind of microorganisms to break down such so-called healthy foods, it can cause bloating, constipation, & gas. However, these are not the only reasons which cause inflammation. There are a number of factors that can promote inflammation. We can tell you specific sources of inflammation-it can be histamine intolerance, harmful bacteria, problems in digesting protein , bile acid metabolism, release of harmful gases & even some specific foods which are assumed to be healthy such as Spinach or Broccoli. We can see what is actually happening inside your gut & each factor that is impacting our gut & various parts of our body. By learning about these specific sources of inflammation, we can give you adaptable & actionable recommendations for food that can overcome situations of inflammation. Let us decode this with the help of an example- Spinach. Spinach are high in oxalic acid which needs to be detoxified. If your gut microbiome does not have a specific microbe- oxalobacter which releases specific enzyme- oxalobacter formigenes which can detoxify & neutralise this oxalic acid, consumption of Spinach will promote inflammation & lead to kidney stones even though Spinach is said to be high in Vitamin A, C & K, iron & potassium. Therefore if you do not have this particular microbe in your gut, Spinach will be in your avoid list in your food recommendations.
- What you should eat if weight loss is your goal
Losing weight does not mean counting calories or having a calorie deficit diet. In fact, you may find that many foods which you assumed to be healthy, may be in your avoid or minimise list. Following a diet that agrees with your unique biology has many benefits including better weight management. Many of our customers have lost weight even if it was not their initial goal. Our UP THE GUT solution is a unique science based precision nutrition service. Our dietary recommendations are based on your precise goals, eliminate specific sources of inflammation unique for your body & alleviate the trial & error approach of fad diets which does more harm than good. Based on dietary recommendations unique to your individual biology, we optimise your gut health to promote healthy weight.
- What is making you feel depressed or anxious
Science has discovered that the gut & brain are connected & interact with each other through the vagus nerve. Through this nerve, the gut sends/receives electrical & chemical signals to/from the brain. Scientists have found that our gut is involved in many signals that are dispersed even to the extent of controlling them. It has been found that depression is linked to dysregulation between gut-brain communication. For instance, Serotonin- an essential neurotransmitter improves our mood & happiness. 90% of this neurotransmitter is produced inside our gut. Similarly our gut is responsible for producing 50% of Dopamine.
If your microbiome is imbalanced, it can harm/disrupt production of neurotransmitters & can create a situation of depression, anxiety & stress. Clinical studies have found that our mental health is deeply linked to the health of our gut.
These are some of your health insights unique for you, you can learn by getting your gut microbiome decoded & every single biochemical activity analysed which can help you overcome dysregulation of biological functions by adopting the personalised & unique dietary recommendations given by us based on functional analysis of your gut microbiome. For more details & registering for our service, you may please visit us at here.
