Nutrigenomics and personalized diets - Tailoring nutrition for optimal health

Abstract

Human health has long been understood to be severely affected by diet. Disturbed lifestyle and diets have led to an increase in metabolic disorders, resulting in high rates of mortality and morbidity. However, personalized nutrition, revolutionized by omics technologies, can address these disorders and enable doctors to anticipate the best treatment for patients. Omics along with nutrigenomics, explores how genes react to specific bioactive compounds in food within the human body. Since individuals vary in dietary response due to unique physiological and genetic factors, personalized nutrition considers gene polymorphisms to tailor diets. In addition, systems biology tools like proteomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics work alongside statistical methods to analyse genetic variation and gut microflora differences that influence metabolic health through food bioactives. The blending of technologies like nutrigenomics and artificial intelligence is necessary to integrate multiple data sets, analyse numerous variables, build databases to support ethical guidelines and decision-making, identify underlying risk factors, and uncover biological mechanisms that enable the early diagnosis and prevention of complex diseases. Whereas personalized diets, shown to enhance the efficacy of medical treatments, offer a promising preventive strategy for conditions like obesity, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases. The nutrigenomic approach promotes “eating the food that not only your taste buds but your genes want,” emphasizing diet’s role in personalized health. This article explores the field of nutrigenomics and personalized nutrition, with a focus on how food’s bioactive compounds influence genes to maintain health, prevent diseases, and optimize well-being. It highlights the relationship between genetic polymorphisms and conditions like cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders, showcasing advancements from genome sequencing and omics technologies.