Time to know your genetic makeup for better health

Blame it on the hectic lifestyles, but nowadays, many working professionals fail to focus on their health, diet and overall fitness. And this calls for a careful and rightly customised approach. And to help such professionals out is the new trend of Genetic Mapping Support Service.

Dr Amol Raut, CEO, GeneSupport, says, “The human body is the ultimate intelligent machine ever built. Our genes encode instructions that allow a cell to produce a specific protein or enzyme enabling it to then perform a certain function.”

Some genetic traits are instantly visible such as eye colour or number of limbs, and some are not, such as blood type, risk for specific diseases, or the thousands of basic biochemical processes that comprise life. Raut adds, “Thus a study of genes essentially enables us to pinpoint with a very high level of accuracy how your body would react to a certain environment or stimuli, thus enabling us to design very specific fitness and nutrition plans customised for every individual.”

The concept of this service is to provide scientifically customised fitness and nutrition plans by examining the respective fitness genes, which is around 25 in number. Sally Jones Kapoor, co-founder, MultiFit, shares, “Based on the results of tests, patrons will be recommended the type of exercises to be done and food plan to be followed to attain optimum benefits. The service would help one not to just design a better fitness and workout regime by ascertaining an individual’s body type, but also counter many health issues, including obesity, inability to gain muscle mass, gluten and lactose intolerance, and bone and cardiac health issues, to

The genetic mapping exercise ultimately throws up a few key parameters that help optimise our lifestyle and fitness levels.

The term ‘strict diet’ is conventionally used to represent a calorie deficit diet, which may even lead to starvation.

Kapoor adds, “As per the studies, such starvation diets may not be useful at all and are usually followed for a limited period. A balanced diet is important and needed for long term fitness. This is achieved by genetic testing, where a person would be recommended the right diet based on his genetic make up. Hence, people undergoing this test would be able to follow the diet without challenges of being hungry every now and then.”

GENETIC MAPPING MYTHS

“A couple of very prevalent myths or fears about genetic mapping are that it is very expensive, invasive and needs to be done at regular intervals. All this are farthest from the truth. Genetic mapping tests are non-invasive and are done through a simple saliva sample. They are cheaper than the conventional tests that are done at any hospital and would usually need to be done twice in your lifetime,” says Dr Raut.

Other common myths are that a blood sample would be better than saliva sample. The fact is that both blood and saliva yield same results. A saliva sample is easy to collect as compared to blood, and hence it’s chosen as a sample.

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