Imagine an algorithm that would tell you exactly what to eat for your ailments and even prevent you from suffering from genetic disease.
No longer would the conundrum of choosing between keto, Mediterranean, paleo, or other trending, slick-sounding diets exist. Your algorithm would be form-fitting—not just to your medical diagnosis but also to your unique medical history, genetics, living environment, race, age, sex, medications, stress level, and microbiome.
Because people are more than just their illnesses, the multitude of factors in choosing a personal diet is important. An eating plan that works well for tackling heart disease might contain foods that don’t metabolize well for a particular individual, based on their constitution, or may not identify an ongoing environmental factor, etc. More insight is needed to provide a comprehensive, individualized plan.
In the current model of health care, issues like heart disease risk and metabolic syndrome are likely to be addressed with prescriptions than a prescribed diet, adding an expensive and sometimes unnecessary burden on the health care system and patients alike. Precision medicine, however, is now examining the efficacy of these current medical practices.
Reducing the burden of health care costs is but one goal of a five-year, $156 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) study on nutrition that begins this year.
Nutrition for Precision Health
Called the Nutrition for Precision Health, the study’s goal is to establish predictive algorithms to inform targeted eating approaches, expanding on what’s currently standard dietary advice for specific groups, such as pregnant and lactating women and diabetics. The aim is to develop more precise factors for each group, adding hundreds if not thousands of additional factors, such as metabolic fluctuations over time, microbiome signatures, home environment, and subjective measures of a person’s experience, such as stress, career, and other complexities.As promising as it sounds, we are nowhere near this new model now. For one, diet rarely makes its way into doctor-patient conversations. A common complaint is how little nutrition training is offered in medical curriculums.
Could the Answer Be in Our Guts?
Frustration isn’t limited to doctors’ office practices. Even with promising studies, there are many dots that haven’t been affirmatively connected by researchers. But the microbiome—the millions of microscopic creatures called “microbes” cohabiting with humans—offers incredible promise in providing a better understanding of how each of us is unique.A deeper understanding of the microbiome could hold the answer to the age-old diet dilemma: Why do some people seem to lose weight effortlessly while others feel miserable following the same diet? An increasing number of Americans suffering from food allergies, intolerances, and sensitivities make universal diet plans even less appealing.
Increased knowledge of microbiology has also opened up more questions, said Dr. Christopher Gardner, Stanford University professor of medicine and nutrition scientist. For instance, scientists know digestion’s main role is to release molecules into the bloodstream, but they haven’t named each molecule or realized their precise functions. Nor has research developed an explanatory list of inflammation biomarkers or a comprehensive directory of flora.
“It’s all in the works, so, at the end of the day, I really think we’re going to have this fabulous trifecta of dietary manipulation of the microbiome to improve immune function,” Gardner said. “That would be the ultimate.”
Knowing more about this microscopic world is one way in which Nutrition for Precision Health could equip researchers—and eventually doctors and patients—to offer specific dietary recommendations. The study’s goal is to create directories with data from 10,000 diverse participants, including 500 who'll be locked together for controlled diet and lifestyle studies for three two-week periods.
Why Nutrition Studies Are Complicated
Complexities in nutrition research don’t revolve only around unknowns in microbiology but also around the weaknesses of major players—research subjects, the government, and the diet industry.“The field of precision nutrition is still in its infancy, although the rate at which it is developing resembles more the growth spurt of a gangly teenager. Growing pains are to be expected and an abundance of frustration is unavoidable, as with any typical teenager,” the article stated.
Second, most nutrition studies aren’t funded beyond a year, Gardner said. “Let’s say we change the microbiome. It is malleable. It absolutely is malleable, but can you maintain the changes you achieve is a question we really don’t know,” he said.
Third, many research subjects aren’t interested in sustaining new diets. Gardner pointed to an NIH-funded study he did years ago in which the participants were fed a specialized diet for a month and their LDL cholesterol was lowered. Such studies are expensive, due to the cost of meal preparation, but most didn’t continue the diet because they didn’t want to change their shopping, cooking, and eating habits—even with a recipe book.
One recent study seemed to have that kind of impact, albeit in a very organic way. The American Gut Project, a crowdsourced study launched in 2012 that garnered more than 11,000 participants who paid their way into research, led to countless podcasts, articles, and challenges on increasing plant consumption.
Achieve Better Gut Health Now
That study was good news for those who want to experiment with their diets because the research teases out more specifics. There are a few other tactics for diet and other lifestyle choices that experts agree make a difference in microbiome health.Dr. William Li, president and medical director of The Angiogenesis Foundation, suggested in an email interview with The Epoch Times that people eat mostly plant-based foods, especially those with dietary fiber such as kiwi, broccoli, bok choy, carrots, and apples. Probiotic foods that naturally contain healthy bacteria should also be eaten, including yogurt, pao cai, kimchi, sauerkraut, and pickles.
“Just as importantly, a microbiome-friendly diet should avoid ... too much ultra-processed foods that contain artificial preservatives, colorants, flavorings, sweeteners,” wrote Li, who authored the book “Eat to Beat Your Diet.” “These chemicals have been shown by researchers to disrupt the healthy gut bacteria (less beneficial bacteria), allowing harmful bacteria to grow.”
Li said marketing claims are mostly ahead of the science and warned consumers that if something “sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Finally, Li said being more mindful about eating will aid in digestion. He recommends adopting traditional values surrounding food, such as preparing fresh, locally grown, and in-season food, and sitting down with people rather than eating while watching TV or scrolling your phone.
“Most people are conditioned by lifelong eating patterns that have been shaped by marketing of ultra-processed foods, the appeal for quick and convenient foods (usually not fresh and highly processed), and inexpensive foods that are mass-produced,” he wrote. “These forces make it difficult to quickly change behavior toward healthier eating patterns.”
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