Diabetes mellitus is one of the leading health problems in the world. It is a metabolic syndrome characterized by hyperglycemia or abnormally high blood sugar. There are two most known types of diabetes mellitus, the type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. However, the most prevalent between the two is the type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).
These diseases are known to be caused by combination of genetic and environmental factors. It has been know that T2DM can be inherited. Thus, individuals who have first degree relatives suffering from diabetes are most likely to develop the disease than to those individuals who do not have a family history of the disease.
However, the environmental factors that increase the risk of the disease cannot be ignored. People's unhealthy lifestyle, which includes unbalanced diet, is a major culprit that triggers this disease. Hence, it is important to understand what nutrients our body needs to decrease our susceptibility to diabetes, especially to those who are highly at risk. Nutrigenomics will help us know the nutrients that we genetically need which influence our body's response to the stimulus that can trigger the development of diabetes.
Diabetes is known to have serious effects on health. The long term complications related to diabetes like diabetic ketoacidosis, hypoglycemia, cardiovascular diseases, blindness, abnormal and decreased sensation, damage to the kidney, and many others, are the causes of morbidity, disability, and premature death to young adults. People who are obese are highly at risk to this disease. Genetic susceptibility testing for people with cardiovascular condition and obesity are now available.
However, there are still some issues needed to be addressed associated to it. Currently, there is no cure for diabetes. Thus, patient education, self glucose monitoring, dietetic support, and exercise are recommended by health care professionals to manage glucose level in the blood and to avoid the short term and long term complications of the disease.
To avoid chronic metabolic diseases like diabetes and hypertension, medical professionals always advise us to watch our weight, exercise, have a well-balanced diet, among others. They emphasize on correcting our unhealthy lifestyles and eating habits. Although we try to follow their advice, some of us still suffer from high sugar level and high blood pressure. Because of this, new researches about nutrigenomics, which deals with the influences of food to the genetic components of the body, are conducted.
Nutrigenomics is a new field of study that deals with the molecular relationships between nutrition and the response of genes, which subtle changes can affect human health. With the new discoveries associated to genes and nutrition, nutrition specialists believe that nutrigenomics holds a great potential in the improvement of diabetes management. People have different responses to a particular food because they have different genetic makeup, so it is deemed important to customize a person's diet according to his genotype.
The practical application of nutrigenomics in diabetes is through clinical diagnostics for subphenotypes and metabolic diagnosis, the intermediate markers of the disease. This will lead to genotype-phenotype-biomarker diagnostics which will be a fundamental in translating nutrigenomics from the laboratory to the market for the consumers.
More studies are still needed to solidify the foundation of nutrigenomics in relation to diabetes management. Nutrition specialists have seen its potential to improve personal and public health through analyzing the effect of food nutrients to genetic components of different individuals, which would help them understand more the relationship of diet-gene interaction of a diabetic person. Through this, they will be able to formulate a more effective, personalized dietary recommendation for diabetes management to the patient.
For more information on Nutrigenomics and how it affects you, contact Charles & Jim at (866) 201-8526 or e-mail Jim@YourDNAStrategy.com
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