Vitamins and minerals are essential for good health and well-being. While the best way to get a sufficient number of vitamins and minerals is through eating a healthy diet, many people find it difficult to get the nutrients they need from diet alone, so vitamins and mineral supplements can help fill this gap.
Each one of us is unique, and so too are our requirements for vitamins and minerals. Therefore, your supplement intake should be based on your genetic makeup rather than a one-size-fits-all solution. Read on to find out more about what DNA testing can reveal about your dietary needs and how Dynamic DNA Labs can help.
Why Is It Important to Customize Your Vitamin Intake?
The questions about which vitamins a person needs, what dosages they need, and how often they should take each vitamin varies from person to person. Every person’s body metabolizes nutrients differently based on genetic makeup.
For this reason, public health guidelines for vitamin intake levels may give a general idea, but these recommendations are not personalized for each individual. This means that some people could base their vitamin intakes on these measurements and take too little or too much of a particular vitamin without knowing. A person with a vitamin D deficiency may need a higher dose than the average person, for example.
With the combination of DNA nutrition testing and medical guidance on lifestyle, medication, and individual health goals, one can customize their supplement intake to prevent deficiencies and unnecessary supplement intake.
With a custom-tailored supplement plan, there are a great deal of benefits to take advantage of, including:
- Weight loss
- Stress management
- Improved sleep and energy levels
- Protection against nutritional deficiencies and other health issues
- Better balance, coordination, and musculoskeletal strength
- Optimal short-term memory
- Boost in mood
- Maintenance of skin and eye health
What Is Nutrigenomics?
Nutrigenomics (aka nutritional genomics) is a discipline that examines the links between gene expression, nutrients, and diet.
Nutrigenomics is a field of study that has helped enlighten people when it comes to their personal health and the impact their genes have on their nutrition. Unlike other disciplines, it considers the fact that genes affect not only the way a person looks but that genes also respond to environmental and lifestyle influences, such as nutritional needs.
A better understanding of how your genes react to nutrients can help you identify the best vitamins and supplements to take for long-term positive results. This allows you to make decisions about vitamins and supplements based on your genetic type as opposed to looking at what is beneficial for the general population.
How Can Genetic Testing Help You Figure Out Which Vitamins & Minerals to Take?
If you are going to invest your money, time, and energy in taking vitamins and supplements, you want to make sure that they’re effective for your body’s unique needs.
Genetic testing can help you figure out the vitamins and minerals you need to take, as well as the dosage range in which you should take them. For example, MTHFR gene variants A1298C and C677T can affect how efficiently your body metabolizes folate. Failure to properly regulate the amount of folate in the body could affect a person’s risk of coronary artery disease.
In another example, PEMT gene variants from 5645G to A and 744G to C have been shown to affect choline levels in premenopausal women. Fat metabolism, liver and brain function, and fetal development are greatly affected by choline. Also, in certain people, choline deficiencies can lead to fatty liver disease.
These are just a few examples of how gene testing can help a person identify a propensity toward deficiencies and then tailor their vitamin and mineral intake to match said deficiency.
Optimize your overall health and start feeling better by seeing what your DNA has to say. Order a nutrition DNA testing kit today.