Microbiota - personalized nutrition

Everyone knows that we should eat more fibers and less saturated fats, but personalized nutrition is more than that. We are talking about choosing the healthy nutrition that it is different for different people. You need to take in account diseases you had or got, the genetic and physiological differences, character, habits and social environment.

Each of us is different, and our response to diet or even the same dietary component is different. Let's say caffeine for example: one can drink it after dinner and sleep well at night, while another cannot sleep if is drinking coffee after lunch. Your body and behaviour is complex, and it will determine how you respond to a new diet.

One research group from Israel tried to make a prediction based on one's glycemic response ( the glycemic response to food is the effect of that food on the blood glucose levels). They found out that different people react very different towards identical food components. The 800 participants that their blood sugar measured every 5 minutes with a special device, and they also used and app to report what and when they ate, when they sleep and how long and when they exercise. In the end their stool samples were collected and their composition and activity of the gut microbiota was measured. After all the data was collected, they made an algorithm that could successfully predict the blood glucose response for the participants. This was also used to successfully predict the response of 100 new participants, so this algorithm can be used to predict someone response to a dietary component and to advise a personalized diet. The conclusion was that some people respond very different to the same food product, so for these people some diets will not work, or even have the exact opposite effect. For one of the subjects, they got a bigger response eating lean fish that eating ice cream. This can happen because of our genetics, our lifestyle and our microbiota is different. The response to food is due to all these personal settings. The ability of a person to measure blood glucose levels is a key factor in the development of diabetes and obesity. A specific diet for a weight loss usually aim to control glucose levels and yet different people are told to use the same diets.

In the future is possible that the personalized diet will be a common occurrence, helping us to be healthier and live longer.

That's it for today, next post will be about faecal microbiota transplant.

See you soon!
G.