Nutrigenomics is a term we apply to the study of how genetic variations affect our metabolism and the way we use and process nutrients, including vitamins and minerals.

There is one important principle to grasp, which good alternative doctors have always known but conventional medics refuse to even consider: WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT.

Orthodox medicine is based on the concept of averages, even though not one single person alive today is “average”. There are too many variables for this to hypothesis to work.  It is wrong to ignore these numerous differences and just pretend we are all the same. It hurts patients and invalidates therapies. Drugs become dangerous for some people, when they cannot detoxify it to something safer, like everyone else. Daily doses accumulate, until fatal levels are reached in the blood. That's the story of Vioxx and numerous other disasters.

Surprisingly, the much-maligned FDA is on our side with this. They have introduced the concept of “personalized medicine” and made it clear that, within a couple of years, if the patient dies and the doctor or hospital has not carried out tests of these metabolic variants, then charges of malpractice and criminal negligence will be brought. Astonishing as this shift of emphasis is, I welcome it openly. It will (or should) change the brutal face of medicine we see today.

Now, to add momentum to the discussion, a new report (more of a discussion paper) from scientists at UC Berkeley, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal (PNAS), points to the way that vitamins and minerals can actually modify genes.

Jasper Rine, professor of molecular and cell biology, and his colleagues have started to look at the human genome rather differently. You remember all the fuss when the genome project was announced? It was going to solve everything. We'd learn at last the true nature of diseases.

Then it emerged that humans have only around 20,000 genes: about the same as an earthworm and less than some plants! Although they haven't admitted it yet, this throws the whole DNA hypothesis on its head. Add to that the discovery that RNA, the supposed subservient “messenger” molecule, can switch genes on and off and the whole landscape has got busted!

Well, at least somebody is admitting that taking select vitamins can switch bad genes off and switch good genes on. I have known to 3 decades foods can do this, as I wrote in DIET WISE. This report has simply re-enforced that view and narrowed the scope down to the effect of vitamins.

It's a whole new fascinating science!

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