Our unique genetic makeup is an important element to understanding our health challenges and disease risk.
Genetic Testing can Reveal Predisposition to Health Conditions.
While our genes themselves don’t make us sick, they can predispose us to health challenges by affecting enzymes that control cellular functions. This is especially true if your life is out of balance, you live with incredible amounts of stress or you have an infection or toxin exposure that is hard to clear.
Identifying stressors or triggers that throw our systems out of balance is just as important as knowing our genetic tendencies. Why? These factors significantly affect gene expression, telomere length and aging. When we are armed with of this information, we become more aware of our unique tendencies and how to offset them. It can even help us heal faster from injuries.
Achieving optimal health is a journey we can all take.
Biohacking and Genetic Testing Roadmap
Genetic testing provides a roadmap we can use to help us on our journey to health. There are different ways to obtain genetic information, such as 23 and ME, disease specific genetic testing, Livewello, genetic genie and others. Nutrigenomics testing is different in that it provides us with genetic information as well as a host of personalized solutions to potential problems. This information helps us zero in on where to start and provides guidance on how to manage your health risks. It often serves as a directional arrow pointing to where to look for further answers that identify the root causes of complex health problems. Ultimately, nutrigenomics provides key anti-aging strategies.
In general, depending on which panels we order, there are 6 critical areas of cellular function that we can look at in GX reports. These 6 areas impact one another and should be worked in the sequence noted below.
Framework sequence:
- Inflammation
- Autophagy
- Methylation
- Mitochondrial Support
- Neurotransmitters
- Detoxification and hormone metabolism
Optimizing these functions using this framework minimizes gene expression and thus minimizes disease risk and pain.
Biohacking Your Health
For example, if you have inflammation from environmental or food exposures and you have IBS or leaky gut, then we must work on this first. Other sources of infection and inflammation should be investigated as well. Why? Because inflammation negatively impacts chronic disease more than any other factor. Inflammation can cause autoimmunity which is your body attacking itself. In this framework autophagy is the next most important factor. This is your body’s ability to clear cellular debris and toxins.
Some people consider autophagy a critical anti-aging function. Methylation is key to our ability to extract B vitamins from food and then transport those vitamins into the mitochondria so that we can produce energy- giving us vitality and the ability to manage our mood and pain threshold.
All of these functions optimize mitochondrial function and brain function and clear the way for detoxification and hormone metabolism. All together this adds up to energy, youthfulness, resilience, vitality, focus, clear thinking, and “mojo”.
When analyzing the data, pay special attention to SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) that are +/+ and +/- and don’t worry about the -/-. Look at the recommendations that correlate with your patterns. Strongly consider lifestyle and dietary changes noted in the report.
Biohacking is the new buzzword when it comes to solving complex health issues and your genetics is a great place to start your journey.
Learn More About Genetic Testing and Biohacking
Our job at Barr Center is to help you interpret the data from genetic testing and make sense of it. We want you to understand your health triggers and how to live optimally.
To learn more about Genetic Testing and Biohacking at the Barr Center, call us at 757-578-2260 or schedule an appointment online.
