Personalised Nutrition

One of the most important lifestyle factors affecting your general health and risk for developing certain diseases, is nutrition.

Humans are complicated. You’ll have heard the ‘one size doesn’t fit all’ adage? Well, it’s true for food choices too. Our responses to the same foods can be pretty individual. Personalised nutrition aims to unpick your personal nutritional status and responses, with your optimum health being the end result.

Navigate to the next section

DNA Testing for Optimum Health

One of the tools we can use, in combination with looking at factors that affect our microbiome and overall nutritional status, is our genetic response.

The human genome consists of around 25,000 genes and almost all can exist in different forms. These variations can impact not only the colour of our eyes and hair, but how we metabolise foods and nutrients.

DNA testing for diet analyses genetic markers which provide insights into your body’s metabolism and give us a better understanding of your nutrient requirements.

Learn how your genes can affect;

The Microbiome

The microbiome is the collective name for the trillions of bacteria that live in our gut and have a significant effect on our health and digestion.  Aside from advances in nutrigenomics, the microbiome is probably the hottest topic in nutrition right now.  The race is on to understand how best to manipulate our bacterial friends into enhancing our health in a multitude of ways from our immune response and our mood to our metabolism.

As a Registered Nutritionist specialising in personalised nutrition, I can help you to ensure that you implement a microbiome friendly diet.

Weight management & DNA

There are many factors that effect your ability to lose weight. Your food choices, your genes, hormones, your digestive health, your physical activity levels.  By looking at your diet and your genetic profile, I can help you to understand your eating habits and find the best diet to allow you to meet and sustain your weight loss goals.

Studies show that DNA-based personalised diet advice can increase motivation and enhance compliance compared to population based recommendations.  For example;

  • Research shows that individuals with the AA variant of the FTO gene (around 1 in 5 of the population) will lose more body weight and fat mass on a high protein diet than those with the other two gene variants of the FTO gene.
  • A recent study found that genetic testing leads to greater weight loss and better glucose management, with study participants in the DNA-based diet group 200% more likely to exhibit a reduction in blood glucose levels compared to the control group.

Other diagnostic tests

Emerging research tells us that our responses to foods are unique. Reducing diet related risk factors leading to ill health requires a personalised approach.

The first step is to look at your diet, which is why I will ask you to keep a food record for 4 or 5 days to assess nutrient intake.

Sometimes however, we may need to delve a little deeper, and there are various tools we can use to gain more insights into your individual metabolic responses.  These include;

  • Hormone testing – I use a urine test called the Dutch test
  • Blood sugar monitoring – I can view your sensitivity to dietary carbohydrates in real time using a continuous glucose monitor
  • Microbiome testing to check the diversity of your microbiota
  • DNA testing for genetic insights into diet related risk factors
  • Personalised blood tests and interpretation of results

Please get in touch if you have any questions about diagnostic tests and when they may be necessary.

Sports and exercise performance

Your genetic code determines how your genes can influence weight management, body composition, cardiometabolic health, food intolerances, eating habits, fitness performance and even injury risk.  Based on your results and together with your fitness professional, we can develop a nutrition and fitness plan to achieve optimal nutritional status and fitness levels.  We will look at indicators for things like;

  • your motivation to exercise
  • your power and strength
  • your endurance
  • pain tolerance
  • bone mass
  • tendency towards muscle damage and tendon injury

Fertility and pre-conception support

Certain types of diet have been associated with improved fertility, and there is little doubt that the nutritional status of both partners can impact on fertility when trying to conceive.  When looking to support fertility there are many things that should be considered together, including;

  • hormonal balance
  • stress and mood
  • nutritional status
  • nutritional requirements of the growing foetus
  • optimal gut microbiome and function,
  • genetic variations that may affect fertility

Personalised nutrition and nutrigenomic testing provides the opportunity to identify factors that may influence fertility and may be supported or modified with nutrients and diet. There are many gene variants and dietary interventions that can be reviewed as part of fertility support and pre-conception care.

“

Roz has completely transformed my life! This is no exaggeration! I have been a professional Olympic athletic coach and trainer for 20 years and have had access to some of the best nutritionists, doctors and medical staff over this period. However, my experience with Roz far exceeds all the advice and expertise I have had access to and has made me look at things in a completely different way.

I will be encouraging as many people I coach and work with to engage with this brilliant offering as it has made such a huge impact to me on a personal level. Thanks again to Roz - simply brilliant advice. I can’t thank you enough.

Simon BassettHARROGATE
“

This is a great service to understand how you can specifically tailor your diet and exercise to your DNA. The whole process is easy. I had an initial consultation with Roz to discuss what I wanted from the process; a healthier tailored diet. Roz arranged for a DNA test to be sent to my house which is a simple swab of the cheek, this is then sent for away for analysis.

Within 2 weeks I received a full report of DNA markers and what they mean for my diet. The report is detailed but Roz condensed the report for specific DNA markers and explained the steps I would need to take to follow exercise and diet that was specific to my DNA. I would recommend this service to anyone who is interested in general health or sports nutrition.

Matthew WadeHUDDERSFIELD
“

Wow! Really interesting. Fantastic to get diet advice and insights based on my own DNA. Roz’s summary and action points were really clear. Good to get advice about supplements too rather than buying stuff without really knowing why!

Probs gonna live to 100 now lol!

Simon DickinsonHARROGATE