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Genetic testing


​Today, modern pandemics such as obesity and diabetes are spiralling out of control.  Despite significant public healthcare expenditure, modern healthcare implementation, and pharmaceutical intervention, which seek to control symptoms of disease, very little has been done to halt the upstream causes of disease.

Modern health practices and science have unearthed a fundamental and adequate appreciation of the macro and micro nutritional needs for most of us.  However,  a generic strategy adopting such guides as a 'food pyramid’ or how you proportion your plate, whilst helping to reduce disease and malnutrition based on inadequate nutrient intake, does little to address the needs specific to your own individual biology and health.

Each of us has our own genetic blueprint and gene variations based on such things as who our parents are, what kind of environment we have been brought up in, what kind of exercise we do, what kind of nutrients we have previously consumed, what our ancestral heritage we have and how our ancestors mixed.  All these aspects have demonstrated vast genetic differences in different populations, including whether genes are switched on or off or whether genes have mutated down the line.  This has effected our ability to use even the most common of nutrients, like vitamin B or vitamin D.

Accordingly, each of us who live in large contemporary populations with varied genetic origins will have extensive responses to the same types of food, medications and diets, which highlights the difficulties of an umbrella dietary approach.

At the cutting edge of nutritional science, and as personalised medicine is more relevant than ever before, genetic testing is now available at Paragon Health.

In the main, there are three components of genetic testing on offer.  They include:

  1. Nutrigenomics:  the study of how food and nutrition can have an effect on your genes and then how they express themselves
  2. Nutrigenetics:  the study of how genes inform how and what you should eat, exercise and supplement
  3. Nutritional Biochemistry:  how to use the tests, interpretation of results and identification of disease patterns

Functional genetic and nutritional testing and assessment in this regard can encompass such areas as:
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  • The latest research on functional genetic information
  • Food responsiveness (how you respond to food)
  • Cellular defence mechanisms (how you protect yourself at a microscopic level)
  • Oxidative Stress (is there an imbalance between the waste products you produce during normal cellular activity and your ability to remove them)
  • Energy pathways (how you produce energy to promote life-giving body processes) 
  • Inflammation (the source of many chronic health issues)
  • Methylation issues (there are many ways to describe the methylation cycle, but recognise that it’s proper function is needed for every single function in the body, including whether your genes can switch on or off)
  • Detoxification pathways (your ability to remove molecules, drugs, chemicals, etc that shouldn’t be in your body)
  • Chronic diseases (current and future possibilities)
  • Weight gain and loss / Obesity (why can’t I loose weight or why can’t I put on weight)

Genetic testing at Paragon Health uses your personal, unique genetic information to uncover your potential for disease and can be used to develop highly specific, individualised eating plans, nutritional direction, modes of exercise, supplement directions, medication regimes and lifestyle interventions.