Genetics and Health

DNA is as Sexy as Jennifer Garner

by Hsien Hsien Lei, PhD on December 12th, 2006

Don’t you just love how celebrities can be worked into every conversation? :D

In this case, The DNA Diet: The Weight Plan That Works Best For Your Genes shares space with stories on the Confessions of a Man-Eater and Ultra-Pretty Dresses (One Will Fit You Perfectly) on the front cover of ELLE’s January issue. Does this mean genetics has made it into mainstream consciousness that usually doesn’t care about anything but the Spring fashion preview?

So I exaggerate because I enjoy reading Vogue and one of my favorite reads is eBeautyDaily. And I’m happy to see that beauty and fashion magazines are paying attention to the new market, which targets DNA for everything imaginable including nutrition and skin care.

In Maggie Bullock’s Analyze This (no link available yet), she asks, ” Will nutrition and DNA-repairing creams change my genetic destiny?” And after undergoing several nutrigenomic tests and trying a few DNA repair skin creams, she concludes: No. Luckily for her, she didn’t have the shell out the $$$ herself to figure that out.

This is the key point of the entire article. Quoting Jose M. Ordovas, PhD, director of the Nutrition and Genomics Laboraty at the USDA HNRCA-Tufts University:

1. Nutrients can’t fix gene defects
2. We are a long way off from understanding how–or if–they actually can prevent disease.

Here are some of the companies and products mentioned:

• Genelex
• CyGene
• Lab21 Skincare
• DNAge from Nivea (not available in the U.S.)
• Dimericine and Remergent from AGI Dermatics

And if Maggie Bullock had asked me what I think of all this? I would have said that people have the freedom to throw away use their money as they wish and in some cases, they really do find results from nutrigenetic tests to be a great source of motivation. But it’s not life or death for those of us who don’t avail ourselves of these services, choosing instead to live moderately.

In the end, it all comes down to commercial value and right now, DNA-selected products are hot and getting hotter as genomic technology improves and becomes cheaper. So if you’ve got it (money or otherwise), flaunt it!

Technorati Tags: nutrigenetics, nutrigenomics, nutritional genetics, genelex, , genetic testing, dna tests, cygene, lab21, nivea dnage, agi dermatics, skincase, genetics, genes, dna, diseases, illness, health, elle magazine

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POSTED IN: Genetic Testing, Genetics and Celebrities, Nutrigenomics