Do you have money in the stock market? Maybe you are not an active investor, but if you have a 401K or IRA, you are an investor in the Market. How do you know what to invest in? Simple, at least in theory: find the up-and-coming new technology that, in a few years, most everyone will be using, and invest in that. People investing in Apple a couple of decades ago, Amazon a decade ago, or Bitcoin five years ago did very well.
Most people didn’t invest in those stocks in the early days though. Why not? Probably because they could not see that those were the trend-setters at the time. In hindsight, we could see that those companies had the right vision for the future.
Investors pay a lot of attention to “futurists” who are looking hard at upcoming technologies and trying to figure where the trend is going. We look to them to hopefully clarify what new technologies will be soon in demand. One area that often does well is “biotech”, which involves the technology that is involved in healthcare.
“If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.” This quote is credited to Chuck Pagano, a past NFL coach and player. Since technology is moving forward at an exponential rate, it only makes sense that biotech is at least a wave of the future.
Maybe stock market investing is not for you, but there is another type of investment you should consider: you can invest in your own health. Look at the pharmaceutical industry, which is very profitable for shareholders, but many of those drugs on the market are only temporarily treating the effects of our ill health rather than treating the root cause of health problems. Investing in your own health is always a good investment.
The futurists are telling us that one upcoming technology is going to be a wave of the future. That area is called “genomics”, the study of the combined functions of multiple genes to determine their likely response to different environmental factors. This goes beyond genetics, where individual genes are identified and mapped. Genes are so complex that the idea of being able to analyze their details and completely map them out was considered impossible decades ago, and we made a major step forward with that technology. But single genes don’t tell us how your cells will react under various conditions, and genomics looks into the interaction of multiple of genes to paint the full picture. Genomics has opened the door to genetic testing that can predict how your genes will react, whether positively or negatively, to environmental factors. And since you have great control over your environment, whether through diet, exercise, avoiding toxins, or reducing stray EMF’s, your genomics can predict the best areas of focus to maximize your health.
You may not want to invest in genomics companies, but you can use their testing to invest in your health.
The Swiss Army Knife of tests
Genomics predict how your cells will respond to environmental factors. Gene testing is being promoted for determining which diseases you may be more susceptible to, or which drug protocols are most likely to achieve their intended effects. Naturally research is being focused on these areas, because medical protocols and drugs are big money-makers. That’s fine — if you are going with conventional medicine and drugs, at least learn which will be the most effective and least harmful to your health. Published in Translational Psychiatry, researchers at the Tanenbaum Centre for Pharmacogenetics at the Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute at CAMH in Canada studied patients with depression who had not responded well to two or more antidepressant drugs and were showing no improvement. Less than 40% were achieving remission with conventional method of prescribing drugs based upon symptoms alone. The researchers were able to fine-tune which drugs and what dosages to give the patients to get results, sparing the patients from the trial-and-error drug approach which they had been facing. By running “combinational pharmacogenomic testing”, which is a testing of multiple genes from a single patient run through a weighted algorithm, they were able to increase the drug response by 31% and the remission rates by 51% with the targeted drugs that their participants received. The testing and comparison with previous results from patients with those genes, through the weighted algorithm and large database, told them which drugs were most likely to be effective for individual patients.
The genomic tests are tools that can be used to predict cellular responses to various environmental challenges for an individual. They are very versatile. Conventional doctors have discovered them for conventional medicine, but another use is to enhance natural health-promoting protocols. Determining your genetic blueprint suggests which therapies will be particularly effective for you. That’s because therapies change the cellular environment, and the testing suggests how your unique cells will react to the change.
One exciting use of genomic testing is fine-tuning your nutrition….
Fit into your genes with the right diet
Nutritional genetic testing, also known as nutritional genomics, studies your unique response to nutrients. We’ve known for decades, even centuries, that a good diet is generally good for everyone. But you have unique requirements. Perhaps you need more of a particular nutrient or you are very sensitive to others. Maybe you are more prone to a disease that can be avoided with targeted nutrition.The combination of biotech and “big data”, where extremely large amounts of data can be processed very rapidly, allows your genetics to be compared with data from large databases of previous studies to predict your specific cellular environmental needs. Published in the BMJ (previously known as the British Medical Journal), researchers at the Institute of Food Research, Norwich, England took a detailed look at what was being done in the field of nutritional genomics as well as its potential for future development. They noted that the field was still relatively young, but that strides had already been made in diseases such as osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. They stated that diet is a key factor in many chronic diseases, and nutrition targeted to the individual can reduce the incidence of those diseases. They cited another study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, which states that simple diet changes can reduce incidence of cancer by 35%. Other studies have shown the diet can reduce the incidence of cancer by up to to 65%. By knowing what dietary changes would have the greatest impact, nutritional genomics is a new vital tool in making those changes.
Epigenetics and genetics
We’ve talked a lot about epigenetics, where genetic expression changes with the cellular environment. You may wonder why the sudden focus on genetics, when before we noted the supremacy of epigenetics and the low importance of your specific genes. Genetic testing looks at the “library” of genes that you have to work with, while epigenetics take from that library as needed to determine what genetics are being expressed at a particular moment. Genomics takes into account both the basic DNA library that you have as well as likely epigenetic responses your cells will have given environmental changes. Both genetics and epigenetics are considered in the process. Epigenetics make it possible to suppress troublesome genes, but we need to know what specific environment will foster the epigenetic response to skip those codes. Now we have tools to do just that.
Take this personally
Without your health, what do you have? Diseases, once diagnosed, are harder to treat, but may be prevented before they become apparent enough to warrant a diagnosis with proactive steps. Before, we had to take broad approaches to natural health — steps that would benefit everyone. Now we can add to that specific personal steps that you can take.
This is a great time to be alive. Technology has brought us previously unimaginable tools to help us fine tune our health. You owe it to yourself to take charge of your health with the best tools out there. Make the best investment you can, one has no downside risk: your health.
Dr. Nemec’s Review
Look at genes like blueprints to build the house called your cell. You have many blueprints, many versions to help build the correct strong house. Epigenetics is the environment that affects how quickly or how slowly the house gets built For example, when we do nutritional genetic testing on patients, let’s say that the genetic pathway or blueprint for a certain vitamin utilization in the body is slower than the norm. This means to build the house, in essence, you’re going to appear to have half as many nails as you need to put it together properly. So if you know the gene is a slower gene you can maximize it by putting more of that specific vitamin, mineral, nutrients or phytochemical in the body to offset the slow genetic blueprint. This is quite amazing because we can target nutritional protocols and customize diets with nutritional genetic testing.
It has always been important to eat a healthy diet and most people have some idea of healthy vs unhealthy food choices in the general sense, but even more important is to eat a diet customized for your nutritional genetic blueprint. Not only this, but you can also personalize nutritional supplementation to speed up any slow genetic blueprints to maintain healthy cellular function.
So the power of the nutritional genetic testing is it takes the unique individual and find the optimal diet, lifestyle and nutritional supplementation to keep these genes, these blueprints up to speed so that the houses get built efficiently and effectively. What does it mean to have a slow blueprint? The house gets built very slowly or never gets completed. What does that mean to you? Your cells cannot keep up so they become dysfunctional and die prematurely which is leads to disease formation or premature aging, and this can happen at any age — or if the cell can’t keep up it mutates to try to keep up: in this is the formation of cancer cells. No matter how you look at it when you invest in optimizing your nutritional genes you are making one of the best investments possible, which will reap long-term benefits.
Here are the ways we can help you in your health journey:
- Outpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-has the most benefit of teaching, treatment, live classes and personalized coaching. This program has the most contact with Dr. Nemec with 3- 6 month programs that can be turned into a regular checking and support program for life. This is our core program that has helped so many restore their health and maintain that restoration for years.
- Inpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-is our four-week intensive inpatient program for those that are not in driving distance, usually over 4 hour drive. This is the program that is an intensive jumpstart with treatment, teaching, live classes and coaching designed for all our international patients along with those in the US that do not live in Illinois. This program is very effective especially when combined with our new membership program support.
- Stay at Home Program-is offered to continental US patients who cannot come to Total Health Institute but still want a more personal, customized plan to restore their health. This program also includes our Learn Membership Program.
- Membership Program is our newest program offered for those that want to work on their health at a high level and want access to the teaching at Total Health Institute along with the Forums: both Dr. Nemec’s posts and other members posting. And also, to have the chance to get personalized questions answered on the conference calls which are all archived in case you miss the call. The Membership Program has 3 levels to choose from: Learn, Overcome and Master. The difference is at the Overcome and Master levels you received one on one calls with Dr. Nemec personalizing your program for your areas of focus.
