Nutrigenomics is an idea whose time is starting to be now.
As a research discipline, it’s the science of how our genes and nutrients interact with each other.
How food and supplements can actually turn on and off certain genes depending on our genetic maps, impacting communications cross our bodies internal networks and directly affecting aging, cognition and almost every facet of our health.
I’m not a scientist nor nutritionist, but as I’ve delved into wellness and nutrition, health and exercise over the last decade, it’s become clear that this is the great looming disrupter.
Disrupting common conceptions of aging and disease treatments. Economically disrupting massive industries like the $60B+ supplement segment along with functional foods, wellness and the weight loss worlds.
It is also I think going to change our delivery systems, bringing pure science, just in time manufacturing, and tech delivery, database driven e-commerce and wellness branding together in as yet unknowable ways.
And in the end, disruptive to our culture as a whole as the possibility of a more age diverse workforce is the end result of extended health and cognition for a huge segment of the population.
The pieces of this puzzle are just coming together with massive investment cross every sector, bridging the gaps between the science and the need to build consumer delivery systems and trusted brands.
The stack for the pieces of this market puzzle looks something like this:
Genetic testing–>personalized secure fingerprint storage–>scientific correlations–>manufacturing–>delivery systems–>consumer education and branding
Genetic testing
Built off the platforms pioneered by the dna ancestry companies, the logistics of extracting dna from swab samples is here today. Through the mail today for $200 each, this is going to commoditize quickly.
It is easy to imagine this going to free either through kits, at your drugstore or school or part of testing for each child born.
This is not where the value or the money is. Free testing will be like free shipping is today.
Secure fingerprint storage
Blockchain has huge potential here for all the many privacy concerns but regardless of technology, it is my take that Amazon potentially is the incumbent to best capitalize on this.
As the footprint for the mass market, delivering customized solutions on a schedule through the mail seems like a huge annuity that they are potentially poised to exploit.
The knowledge base
This is the secret sauce. Where science resides in the correlation engine.
This is where the almanacs of today’s wellness recipes meet the hard-core reality of connecting nutrients to altering the expressions of our genetic makeup.
This will not only be IDing what your makeups is malleable to but the best way for your body to injest the nutrient, be it pills, liposomal liquids, drips or even pens.
How regulation will play to this and the complications of certs and insurance and testing remains to be seen but will be obviously complex and every changing.
Custom manufacturing
The key to nutrigenomics is that much of the lore of wellness and almost almanac knowledge is moved to scientific connections.
For example, the question is not whether a nutrient like Turmeric is good for specific things, but precise correlations between your genetic makeup, how it might impact you and how well you absorb it, are the pieces that nutrigenomics pulls together.
It has been shown that there is a 70% variability of one drug or nutrient’s impact cross a small cross section of the population.
An industry is yet to formed to build customized solutions to genetically similar swatches of the population that can be delivered through platform like Amazon, direct to consumers, and direct to doctors and clinics for more invasive therapies like drip and injections.
Direct to consumer brand
Who will we trust for our solutions? Who are the mass market generations of experts that we will decide to believe in and buy their products?
Is this going to be your physician? Your sports medicine specialist?
Two things are certain here—the massive food brands, be they P & G, the package good conglomerates, or Amazon will be part of it and that they will not be the trusted brand developers in the beginning cycles.
We can see the beginnings of this today with point solutions around aging and vitality. That absorption technologies like liposomes will start to build inroads into the wellness market channels though in actuality we are still early.
The winners will be the brands that hold consumers trust.
On top of this massive pyramid of scientific research, data driven personalized manufacturing, delivery systems sits you and I.
Each of us with personal genetic fingerprint. Each of us with hopes for curative solutions, increased life and functionality, receiving a monthly package in the mail that should make our lives better.
First thoughts
I’m a technologist, brand builder and wellness fanatic, not a scientist.
But this is coming and for all of us, it can’t possibly come fast enough.
Please do share if you are closer to this in any of the areas.
