Obesity claims the lives of approximately 300,000 Americans each
year. Often caused by poor diet and lack of exercise, poor
nutrition associated with obesity can eventually lead to damaged
genes.
Obesity, as well as other health issues, including
Alzheimer’s, mad cow disease and dietary supplements, were
addressed at “Nurturing Our Nature: Genomics, Diet and
Nutrition,” a symposium held at UCLA on Sunday.
Presented by the UCLA Center for Society, the Individual and
Genetics, the symposium featured a panel of speakers from the
University of California and across the nation.
The speakers stressed that the future of an individual’s
health depends upon the maintenance of a healthy, nutritious
diet.
“(The nutrition) revolution in genomics is going to touch
every aspect of our lives,” said Gregory Stock, the
symposium’s moderator and director of UCLA’s Program on
Medicine, Technology and Society.
In the future, diets may be individualized according to each
person’s genome and their lack of certain nutrients.
“The concept of having personalized, predictive and
preventive medicine looks at nutrition as an important
element,” said Linda McCabe, a researcher in the human
genetics department.
A diet lacking in specific nutrients can damage or break
DNA.
“Since we all have a unique genetic background,
we’re going to be deficient at certain nutrients,”
McCabe said.
Scientists can now determine these nutrient deficiencies by
analyzing DNA.
Linda McCabe and her husband, Edward McCabe, the director of
CSIG, jointly teach a Fiat Lux seminar (Pediatrics 19: Nurturing
Our Nature: Genetics, Diet and Nutrition) focused on the issues the
symposium addressed.
Students were encouraged to attend the symposium in order to
expand upon what they learned during the Fiat Lux seminar.
“(The class) is a chance to ask questions and discuss
these issues in a more public form,” said Niloufar Tehrani, a
first-year student who is in the seminar.
Her classmate, Anthony Eskander, said he attended the symposium
as part of the class, and also to learn the benefits of the human
genome project.
A healthy individual must consume 40 different vitamins and
minerals in order to prevent DNA damage.
“It’s like a car. You need oil in the engine. If you
don’t put oil in the engine, it’s not going to last
very long. And we need 40 different kinds of oil for our
engines,” said Bruce Ames, a speaker and professor of
biochemistry and molecular biology at University of California,
Berkeley.
By simply oiling one’s engine, humans can decrease the
risk of certain diseases like Alzheimer’s or cancer.
Development of Alzheimer’s may be associated with an
increase in levels of homocysteine, a naturally occurring amino
acid, said Irwin Rosenberg, a senior scientist and professor at
Tufts University.
The consumption of moderate amounts of folic acid, vitamins B12
and B6 ““ found in fortified cereal, dairy products, fish,
meat, and poultry ““ have been shown to decrease homocysteine
levels.
Therefore, including these foods in one’s diet can
potentially decrease the risk of Alzheimer’s.
However, there is disagreement among the different
food-producing industries about what constitutes a healthy
meal.
For instance, popular diets like the Atkins diet encourage
minimal consumption of carbohydrates, but carbohydrates are also
essential to humans’ biological systems.
These disagreements can lead to public misconceptions about
proper nutrition, Stock said.
“It benefits a lot of (food industries) to have people
consume a lot of food,” Stock said.
“(The symposium) is trying to cut through some of the fog
in this realm and also to talk about what the genetic aspects of it
are.”
A video of the symposium will be available for viewing online at
www.arc2.ucla.edu/csig later this week.