How Reliable Are Genetic Analyses for Training and Nutrition Recommendations?

28. August, 2024(letzte Änderung)

Autor: Marc Sonderegger

In this blog post, we take a closer look at so-called lifestyle gene analysis. Testing to determine the optimal form of nutrition or exercise has been available on the Internet for some time. But they are also available in pharmacies. These tests can tell you whether you burn fat or carbohydrates better, or whether you are more of an endurance or strength type. In some cases, they even go so far as to suggest sports that you are particularly good at. How reliable are these tests?

What genetic tests are available?

There are dozens of different vendors. Some are limited to determining your ancestry, others are very complex and cost close to 1000 francs.

For providers that make medical claims (e.g. about diseases), a doctor’s approval is required. However, the pharmacists’ association is calling for this to be allowed in the future. If it is “only” about ancestry or general statements about training or nutrition type, an order can be placed without this.

How do genetic tests work?

All providers send a test kit to your home (or you can buy it at a pharmacy). The kit contains a tube into which a saliva sample is placed. You then send it in. A few weeks later, you will receive your results by email or through the service provider’s app.

Your saliva sample is tested for genes or variants stored by the provider. This is done by looking for SNPs. SNPs are differences in single base pairs in your DNA. This means that many differences (several 10,000 genes) can be tested at once at low cost.

How scientific are the results of these genetic tests?

If you search Pubmed for studies, you will find very little relevant information on this topic. More general statements are made, which I summarize here along with other sources:

There is often no validation of the tests. Anyone can offer a genetic test and make statements about it that are not verified by anybody.
Even with the enormous number of genes sometimes tested, only about 0.01% of your DNA is analyzed.
The assumption “1 gene – 1 function” is usually wrong. There are diseases that are caused by a single gene mutation, such as phenylketonuria or lactose intolerance. In most cases, however, the relationships are much more complex. For this reason, statements about sports or types of sports based on 2 tested genes, such as ACE II (“endurance gene”) or ACTN3 (“power gene”), are oversimplified, if not incorrect. For example, more than 20 million people in the UK carry the ACTN3 gene with the RR genotype, but very few are competitive athletes. It is also estimated that this gene accounts for less than 1% of sprint performance.
When you do genetic testing with different providers, you sometimes get completely different results. This raises many questions.
Der Faktor Epigenetik wird bei solchen Gen-Analysen nicht berücksichtigt. Man weiss mittlerweile, dass Umwelt – und Lifestyle Einflüsse Gene ein- und ausschalten können. Folgende Grafik zeigt sehr schön, welche Einflüsse auf das Erscheinungsbild des Menschen einwirken. Die Genetik ist nur eine davon.

CONCLUSION

I did a test myself with a provider some time ago. I am interested in such things. The results were very interesting, but nothing more. However, I have to say that this provider is also one of the more serious ones and the statements are very vague. In conclusion, we do not recommend such tests to our clients, at least not if you want to have solid information to achieve a certain goal. However, genetic testing may be the future as we learn more about our genes and how they work.Consultations are available on a variety of topics.

For more lifestyle tips, check out our free lifestyle guide (GERMAN). Have fun with it!

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