The SCVC Blog

Cardiovascular care news and articles from our expert team

From Genes to Greens: How DNA Shapes Your Nutritional Needs

Posted on Saturday August 2, 2025 in Naked Heart

An article written by Dr Edward Leatham, Consultant Cardiologist

Tags: DNA, Nutrition, NH1 search website using Tags to find related stories.

Nutrigenomics is the science that studies how our genes interact with nutrients. DNA testing can now identify specific gene polymorphisms – small variations in DNA – that affect how we absorb, metabolise, and utilise key macro- and micronutrients.

For example:

FTO and MC4R genes are associated with how your body stores fat and responds to satiety cues.
MTHFR polymorphisms can impact folate metabolism and methylation, influencing energy, mood, and cardiovascular risk.
Variants in CYP1A2 determine how quickly you metabolise caffeine, which has implications for blood pressure and sleep.
LCT gene status indicates lactose tolerance – critical when considering dairy as a calcium source.

Armed with this information, your doctor or nutrition specialist can fine-tune your diet to your genetic strengths and vulnerabilities – whether that means increasing certain B vitamins, moderating your fat intake, or choosing slower-digesting carbohydrates.

CGM Monitoring and Food Analysis Apps: Real-Time Nutrition Insights

Your DNA tells you what might happen – but continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) and digital food tracking apps show you what is happening in real time.

Even in people without diabetes, CGMs reveal fascinating inter-individual differences in how foods affect blood glucose. For example, one person may have a significant glucose spike after eating oats, while another doesn’t. These variations can’t always be predicted by the glycaemic index alone – they’re the product of your gut microbiome, insulin sensitivity, and even your stress levels.

By combining CGM data with AI-powered food tracking apps, you can build a picture of:

Which meals keep your glucose stable
Which foods lead to energy crashes or cravings
How your body responds to fasting, exercise, or poor sleep

This phenotypic feedback loop allows you and your doctor to refine your food choices not only based on theory, but on actual metabolic response.

Seeing Beneath the Surface: DEXA and Low-Dose CT Scans

You might weigh 70 kg – but what’s inside that number matters far more than the number itself. Advanced body composition scans offer precise insights into your inner health.

DEXA (Dual-Energy X-ray Absorptiometry):

This scan provides detailed data on:

Visceral fat – the dangerous fat stored around abdominal organs, often hidden despite a “normal” BMI
Lean muscle mass – critical for metabolic function and long-term strength
Bone mineral density – key for assessing fracture risk and osteoporosis

Low-Dose CT Scans:

While DEXA is excellent for body composition trends, low-dose CT scanning offers even more precision in quantifying visceral fat volume – the fat that wraps around your liver, pancreas, and intestines. This type of fat is strongly associated with insulin resistance, inflammation, and cardiovascular disease risk. For examples see related blog.

It’s this “hidden fat” – not the fat under your skin – that contributes most to the middle-age spread and derails metabolic health. As we age, we also tend to lose skeletal muscle, which plays a key role in glucose disposal and maintaining insulin sensitivity. Together, increased visceral fat and declining muscle mass form the perfect storm for metabolic dysfunction, leading to:

Central obesity
Pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes
Fatty liver disease
Accelerated cardiovascular ageing

With a low-dose CT scan, doctors can visualise and quantify this fat burden with remarkable accuracy – and target it in your health plan.

Epigenetics: Lifestyle Imprints on Your Genes

One of the most powerful concepts in modern medicine is that genes are not destiny. Through processes called epigenetics, your environment, diet, stress levels, and activity can switch genes on or off.

What you eat, how well you sleep, your exposure to toxins, even your thought patterns – all leave molecular marks on your DNA that influence gene expression. These changes can alter your risk of disease, inflammation levels, metabolic function, and even ageing speed.

By combining DNA polymorphism analysis (your inherited blueprint) with CGM, food tracking, DEXA, CT scans, and other phenotype data (your expressed characteristics), we can map out your epigenetic terrain – the current state of your health as shaped by both genes and lifestyle.

The Future: A Personalised Health Profile for Each Patient

The promise of this integrated approach is a personalised health profile – a living, breathing document that evolves with you.

With your doctor’s guidance, it might include:

Gene-based dietary recommendations
A food and glucose response map based on CGM trends
A visceral fat and muscle mass trajectory
Sleep and stress metrics
A roadmap to reduce your biological age and disease risk

This isn’t just about prevention – it’s about optimisation. Whether your goal is more energy, sharper cognition, weight loss, better metabolic health, or longevity, these tools offer a tailored strategy based on your biology, not population averages.

The Cardiologist’s View: Precision Profiling in Patients Over 40

From a cardiologist’s perspective, these advanced investigations are particularly relevant in patients aged 40 and above, when subtle but significant cardiovascular changes often begin to emerge. Many of our patients will have already undergone a coronary CT scan with FAI (Fat Attenuation Index) — an advanced imaging technique that not only visualises coronary plaque but also quantifies:

Location and burden of atherosclerotic plaque
Degree of calcification
Localised inflammation in each coronary vessel

FAI analysis provides powerful prognostic information, helping to identify patients at high risk of fatal myocardial infarction (MI) within the next 8 years — even when traditional risk scores appear low or intermediate.

This data-driven approach enables stratification of cardiovascular risk with far greater precision. By integrating genomic, metabolic, and phenotypic data — including DEXA, low-dose CT for visceral fat, CGM for glycaemic patterns, and food response analytics — we can prioritise both pharmacological and lifestyle interventions. For high-risk patients, this might include early use of lipid-lowering agents, targeted nutritional adjustments, visceral fat reduction strategies, and muscle-preserving exercise prescriptions.

Ultimately, the aim is not just to reduce cardiovascular events, but to improve healthspan — the years lived free from disease and functional decline — through a personalised, proactive approach to prevention.

The Takeaway: Own Your Data, Own Your Health

We are at the frontier of a new era in medicine – one where your own data becomes the foundation of your care. When used responsibly and under professional guidance, DNA testing, food analysis apps, CGM, DEXA, and low-dose CT scans empower you to make smarter, more targeted decisions about your health.

Instead of trial-and-error or generic advice, you can now ask: What does my body need? And get an answer that’s backed by evidence and personalised to you.

Your healthspan – and your quality of life – depend on it.

What are the latest guidelines target for LDL?

For patients who have been diagnosed with an acute coronary syndrome, requiring bypass surgery or stent, or have CT Angiography and or raised FAI, the latest European and UK guidelines reflect the finding that there is no lower limit for LDL yet discovered, basically meaning the lower the better. These recommendations come after new trials with lower targets showed better outcomes. As a result, millions of people around the world need to be looking more carefully at whether they are taking sufficient medication to lower their LDL to these new targets, for the very best outcomes to be achieved.

Can You Go Low-Carb with Kidney Disease? A Safer Way to Improve Blood Sugar Without Harming Your Kidneys

For patients with CKD 3b, a high-protein diet may accelerate renal decline and should be avoided. However, metabolic improvement via a moderate low-carbohydrate diet with controlled protein intake (~0.8 g/kg/day) and unsaturated fats is both feasible and safe when guided appropriately. Creatinine changes should be interpreted carefully in the context of diet, and dietary interventions should be closely monitored.

The Role of Gain of Function Mutations in Heart Disease

By enhancing PCSK9 activity and increasing LDL cholesterol levels, gain of function mutations could have given our ancestors a survival edge, helping them ward off potentially lethal infections. Over time, as these mutations passed down generations contributing to the widespread issue of high LDL cholesterol and coronary artery disease we observe today.