Nutrigenomics is the scientific study of the interaction of nutrition and genes, especially with regard to the prevention or treatment of disease. It’s quite possible that a good understanding and application of nutrigenomics can help us delay or prevent many of the diseases associated with aging.
Life expectancy today in the U. S. is approximately 77 years with a big discrepancy between males and females: 73.6 years for men and 79.4 years for women. But scientists are beginning to question this data. Because of many remarkable discoveries in molecular biology and nutrigenomics, many scientists now believe we can live well beyond the average life expectancy.
These discoveries include those of longevity genes, how they are activated and the biochemical mechanisms they rely on to increase longevity and enhance health.
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And then there’s the further discovery that specific plant molecules found in our food supply can activate longevity genes.
These same scientists are now beginning to admit that we can fortify our diets with plants for anti-aging effects.
Says Ronald Klatz, M.D., D.O., who coined the term, “anti-aging medicine:”
“We’re looking at a life span for the baby boomers and the generation after the baby boomers of one hundred twenty to one hundred fifty years of age.”
The idea that food is nothing more than fuel is no longer valid. Even the simplest foods contain hundreds of specialized molecules some of which are nutritive and provide energy and others of which are bioactive, meaning they’re capable of effecting changes in hormone levels and in fat, carbohydrate and protein metabolism. But Hippocrates, father of Western medicine and author of the adage, “Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food,” in a general sense, already seemed to grasp the bioactivity of food.
This plant-to-human/animal interaction is as ancient as humankind itself. A biological principle exists that explains how it is that we can derive health benefits from eons of plant stress response evolution: Environmentally stressed plants, through the ages, have produced bioactive compounds that can confer stress resistance and survival benefits to humans and animals that consume them.
This principle is called xenohormesis (from xenos, the Greek word for stranger, and hormesis, the term for health benefits provided by mild biological stress such as cellular damage or a lack of nutrition).
Xenohormesis asserts that certain molecules in our food can have significant health- and longevity-enhancing effects that could possibly turn out to surpass anything current medications can achieve, if only we would focus our diets on their consumption.
But should we restrict the ingestion of plant foods beneficial to our longevity and vitality only to what goes in the mouth?
What about our skin, the largest organ of the body and which absorbs more than 60% of what we put on it? Our skincare penetrate the body and join the bloodstream to nourish not just skin but body. It stands to reason that nutrigenomics applies to the ‘nutrition’ we give topically to our skin.
This is why PHYTO5 creates skincare with high grade essential oils, for example, that have the ability to ‘communicate’ to the body ingesting them through the skin.
Lingonberry seed essential oil in Extreme Hydrating Cream, the perfect super skin hydrator product especially in icy cold temperatures, is a berry from the Arctic region containing ingredients essential to lingonberry’s survival in temperatures as low as minus 50°C. Lingonberry is able to pass on its survival response to and through the skin.
Against all odds, Edelweiss, which grows at great heights on cliffsides and in other dangerous areas, offers the benefits of centuries of stress response, namely, survival and regeneration to the skin in PHYTO5’s Face Gel Mask and Perfection Cream for hyperpigmentation.
And the ancient ginkgo tree passes on its knowledge of survival and longevity in PHYTO5’s Water element Day Cream and Night Cream.
Xenohormesis has already been applied in drug discovery and the conscious nutritional enhancement of diet by many people.
“A full 40 percent of the drugs behind the pharmacist's counter in the Western world are derived from plants that people have used for centuries, including the top 20 best selling prescription drugs in the United States today.” — USDA–U.S. Forest Service
“A new study has revealed that the number of Americans following plant-based diets is up nearly 9.4 million over the last 15 years to over 9.7 million in total.” —thebeet.com
Though most plant-based consumers are unaware of xenohormesis and how a plant passes on its rich history of stress response to the human body, these consumers nevertheless recognize a whole array of health and longevity benefits.
Xenohormetic plant compounds can, when ingested, improve longevity by activating our own cellular stress response. This form of plant to human communication gives us important chemical cues we may have overlooked until recently. Applying the science of nutrigenomics may prove to be beneficial in not just our life-extension but quality of that life as we extend it.
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Endnotes:
Hooper, Philip L et al. “Xenohormesis: health benefits from an eon of plant stress response evolution.” Cell stress & chaperones vol. 15,6 (2010): 761-70. doi:10.1007/s12192-010-0206-x
Konrad T. Howitz, David A. Sinclair, Xenohormesis: Sensing the Chemical Cues of Other Species, Cell, Volume 133, Issue 3, 2008, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2008.04.019.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867408005114)
Cayuela Sánchez JA, Elamrani A. Nutrigenomics of essential oils and their potential domestic use for improving health. Nat Prod Commun. 2014 Nov;9(11):1641-8. PMID: 25532301.
Dhanjal, Daljeet Singh et al. “Plant Fortification of the Diet for Anti-Ageing Effects: A Review.” Nutrients vol. 12,10 3008. 30 Sep. 2020, doi:10.3390/nu12103008
Phytochemicals of Nutraceutical Importance. United Kingdom, CABI, 2014.
Swann G. The skin is the body's largest organ. J Vis Commun Med. 2010 Dec;33(4):148-9. doi: 10.3109/17453054.2010.525439. PMID: 21087182.