So last week I fell asleep one afternoon rocking my daughter in the living room to go down for her nap.  Shortly after I woke up to catch a segment of Doctor Oz on the television talking about a revolutionary new way to determine the ideal diet for each individual; genetic testing.

According to the show, a study was conducted comparing three different macronutrient compositions.  Each group had either been put on a low carb diet, low fat diet, or balanced diet for a year.  Weight loss was monitored.  Of course, within the context of any diet there are those who lose more weight than others, but in this case scientists did genetic tests on everyone in the study.  What they found was that those who are on the right type for their genetics lost 2.5 times more weight than those who were not.  Moreover, the testing can be done for as little as $149 dollars!  Obviously I was intrigued because if this were truly the case it would be much easier to assign diet protocols to ensure results.

Being the curious mind that I am, I decided to look up the study.  As it turns out, the study has yet to actually be published in a peer reviewed journal, but was recently presented at the American Heart Association’s Joint Conference – 50th Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention – and Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism – 2010 and a summary of the study can be found on the Interlekin Genetics website HERE.

While Doctor Oz may have been technically correct in reporting that the groups using the appropriate diet for their genetics lost 2.5 times more than those who did not, the actual numbers from the study are actually a little less impressive.

Those who used the diet that best suited their genetics for one year lost approximately 5.3% of their body weight.  Those who did not lost 2.3% of their body weight.  That would mean for a two hundred pound person, testing your genetic profile would improve your weight loss in one year from 4.6 pounds to 10.6 pounds.  While this might appear decent at first, it is still only less than 11 pounds in a year!!!  After a night at the buffet I’ve probably had have bigger bowel movements.

In all seriousness though, that amounts to less than one pound per month which isn’t really that impressive at all.  More importantly though, was that this study was actually piggy-backed on a large study called The A to Z Weight Loss Study.  In the study they technically gave each participant a macronutrient (protein, carb, and fat) breakdown, but they were actually based on diet programs (Zone, LEARN, Atkins, and Ornish) and not just food intake.  In other words, some people’s programs (Zone and LEARN) contained information on calorie restriction and other people’s programs (Atkins and Ornish) did not.  Some also had information on physical activity and others did not.

While this is possibly a good indictation of which diet may work in the real world, it probably isn’t a great indication of which macronutrient composition best reflects our genetics because there are other confounding variables.  Along the same lines, it is important to keep in mind that the population used for this study was women with BMI measures between 27 and 40 which is not necessarily representative of the whole population. 

So am I against the science of nutrigenomics?  Definitely not.  I think it will bring many great things in the future.  Would I use it for creating the “ideal” diet?   Probably not.  Still, if you want to give it a shot, you can get your test done pretty cheap at Inherent Health.

What do you think?  Is genetic testing worth it?

A couple weeks ago I was reading some stuff on Lyle McDonald’s website when I stumbled across an article that I thought may be of interest for anyone who has ever trained to put on a little muscle (or a lot of muscle for that matter).

In light of the frequent marketing based reports of gaining 20 pounds of lean mass in 12 weeks with one program or another, I think this post gives great insight into what is realistic for beginner, intermediate, and advanced trainees.

What is your genetic muscular potential?

Read Lyle’s article HERE for summaries of a few models for predicting your maximum hugeness factor.

If you’re not in the mood to read the whole article, you can go straight to a muscle mass potential calculator mentioned in the article created by a guy named Casey Butt.  Check it out HERE.

And in case you were wondering about the effect of anabolic steroids on muscle gain using well controlled scientific studies (as opposed to the anecdotal reports you’ll hear from some random meathead the gym) here is a quote from Alan Aragon.

“…the norms for drug-enhanced gains in the short term (within 10 weeks) are 2-5 kg (4.4-11 lbs), and roughly 12.7 kg (27.9 lbs) over 2 years. The latter two figures collectively average out to a monthly gain of 0.9-1.1 lbs.”

Give the article a read and let me know what you think in the comments section below.  Agree or disagree?