MTHFR. Do you have it? And is it affecting your health?
MTHFR is a gene that gets a lot of press. It can be very relevant for many people, and may be linked to symptoms like fatigue, depression, blood clots, OCD, poor memory, insomnia, and heart disease.1 But it also sometimes gets unfair blame. So what does it do? And does it matter for you?
Are you highly sensitive?
The highly sensitive person, or HSP, refers to an innate personality trait characterized by heightened sensitivity to stimuli in one’s environment, including emotional, sensory, and social cues. HSPs tend to process information more deeply than individuals who do not possess this trait. And while sensitivity may sometimes be perceived as a bad thing in our society, it brings a lot of intriguing qualities (and in other cultures is perceived very favorably).
What is nutrigenomics?
Nutrigenomics examines the interactions between nutrition and genetics. Specifically, if focuses on how subtle individual genetic variations caused by a single change in the coding sequence of a gene (a single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP) influence a person’s response to different nutrients, and how those nutrients influence gene expression and function. Nutrigenomics seeks to understand how the food we eat interacts with our genes to create health or to influence susceptibility to disease.