Personalized dieting is now the new norm

What to name this column nearly delayed its debut. Way back when on a Wednesday in June in 1989 during a phone conversation with a bigwig at The Times News, I got the green-light and a good question.

“What should we call the column?”

The two titles I suggested were rejected, so I was told to call back with some others by Friday. Try as I might, I could not come up with a title I liked.

But as I approached the rotary phone in my living room that Friday to tell the bigwig exactly that, my eyes serendipitously spied the old portable cross-country skiing simulator I used sometimes when bad weather kept me from riding my bike.

Its name: The Fitness Master.

Since the company had been out of business for years, I offered that as the title and got two thumbs up.

How the title came to be, however, is not why I cringe occasionally when I see it in print. I cringe sometimes because I feel calling myself The Fitness Master is a bit too brazen, a bit too bold, and certainly undeserving.

But I don’t feel that way today.

I’ve just read three paragraphs of an article posted by WebMD, and then did a very satisfying double take when I saw the subtitle that introduces the fourth: “News Flash: Diets Aren’t One-Size-Fits-All.”

News flash? News flash? I thought that phrase was used for previously unknown information.

Years before I ever wrote this column and simply taught a health-and-fitness course to teachers, what I stressed above all else is that one diet will never fit all. And throughout the 30 years of this column, that idea has appeared in one way, shape, or form dozens of times.

But even though that subtitle isn’t news to regular FM readers, what’s occurring in the world of health and nutrition because it’s perceived as such is noteworthy. According to the aforementioned article, about a dozen companies “offer nutrition advice customized to your body, based on DNA or blood tests, micro biome profiling, or a combination of those ...

“DayTwo [one such company] charges $499 for a micro biome kit, personalized app, orientation call from a registered dietitian, and micro biome summary report.” Other companies charge as much as $1000.

If you want to pay for this sort of help, go ahead. Or you can listen to me and save some serious sawbucks.

Granted, what I advise is not nearly as precise as what you would pay for, but if you do it in the proper manner, it can be just as effective. And that is to intelligently experiment with the dietary practices that have worked for me and those I have counseled in order to create a way to eat that helps rather than hurts your health and fitness.

Consider, for example, the anecdote that begins the previously mentioned WebMD article. A 71-year-old man gets his diet analyzed by the DayTwo company and discovers that a bagel with cream cheese and lox, a combination he loves but usually causes a spike in blood sugar, does not do so to him.

Jokingly Howard Wolinsky adds, “It turns out those little bugs in my gut seem to like bread, if it’s combined with protein and fat.”

Later in the article, a doctor intrigued by the science behind the DayTwo analysis does an experiment of his own and finds “Certain foods [give] me prominent spikes in my glucose, and I’m not a diabetic.” Furthermore, his experimentation reveals that even though cheesecake is loaded with sugar, the little bugs in his gut handle a load of sugar well — when it’s accompanied by a ton of fat and a fair amount of protein.

Because when Eric Topol, MD, a cardiologist and author of Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again, eats cheesecake, his glucose level doesn’t “budge.”

At this point, the obvious must be addressed. If you have certain serious medical conditions, your diet needs to be dictated to you by medical professionals.

But despite that caveat, you should still acknowledge that a combination of sustained motivation and experimentation can have a positive impact on your health.

A study published in the September issue of Diabetic Medicine, for instance, found that the sort of weight loss that is easily attainable for those significantly overweight, about 10 % of total body weight, can send type 2 diabetes into remission when the weight loss occurs within the first few years of diagnosis.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom analyzed data accrued on more than 800 middle-aged people recently diagnosed as type 2 diabetics and who were part of the ADDITION-Cambridge trial to reach this conclusion.

While 30 percent of all the subjects were in remission five years after the study, “those who had achieved at least 10% weight loss within five years of type 2 diabetes diagnosis were more than twice as likely to experience remission at the 5-year follow-up, compared with individuals who had not lost any weight” according to a Medical News Today article.