Personalized Nutrition for Healthy Aging, A Review

Aging is a multifactorial biological process manifested by different characteristic changes at the molecular and cellular level affecting multiple physiological functions and immune competence. While varying enormously between individuals, aging and its underlying mechanisms increase the susceptibility to many diseases. Research focusing on individual aspects of disease pathologies and aging has shown the huge importance of epigenetic regulation and microbial metabolites beyond hereditary genetic dispositions. Epigenetic mechanisms, but also microbiota and their metabolites reflect impacts of lifestyle and nutrition. Epigenetics and microbiota therefore provide some of the most accurate biomarkers of healthy of premature aging such as the epigenetic clock. These developments suggest that the ‘one-size-fits-all’ concept in medicine as well as in nutrition is no longer sufficient to narrow the gap between health span and life span. Integrating and combining data from different platforms (genome-DNA sequence, transcriptome, proteome, metabolome, and epigenome) leads to a better understanding of the basis of complex diseases and paves the way toward personalized medicine and personalised nutrition. Consumer organizations will have to find a delicate balance between safety, use of modern concepts of precise nutrition as well as quite divergent expectation of different consumer groups.