AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION: There is now a field of study in the medical world called “chemoprevention”. The National Institute of Health and various universities are finally putting some money into exploring the effects of specific foods and nutrients, e.g. selenium and green tea and retinol, on cancer and other chronic conditions. In fact, there was an article in today’s New York Times about “nutritional genomics”, the idea that because each person has a different genetic make-up, there is a diet specific to his or her body chemistry that will optimize their health and well being. More and more evidence is piling up that the body does a wonderful job of staying healthy when it runs on the right fuel, and gets messed up over time when the wrong stuff is being fed to it. Perhaps someday, we will be able to go see a chemoprevention geneticist to develop diets specific to our genetic vulnerabilities, say if colon cancer or diabetes or heart disease run in our families, and to our body’s specific metabolic strengths and weaknesses.

Hopefully, in 20 years or so we will have a body of well founded research to back up such recommendations. Right now, we have a lot of enthusiasts and herbalists and a few honestly interested doctors who admit that we just don’t know that much on the subject right now. And we have political factions like the beef growers council and dairy farmers and fast food industry that may not like what the chemopreventionists and nutrigenicists will have to say about their products, and will thus do their best to choke off money for continued research. Look at how tough the tobacco industry has fought anti-smoking research and education over the years. And you have to wonder if the hospital corporations and pharmaceutical manufacturers and insurance companies and care management groups aren’t a bit scared of the idea that people who eat right and exercise properly might not need their services as much in the future.

Let’s just hope that somehow, in spite of the vested interests, our government gets the message that people want to learn how to eat better and exercise better so as to live longer and healthier, and that our leaders heed that call by making a lot more money available for chemoprevention and genomic research. It’s an investment that will pay itself back many times over in the future. It’s also a populist idea, given that it will benefit both the rich and the poor: we all have to eat, so why not eat the right stuff? Lets hope that a professional chemoprevention and genomic specialty grows within the health field, and does not limit itself to prescribing a few vitamin or mineral supplements as antibiotics are prescribed today, but addresses the overall topic of what foods are good and bad relative to a person’s specific health needs, and includes exercise and psychology and even spirituality, so as to help each person (rich or poor) achieve a longer and happier life.