1. nbj 2013 U.S. Market Overview
44 | june/july 2013 integrative medicine supplements Functional food
E
ach year, I write about the trends I
believe will have the greatest impact
on the future of the nutrition and
supplement industry. This year, as I look at
the broader issue of healthcare, there is one
disruptive trend that I feel has the power to
completely change the game as we know it:
personalized lifestyle medicine.
This newly emerging field builds on the
trends of personalized medicine and life-
style medicine, and is defined by the Per-
sonalized Lifestyle Medicine Institute
(PLMI) as “an approach to medicine in
which an individual’s health metrics from
point-of-care diagnostics are used to devel-
op lifestyle medicine-oriented therapeutic
strategies for improving individual health
outcomes in managing chronic disease.”
PLMI’s founder, Dr. Jeffrey Bland, de-
scribes the “secret sauce” of personalized
medicine as a combination of genomics,
biomarkers and lifestyle-based therapeu-
tics [NBJ; October 2012; On the Hunt for
Personalized Medicine]. The NBJ article
continues to break this down, saying that
“genomics decode our hardware, phenom-
ics assess the software through a dizzying
array of more affordable biomarkers and
deeper diagnostics, and lifestyle medicine
provides a smarter therapeutic approach to
prevention before the disease even sets in.”
Today, you can see evidence of the per-
sonalized lifestyle trend everywhere, with
technology making access to personal
health metrics both more convenient and
affordable. One of the best examples of this
is the human genome test, which cost over
$300,000 in 2010. Now, for under $10,000,
you can access your complete human
genome, and for $99 you can get a select
snippet of key genetic indicators through
a saliva test ordered on the internet. In
addition, smart phone apps and devices
like the Jawbone UP wristband are mak-
ing it possible to track personal metrics on
everything from diet and exercise to your
biorhythms during sleep. Before you know
it, you’ll be able to lick your smart phone
and have it tell you your personal genome
and other key biomarkers.
The purveyors of personal genomics in-
sist that genomic medicine will—indeed,
must—become an integral part of modern
health care. “I think it is very likely that,
within a few years, pretty much every col-
lege-educated person in the United States
is going to have a profile similar to the one
provided by deCODEme or 23andMe
or Navigenics,” says Kári Stefánsson, co-
founder and CEO of deCODE.
Dietrich Stephan of Navigenics believes
personal genomics will become part and
parcel of 21st-century medicine—a com-
plete personal-genome sequence, quite
possibly performed at birth.
How will genomics affect nutrition?
Trends that affect the world of medicine
almost always impact the nutrition and
supplement world, and personalized life-
style medicine is a perfect example of this.
Working together with medical practitio-
ners, researchers and those pioneering
new diagnostic technology and services,
the supplement industry has the opportu-
nity to harness the power of personalized
medicine to help dramatically curb the ex-
pensive growth of chronic illness and help
address our debilitating healthcare crisis.
Personalized lifestyle medicine will play
a powerful and critical role in prevention.
Informed with a profile of our genetic
predispositions, combined with a range
of hundreds of biomarkers from diag-
nostic technologies, practitioners as well
as individuals will have access to a de-
tailed DNA-specific health roadmap, with
benchmarks and milestones included.
With this map in place, there is the ability
to chart a new course for the future of our
health through medicine and lifestyle, in-
cluding preventive, individually-targeted
diet and nutrition.
Personalized lifestyle medicine provides a
significant opportunity for the supplement
industry, the broader nutrition industry in-
cluding functional and medical foods, and
indeed the entire healthcare system, in-
cluding service providers, pharmaceutical
companies and likely even food and food
service companies. While many unknowns
remain, I believe it can be taken for granted
that cost-effective technology and data
management systems will emerge and the
business race will be over who can manage
and deliver information to individuals and
create practical tools for consumption pat-
terns and lifestyle choices.
The age of technology & diagnostics
In the future, technology and the practical
application of diagnostic and monitoring
technology will be the backbone of personal-
ized lifestyle medicine. If nutrition and sup-
plement companies want to succeed in this
new competitive age of personalized health
management, they will need to stay on top
of the dynamic trends in these technologies.
In his book, The Creative Destructive Medi-
cine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create
Better Health Care, author Eric Topol, the
chief academic officer of Scripps Health,
talks about how “digital medicine”—ranging
from wireless sensors and genomics to new
health information software—will change
the medical field for both professionals and
patients. “This is a new era of medicine, in
which each individual can be near fully de-
fined at the individual level, instead of how
we practice medicine at a population level,"
writes Topol.
This personal health empowerment is also
seen in the “quantified self movement”—the
term used to describe those who use smart
phones and wearable devices to track and
improve their health metrics. Those using
personalized health technology are a small
outlier of the population who will serve as
a leadership group in setting the tone of
what post-genomic medicine might look
like in consumer-ese. “These are not aca-
demic, medical professionals,” says Bland.
“These are young men and women who
are doing serial analyses on their physi-
ologies on smart phones and developing
algorhythms using their own bodies as
an experiment to see if they can optimize
their function. This is a very different ap-
proach to health than waiting for stuff to
happen and then treating the symptoms.”
Supplements,MeetPersonalizedLifestyleMedicine
What will it take to win in this new paradigm of prevention?
by Thomas Aarts, NBJ Editorial Advisory Board

2. newhope360.com/nbj | 45
Strategic information for the nutrition industry nbj
Who’s on trend?
Personalized supplements are not exactly
a new idea. In the past decade and a half,
many companies have attempted to pro-
vide customized nutraceuticals, but very
few have proven successful. In the late ‘90s,
companies such as Acumins, Sciona, Sura-
cell and others incorporated internet-based
questionnaires and DNA tests to create in-
dividually tailored supplement solutions.
You may also remember Custom Nutrition
Services’ CustomPak (1998), which incorpo-
rated a type of vending machine to deliver a
customized packet of supplements based on
a personalized questionnaire.
Past failures do not predict the future,
however. Diagnostic platforms such as the
Metabolic Code developed by Jim LaValle
of Integrated Health Resources now pro-
vide comprehensive tools that assess many
factors beyond gene snips and use blood
work and other lifestyle inputs to develop a
comprehensive practitioner-recommended
solution for the prevention of chronic ill-
ness. Thousands of practitioners have been
trained with this platform and are keenly in-
terested in its potential.
Looking into the future, I believe the com-
panies that can provide simple and user
friendly diagnostics to measure an individ-
ual’s biomarkers, and then deliver a nutra-
ceutical product that can positively impact
these metrics, will have the advantage in the
age of personalized lifestyle medicine. One
example of an early success comes from
Pharmanex, a brand developed by Nu Skin.
Usingapatentedbiophotonicscannerdevel-
oped by the University of Utah, Pharmanex
distributors are able to test a client’s antioxi-
dant levels before and after taking the com-
pany’s NanoLife packet. Through this test/
retest protocol, customers are shown imme-
diate tangible evidence that the product is
really working. It has been rumored that the
scanner has increased incremental revenue
for Pharmanex by over $100 million.
Several other companies are partnering
directly with medical or educational insti-
tutions to offer diagnostic solutions. Pure
Encapsulation’s new Pure Heart Protocol,
withthetagline,“Screening+Supplements=
Success,” is one example. For its cardiometa-
bolic screening process, the company part-
nered with Cleveland HeartLab (licensed
from the well-known Cleveland Clinic) to
test for six key biomarkers that gauge every-
thing from lipid balance and blood flow to
CoQ10 status, glucose metabolism and oxi-
dative stress. The company then offers prod-
uct recommendations from Pure Encapsu-
lations’ standard line designed to help bring
each specific biomarker into healthy range.
Barlean’s new Ideal Omega test kit, de-
veloped in cooperation with Stirling Uni-
versity, is another great example of how
supplement companies are using diagnos-
tics. The test breaks down the exact ratio
of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids in your
body and includes a custom report with
recommendations for achieving the opti-
mum balance. Although the kits are valued
at $150 each, Barlean’s is offering them free
to retail partners.
Another company testing the edge of per-
sonalized nutrition is Blue Spot Health,
whichmakesalineofnutraceuticalstargeting
neurology-based issues such as depression,
ADHD and autism. The company will be the
first to bring “dry spot testing” to the United
States. This patented technology, which can
testforover300biomarkers,allowsyoutoskip
the lab visit while also offering much more
stability than sending liquid vials through the
mail. These biomarkers, along with statistical
data and key genetic indicators, are then pro-
cessed using Blue Spot's proprietary software,
co-developed by one of the creators of Har-
vard’sGenomeProject.Thiscloud-basedplat-
form accesses a knowledge base developed
by a team of doctors and functional medicine
clinical nutritionists and uses all this informa-
tion to create a personal profile and prescribe
a nutraceutical plan, as well as recommend
lifestyle modifications, any additional testing
and a retesting schedule.
These are but a few examples of what’s to
come. In coming years, I predict the winners
and losers in the personalized supplements
arena will be determined by their diagnostic
capabilities and the ability to easily provide
custom or semi-custom solutions with mea-
sureable results that are instantly accessible
and simple to understand. In fact, the next
new $100 million supplement company of to-
morrow may not even be a supplement com-
pany, but rather a diagnostics company that
creates or effectively partners with a science-
based product line.
Today, most consumers take a combina-
tion of supplements hoping it works, but in
the future, I believe we will take supplements
and see proof that they work. At a previous
NBJ Summit, we challenged the industry
with the ideal of "The Product Promise," a
guaranteethatwhat'sonthelabelisinthepill
at the point of purchase and is absorbed effi-
ciently and effectively into the body. I see that
as the promise of yesterday. The promise of
today is that our products work and their ef-
ficacyissupportedbyclinicalevidence.What
I see as the promise of tomorrow is that not
onlydotheseproductswork,butthatspecific
products work for you.
tom aarts
Chairman, NBJ Editorial
Advisory Board
tom@nutritioncapital.com
“looking into the future, i believe the companies that can provide simple
and user friendly diagnostics to measure an individual’s biomarkers,
and then deliver a nutraceutical product that can positively
impact these metrics, will have the advantage ...”