Scientists are increasingly convinced that the majority of disease – potentially up to 95 per cent – is preventable through making healthy lifestyle choices and that even the prognosis for unpreventable disease can be improved by a better lifestyle.

It was previously thought that genes were fixed for life and that they determine our ‘biological destiny’, however, research carried out around the sequencing of the human genome has taught us that many genes change in response to how we care for ourselves during each second of our lives.

This includes everything from exercising to sleeping, to the pollution we’re exposed to, and from our stress levels to what we eat and drink and our state of mind.

Changes to our genes brought about by lifestyle – be they positive or negative – can either be specific to us, in that they alter how genes are expressed without altering the underlying DNA sequence, or they can be heritable and passed on to subsequent generations.

Increasing awareness of these findings make this type of research a huge game changer for industries related to self-care, such as the food and nutrition, sleep, spa, exercise, wellbeing and lifestyle sectors.

All stand to benefit from the fact that solutions to many ailments are cheap, available and straightforward to deliver and that – most importantly – prevention will be a huge industry in the years to come.

Who’s interested in this new thinking? Firstly, anyone who wants to live a longer, healthier life, free from disease and secondly insurance companies, corporations and governments which want to save money on healthcare.

And it’s likely to get complicated very quickly, because the greater availability of personal genetic testing kits means we’ll be seeing interested parties starting to identify those most likely to succumb to genetic disease with the intention of either helping them (in the case of health services and the wellbeing sector) or isolating them in terms of risk and potentially charging them more for services (in the case of insurance companies).

And just as our current fitness test from the gym or spa reports on our strength or cardiovascular fitness, in future, it will reveal how our diet, meditation and exercise regime has changed our genes, by how much and in what way. We’ll also discover if we’ve lowered our risk of developing a specific disease or increased our longevity.

This new thinking places our sector at the heart of a substantial and growing market for personal wellness services and will bring significant opportunity.

We have a robust knowledge base on which to build these new services and we need to tackle them head on by designing and introducing ‘test and prescribe’ modalities to ensure we’re at the heart of the drive for prevention.

Liz Terry, editorial director @elizterry