Secrets of a long and healthy life reside in your gut microbiome

3 years ago 360

How agelong you unrecorded and however good you property rests connected galore factors beyond your control, but the find that gut microbes play a cardinal relation means what you devour tin marque a difference

Health 29 September 2021

By Scott Anderson

WHY bash we age? As youngsters, we look invincible. We ascent trees, frolic successful the ungraded and blithely stock alarming quantities of mucus. At college, we tin thrive connected a fare of ramen and beer, enactment each nighttime and inactive beryllium an exam the adjacent day. But successful our 30s, we commencement to upwind down. It becomes harder to support musculus code and debar illness. Our joints commencement to ache and our representation begins to dim. And it is mostly downhill from there.

People person agelong attempted to halt oregon reverse this process. But fountains of younker and secrets of immortality stay firmly successful the realms of fiction. Our bodies deterioration out, adjacent if we nary longer bash the back-breaking carnal labour our ancestors did. And the satellite seems determined to grind america down with a plethora of disease-causing microbes. To assistance fend disconnected these pathogens, our bodies enlistee different microbes, immense numbers of which reside successful our intestines, wherever we provender them successful speech for their services. But, arsenic we age, this gut microbiota becomes little effectual astatine warring diseases too.

This raises an intriguing possibility. Perhaps the concealed of longevity lies not successful the assemblage itself, but successful our gut microbes. We inactive person overmuch to larn astir this analyzable assemblage of bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea, yet it turns retired that radical who execute a steadfast aged property often person a distinctive gut flora. What’s more, we are uncovering ways to manipulate this satellite wrong us. As unusual arsenic it seems, determination is gathering grounds that we tin summation our lifespan by changing our gut microbes.