Most of us would like to live long and healthy lives, although few would go as far as 45-year-old American tech multimillionaire Bryan Johnson, who reportedly eats more than 70 pounds of vegetables a month, plus dark chocolate and lots of it. Dietary Supplement to Counter the Effects of Aging.
is he crazy Maybe not. I recently finished a television series on the science of aging, traveling the world and meeting “Super Agers” – people in their 80s and 90s who look and act like someone decades younger.
Like Arakaki Toshimitsu, a karate master from Okinawa, an island off the coast of Japan. At 80, he is in top shape and attributes this to daily exercise and a relatively low-calorie diet high in vegetables and seaweed.
During the production of the series, I also spoke with leading scientists who are researching ways to slow or even reverse the aging process.
One of the things they said that really surprised me was that genetics play a relatively small role in how well you age – your lifestyle is much more important.
Most of us would like to live long and healthy lives, although few will go as far as 45-year-old American technology multimillionaire Bryan Johnson (pictured), who reportedly eats more than 70 pounds of vegetables a month, writes Dr. Michael Mosley
Genetics play a relatively small role in how well you age – your lifestyle is much more important
We know that what and how much you eat plays a key role in whether or not you stay healthy, but what seems to be just as important is the impact of those foods on your gut microbiome, the mix of living bacteria, viruses and fungi in your gut .
It seems that every few weeks a new study reveals a new way these microbes affect our bodies and brains.
For example, they play an important role in regulating your immune system, which is central not only to protecting you from infection, but also to detecting and destroying cancer.
Now there is growing evidence that your microbiome has a big impact on how well you age.
In a study published earlier this month in the journal Nature Aging, scientists at the Guangxi Academy of Sciences in China compared the microbiomes of 1,575 people aged 20 years to over 100 years.
They found that the healthy centenarians (those least affected by age-related diseases) had a very diverse mix of insects in their guts, with particularly high levels of a type of bacteria called Bacteroidetes. This defect was previously associated with thinness and is present in much smaller amounts in the intestines of obese people.
Bacteroidetes seem to absorb the fat we consume less well than other gut bacteria, so people who have more of them tend to remove more calories from their bodies.
Dr. Michael Mosley (pictured) spoke to leading scientists looking for ways to slow or even reverse the aging process
Another benefit of many bacteroids is that they are very good at converting the fiber in the food we eat into short-chain fatty acids, chemicals that have powerful anti-inflammatory effects throughout the body.
Given that chronic inflammation is at the root of many age-related diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, and dementia, it’s not surprising that this particular disease appears to play an important role in helping us stay healthy as we age.
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The best way to increase the number of bacteria (and other “good” bacteria) in the gut is to eat a mostly plant-based, high-fiber diet and make sure you eat lots of different colored fruits and vegetables.
If you look at the food habits of communities around the world, where many people are reaching healthy ages, you see exactly that.
Daily servings of fermented foods like sauerkraut and kimchi have also been shown to boost your “good” gut bacteria, while sugary foods have the opposite effect.
But interestingly, it turns out that not everyone has enough good bugs in their gut to benefit from a high-fiber diet — although there’s no easy way to determine if this applies to you.
So what about a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) from someone who already has a lot? To do this, doctors collect stool from a healthy donor, treat it to remove anything potentially harmful, and transplant it into the recipient’s intestines (usually through a tube passed through the nose or into the rectum). .
It can be life-changing. I saw a patient infected with a nasty bacteria called Clostridium difficile, which had been causing him pain for years and was resistant to all available antibiotics. Within hours of receiving the FMT, she was cured thanks to the influx of healthy donor bugs.
But can it affect aging? Animal experiments suggest so.
In a report from the University of East Anglia last year, faecal samples from three-month-old mice were transplanted into 24-month-old mice; the equivalent of 80 in humans. They also did the reverse experiment and transplanted gut microbes from old mice into young mice.
Remarkably, the young mice fed the old manure soon showed signs of accelerated aging with widespread inflammation in the brain, eyes and nervous system.
Transferring young feces to old mice had the opposite effect, increasing the count of beneficial bacteria, calming inflammation and making the older mice look younger and healthier.
This is clearly just beginning, and I doubt the quest for eternal youth will end with fecal transplants – but it just goes to show how important our gut bacteria are and why you should value and respect them.
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Crystal Leahy is an author and health journalist who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a background in health and wellness, Crystal has a passion for helping people live their best lives through healthy habits and lifestyles.
