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

WHY will we age? As children, we appear invincible. We climb bushes, frolic within the grime and blithely share alarming portions of mucus. At school, we are able to thrive on a weight loss program of ramen and beer, social gathering all night time and nonetheless sit an examination the subsequent day. However in our 30s, we begin to wind down. It turns into more durable to take care of muscle tone and keep away from sickness. Our joints begin to ache and our reminiscence begins to dim. And it’s largely downhill from there.

Folks have lengthy tried to cease or reverse this course of. However fountains of youth and secrets and techniques of immortality stay firmly within the realms of fiction. Our our bodies put on out, even when we now not do the back-breaking bodily labour our ancestors did. And the world appears decided to grind us down with a plethora of disease-causing microbes. To assist fend off these pathogens, our our bodies recruit different microbes, huge numbers of which reside in our intestines, the place we feed them in alternate for his or her providers. However, as we age, this intestine microbiota turns into much less efficient at combating illnesses too.

This raises an intriguing risk. Maybe the key of longevity lies not within the physique itself, however in our intestine microbes. We nonetheless have a lot to study this complicated assemblage of micro organism, viruses, fungi and archaea, but it seems that individuals who obtain a wholesome outdated age typically have a particular intestine flora. What’s extra, we’re discovering methods to govern this world inside …