Gut bacteria can make you younger!
We already know that the bacteria in our gut, aka our microbiome, play a crucial role in quite a lot of health issues.
It has been shown for example that these tiny organisms can make you fat! When researchers transplanted the microbiome of fat mice into thin mice, the thin mice became obese! The same was true vice versa. Concluding from that it can be stated that the bacteria have an enormous influence on our metabolism. It's not just calories in vs. calories out ;)
A new study* shows that the microbiome also plays a very important role in aging. When you get older, the inflammation in your body increases. You can also say it like that: inflammation makes you age faster. This process is called inflammaging (from inflammation and aging).
Inflammation, especially when chronic, is linked to an increase in several health problems like stroke, dementia and cardiovascular disease.
Researches transplanted the microbiome from old mice into young mice and found that there was an induction of age-related chronic inflammation! So the young mice kind of appeared older from a biomarker standpoint.
The composition of your microbiome is very important when it comes to basically everything, in this case aging.
This finding presents a very simple strategy to deal with healthy aging or as I like to say staying younger longer ;D
Short end note: What influences the composition of your gut microbiota?
FOOD!!! What you put in your mouth matters! It can make you age faster, it can make you become fat faster, it can even make you depressed.
What matters too is your attitude and your lifestyle. Gut bacteria don't like when you're stressed out and when you're taking antibiotics. Because guess what: Antibiotics kill your gut bacteria. And it can take years for you to "grow" them back. And you might grow the wrong ones, maybe the ones that make you fat and ugly...
So just eat right and be happy and take care of your little homies :) Because who knows what else they are responsible for...