The secret to healthy ageing is a healthy gut
If you want to age gracefully, look after your gut.
Picture: iStock
New research has shown a potential link between healthy ageing and a healthy gut.
This is according to one of the largest microbiota studies conducted in humans.
Researchers studied the gut bacteria of more than 1 000 extremely healthy people of various ages.
The results showed that the overall microbiota composition of the healthy elderly group was similar to that of people decades younger.
“The main conclusion is that if you are ridiculously healthy and 90 years old, your gut microbiota is not that different from a healthy 30-year-old in the same population,” says Greg Gloor, the principal investigator on the study.
Gloor is also a professor at Western’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry and scientist at Lawson Health Research Institute.
“This demonstrates that maintaining diversity of your gut as you age is a biomarker of healthy ageing, just like low-cholesterol is a biomarker of a healthy circulatory system.”
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