Gretchen Röehrs
WHY do we age? As youngsters, we seem invincible. We climb trees, frolic in the dirt and blithely share alarming quantities of mucus. At college, we can thrive on a diet of ramen and beer, party all night and still sit an exam the next day. But in our 30s, we start to wind down. It becomes harder to maintain muscle tone and avoid illness. Our joints start to ache and our memory begins to dim. And it is mostly downhill from there.
People have long attempted to stop or reverse this process. But fountains of youth and secrets of immortality remain firmly in the realms of fiction. Our bodies wear out, even if we no longer do the back-breaking physical labour our ancestors did. And the world seems determined to grind us down with a plethora of disease-causing microbes. To help fend off these pathogens, our bodies recruit other microbes, vast numbers of which reside in our intestines, where we feed them in exchange for their services. But, as we age, this gut microbiota becomes less effective at fighting diseases too.
Take our expert-led short course on gut health and discover the powerful links between your microbiome and your physical and mental wellbeing
This raises an intriguing possibility. Perhaps the secret of longevity lies not in the body itself, but in our gut microbes. We still have much to learn about this complex assemblage of bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea, yet it turns out that people who achieve a healthy old age often have a distinctive gut flora. What’s more, we are finding ways to manipulate this world inside …
