We have been living in a world where the average life span has increased considerably given the fact that our healthcare system is well equipped to overcome episodic & infectious diseases. However, the same cannot be applied to our health span. Our health span has deteriorated over last 5 decades thanks to man made disastrous inventions- drugs & medication & practice of our healthcare system to manage symptoms by prescribing medications.
Now people have to be empowered so that they can focus on improving biological age not chronological age, thereby promoting optimal health. It is not only about our physical ageing & skin, it’s more about resetting our internal clock ticking our cells. Ultimately, your biological age depends upon how well you take care of cells & tissues in your body.
Since we know that our overall health has a lot to do with our own & our microbial genes’ expression, we can improve our longevity by taking care of our cellular & molecular health-decoding mechanism of our cells & mitochondria. Just by taking care of the health of your cells & maintaining their integrity, you can actually slow your ageing.
Let us discuss this in detail.
We all age & physical signs are more prevalent than others-sun spots on skin, wrinkles & having grey hair. However, your body also experiences biological changes that can influence how quickly these ageing signs may show up. In Fact, the process of ageing begins much before physical signs show up. Depending upon our lifestyle choices, we start experiencing decline in our ability to maintain biological functions. Again generally starts when we have reached our peak productive age. Once the decline begins we focus on maintaining our longevity or lifespan irrespective of our biological age. So we think – Oh I can easily live for 80 years but your 80 may be quite different from 80 of your friend- this difference is attributed to our health span. The rate at which your body ageing is a distinctive process.
Your biological age is a function of both cellular health & mitochondrial health which both depends upon health & balance of your gut microbiome.
Cellular Health: Inside each cell in our body, different sections of our DNA are being copied & translated into specialised proteins. Each of these proteins has specific functions to promote cell functions. Each strand of DNA is capped to prevent it from damage. Health of our DNA is dependent on telomeres. If our DNA is exposed, the risk of DNA being mutated or degraded increases. Most chronic age related conditions occur when the number of cells with damaged telomeres are more prevalent. Our nutrition choices play an important role in protecting telomeres. Evaluating the health of our cells & what is impacting them goes a long way in determining what nutrition choices can increase the shelf life of telomeres. Therefore if you are experiencing oxidative stress, foods high in antioxidants can improve your cell health.
Mitochondrial Health: To carry out our daily activities, we need energy. Our body takes compounds from the food we eat & convert them into chemical energy with the help of mitochondria. Not to forget our mitochondria is populated by bacteria & these bacteria are actually cousins of gut microbes & communicate with them regularly. This food to chemical energy conversion is an important process; it drives single cell organisms to convert into much bigger organisms.
There is a lot of stress involved in this process of converting food into usable energy which our mitochondria undertakes. As a byproduct a lot of free radicals are produced by out mitochondria which if not killed or neutralised can create a situation of oxidative stress which can damage our DNA & telomeres( as discussed above). Therefore it is necessary to assess the ability of Mitochondria to neutralize oxidative stress, re-generate stress & how much energy mitochondria is able to produce. Mitochondria also signals if any cell is not functioning. It is job of mitochondria to weed out old cells & keep on adding new & fresh cells.
It is here that preventative & evidence based nutrition comes into picture. Your dietary choices as well as the compounds or beneficial metabolites released by your gut microbiome helps in recovery of the body.
The biggest fallacies in nutrition is that one solution fits all approaches. Understanding specific requirements your gut microbiome requires is essential so that these microbes keep feeding your body with beneficial microbes. We all are unique & have unique microbiomes so why should we adopt standard nutrition recommendations? Besides, we also assume that we all need same diet & nutrition irrespective of our age.
Our bodies undergo constant change- our stress level, relationships & environment are always changing. As we age, our body finds it difficult to maintain necessary functions for keeping cells as new & healthy. Therefore, as we age our nutritional requirement also changes to upkeep our cellular health. All these should take into account composition of your unique microbiome.
We generally experience general recommendations such as – as you age, your diet should have more protein. The issue in such recommendations is high protein consumption impacts our digestive efficiency. Most age -related chronic health conditions occur due to digestive issues. Therefore your nutritional recommendations should take into account biological changes taking place inside your body.
Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30779015/
https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/unique-gut-microbiome-patterns-linked-healthy-aging-increased-longevity
