As human beings, we are all guardians of a vast school. Each surface of our bodies, inside and out, is full of microorganisms. We have microbiomas in our skin, in our mouths and other holes and, especially, in our intestines.
In recent years, we have become accustomed to thinking about these internal residents as benign, even essential for our health. It is said that our guts are full of “friendly” bacteria and other microorganisms that make us favors in exchange for giving them a cozy home. That is true to some extent, but a new investigation into the role of intestinal microbiome in aging points to what would constitute a deep rethinking of this relationship.
In this emerging point of view, our intestinal microbes are not our friends, but an enemy at the doors. Far from being mutually beneficial, our relationship with them is more like a war of wear, a war that we finally lose. However, there are ways to postpone the inevitable.
The intestinal microbioma is a community of perhaps 100 billion microorganisms (bacteria, arches, fungi and viruses) that inhabit our intestinal tract, more abundantly in the colon. It is established early and stays with us throughout our lives, although it is constantly changing. “It is a very complex and very dynamic community that depends on what we eat, with whom we interact,” he says Dario Valenzano In the Leibniz Institute on Aging – Fritz Lipmann Institute (FLI) in Jena, Germany.
Microbiome aging
It also changes as we age. During the majority of our lives, the composition …
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