- Eating a poor diet could be taking years off your life
- Foods high in fat and sugar cause an imbalance of the microbes in your gut
- This triggers inflammation, impairs immune function and reduces your lifespan
Mary Kekatos For Dailymail.com
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What you eat could be shaving years off your life, a new study reveals.
Scientists say that eating a poor diet can trigger inflammation within the body.
Foods high in sugar and fat lead to an imbalance in gut bacteria, which can cause the intestines to become leaky.
This releases bacterial products that impair immune function, rapidly ageing your cells, and reducing your lifespan.
Eating a poor diet could be taking year off your life by causing an imbalance in your gut microbes, which triggers inflammation and impairs immune function, a new study says
The study, conducted at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, showed researchers raising mice in germ-free conditions and comparing them to their conventionally raised counterparts.
The germ-free mice did not show increases in inflammation and a higher proportion of them lived to old age.
Age is associated with an increase in levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines, or proteins that act to make disease worse, in the bloodstream and tissues.
One of these proteins is called a tumor necrosis factor (TNF). Researchers found that germ-free mice did not have increased TNF with age.
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‘To date, the only things you can do to reduce your age-associated inflammation are to eat a healthy diet, exercise and manage any chronic inflammatory conditions to the best of your ability,’ said senior author Dr Dawn Bowdish, a professor of pathology and molecular medicine at McMaster.
‘We hope that in the future we will be able use drugs or pre- or probiotics to increase the barrier function of the gut to keep the microbes in their place and reduce age-associated inflammation and all the bad things that come with it.’
FIVE GOOD FOODS FOR YOUR GUT…
1. Yogurt
2. Sauerkraut
3. Kimchi
4. Bananas
5. Blueberries
…AND FIVE BAD FOODS FOR YOUR GUT
1. Dairy milk
2. Garlic
3. Beans
4. Chili peppers
5. Corn
Foods like yogurt and sauerkraut are both probiotic foods that contain live active cultures, which help diversify and multiply good bacteria in your body.
And fruits like bananas and blueberries do this through their high numbers of vitamins and minerals, potassium and magnesium in bananas and vitamin K and fiber in blueberries.
Processed or artificial sugars, on the other hand, feed on bad bacteria, which results in poor gut health.
The lactose, or sugar, in diary milk multiplies gut germs and can cause diarrhea, gas, abdominal bloating and cramps.
And while fiber-rich corn can be good for you, it also contains cellulose – a type of fiber that humans can’t break down easily because we lack a necessary enzyme – causing an imbalance in the bacteria in our gut that break down food.
Humans with high levels of inflammatory molecules are more likely to be frail, hospitalized, and less independent.
They are also more susceptible to infections, chronic conditions such as dementia and cardiovascular disease and death.
In addition, TNF-deficient mice that did not develop age-associated inflammation or conventional mice that were treated with an anti-TNF drug approved for humans had reduced age-related changes in the microbiome.
‘We assume that if we reduce inflammation, we improve immune function. If we improve immune function, we maintain the ability to farm a healthy gut microbiota, but we don’t know for sure yet,’ Dr Bowdish said.
‘We also believe that targeting age-associated inflammation will improve immune health and we are investigating repurposing drugs that are already on the market and developing novel strategies or therapeutics to this effect.’
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