A healthy gut microbiome holds the key to a long and healthy life

Is the fountain of youth in our guts?

For over 13 years, I’ve dedicated my academic career to the gut microbiome. Since we first discovered the community of trillions of microscopic bugs that call our gut home, thousands of research papers have been published investigating its importance, its role and its potential. This area is now more exciting than ever with excellent science pointing to the role our gut bugs play in a whole host of important factors including cancer, mental health, good immune function and maintaining a healthy weight, to name just a few. Gut microbiome research is on a steep innovation curve and the results from some of the most recent studies give us all reasons to be excited - especially when it comes to  our immune system. 

We now know that the health of our gut microbiome is closely linked to our general health and  is a good overall indicator of increased risk for certain diseases such as Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease and allergies. In the ZOE Predict study we analysed the ratio of ‘good’ to ‘bad’ bugs as well as the diversity of different bugs as markers of gut health (one of the five measures that go into creating a personalised nutrition score). We found that too many bad bugs put you at higher risk of poor blood sugar control and lead to more internal fat around the organs - a risk factor for heart disease. The good bugs help keep you healthy and are associated with good metabolic status, immune health and mental health.

The Fountain of Youth, 1546 painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder

Our gut microbes thrive when they have a variety and abundance of different plant fibres to feast on. Our human gut enzymes aren’t capable of breaking fibre down but our gut microbes do this for us very efficiently creating chemical byproducts called postbiotics. These chemicals range from vitamin K to serotonin, short chain fatty acids, bile acids and contribute to hormones such as GLP-1 being released which are key to how drugs like Ozempic works on appetite. When we don’t feed out gut microbes the fibre they need, they simply stop working and die out. The ‘bad’ bugs then flourish when we lack fibre and consume harmful additives as in all ultra-processed foods. The bad bugs make postbiotics too but these are not helpful and some, such as trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) produced when microbes eat meat,  increases the  risk of heart disease.