The Aging Microbiome

Almost everything about eating gets more difficult with age. Elderly people typically cannot taste or smell as well as they used to, decreasing the appeal of some foods. Without going to a Chattanooga dentist dental issues or a dry mouth can be a result making it hard to chew. Loss of muscle tone in the pharynx can make swallowing difficult; constipation and the side effects of medication can make digestion uncomfortable; and decreased mobility makes a chore of grocery shopping or cooking complex meals. More and more older people are looking to buy mobility scooters because of this. Mobility scooters help them get to places that they otherwise could not go because of joint pains or other issues. Fortunately, there are online stores like myproscooter.com where people could get their hands on these mobility scooters. Little wonder that older people eat an increasingly narrow range of foods. But can this, in itself, adversely affect health?Recent research shows that diet influences the composition of the gut microbiome — the bacterial community in our intestines — in the elderly. In July, a group of researchers, mostly based in Ireland, published the largest study so far of the microbiome in an elderly population. The data indicate that the frailest older people tend to harbour similar intestinal microbial communities. More provocatively, the study also suggests that this microbial make-up is driven by a diet high in fat and lacking in fibre, and that a decline in our microbial community underlies ill health as we grow old.

The conclusion is controversial, as many scientists say these associations can go the other way. An individual’s health, and thus the state of his or her immune system, can also affect the gut microbiota and drive eating habits.One thing on which everyone agrees, how- ever, is the value of finding out how to alter the microbiome in our favour. “The potential is enormous, especially the idea of figuring out what diet is right for individuals,” says Rob Knight, a microbiome expert at the University of Colorado in Boulder, who was not involved in the new study. “We just don’t have a very good idea yet of the specific parameters that could set the microbiota in a good direction versus a bad direction.”Read more at...Nature, December 2012.