Weight loss guru Dr Michael Mosley has long been hailed as the go-to for his expert diet advice for losing weight. Now the TV doctor has turned his sight on other ways food can impact our health, focussing on how the food we eat affects our ageing process.
Dr Mosley has just finished filming a series which features him examining ageing and how food plays its parts. He spoke to the world's leading scientists who are researching ways to slow, or even reverse, the ageing process. Surprisingly, Dr Mosley discovered that genetics play a relatively small part in how we age. He did however discover that lifestyle is far more important.
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The doctor also found that eating for your gut health, microbiome, is integral to ageing well and surviving well beyond the average lifespan, Coventry live reports.
Dr Mosley wrote in the Daily Mail: "We know that what, and how much, you eat play key roles in whether you stay healthy or not — but what seems to be equally important is the impact this food has on your gut microbiome, the mix of bacteria, viruses and fungi, which live in your intestines."
In a study, published earlier this month in the journal Nature Ageing, scientists at Guangxi Academy of Sciences in China compared the microbiomes of 1,575 people, ranging in age from 20 to over 100.
Explaining the findings, Dr Mosley says: "They found that the healthy centenarians (those least troubled by age-related disease) had a very diverse mix of bugs in their guts, with particularly high levels of a bacterial species called Bacteroidetes. This bug has previously been linked to slimness, and is present in far smaller amounts in the guts of people who are overweight."
A healthy microbiome not only significantly boosts your immune system, but has been shown to reduce inflammation linked to numerous cancers and heart disease. Health editor Lydia Stephens took on the challenge of eating 30 different plant foods across the space of a week, which experts advice is optimal for gut health.
The doctor says the best way to boost gut levels of Bacteroidetes and other 'good' bacteria is to eat fermented foods such as such as sauerkraut, kefir and kimchi daily. Meanwhile, foods packed with sugar tend to have the opposite impact on ageing and your gut health.
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