Gut Bacteria and a Youthful Brain
Middle age is in most respects a good age to be. You are hopefully making enough money to do the things you want to do. You know enough about yourself to know what you want. And you know enough about the world to figure out how to get what you want. But…there is one master you still can’t outwit. Time.
In middle age you begin to experience what time does to a body. Activities that were once effortless and without consequence become possible only through great concentrations of energy, and the price is exacted through days of soreness afterward. Brain activity is similarly hampered: complex exercises and recalls are only possible with ever-increasing effort, and sometimes not even then. You walk into a room with purpose, and then suddenly you realize you haven’t a clue what that purpose is. Sometimes the purpose comes to after a quick think, sometimes not, or only much later.
Since the dawn of time this phenomenon could only be shrugged at as inevitable. But recent research in lab mice shows that an old brain can be made younger. It all has to do with gut bacteria. Older mice, some with gut bacteria transplanted from young mice, some without, were made to memorize a path through a watery maze in order to reach a dry platform. The mice with the bacteria transplant performed far better than the others.
This is very preliminary research, as well as kind of gross (they basically took poop from young mice and shoved it into old mice colons), but it reveals hope of someday producing similar results in old humans (I sincerely hope the transplant method is refined by the time consumer products are available). With any luck I may someday soon eat yogurt that is healthy for my brain as well as my body. Now where did I leave that spoon?
Here endeth the lesson on gut bacteria and a youthful brain.
Bike Newbie 