DR MICHAEL MOSLEY: Take care of the viruses in your gut and you could live to be 100!

What are the secrets to living a long and healthy life? Most people realize that reaching a healthy old age requires regular exercise, maintaining a reasonable weight, getting adequate sleep, and managing stress.

But now you can add something much more amazing to that list: getting infected with the right viruses.

That, at least, was the conclusion of a recent study of centenarians from Japan and Sardinia.

The Japanese are famous for their longevity, while the tiny Italian island of Sardinia claims to have one of the highest proportions of people living to be 100 years or older.

It has always been assumed that this is mainly to do with diet and lifestyle, but now it seems that harboring the right viruses in the gut can also make a difference.

In a study published in the journal Nature Microbiology earlier this month, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University in the US studied stool samples collected from nearly 200 centenarians from these two areas.

The scientists used them to analyze the participants’ gut microbiomes, the community of trillions of microbes that live in our intestines and have profound effects on our health, for clues to their longevity.

What they found was that, compared to people in their 60s, centenarians had a greater variety of “good” bacteria and also more “good” viruses.

It may surprise you to learn that there are many viruses and fungi living in our guts, along with the bacteria we’ve all read a lot about recently.

While we normally think of viruses as bad for us, and in fact cause a variety of nasty illnesses, most do nothing wrong and some appear to be beneficial.

Viruses are tiny, around 100 times smaller than bacteria, and partly because of their size they are difficult to study, so the ones that live in our guts have received far less attention than larger bacteria until now. prominent.

So, you might ask, what are viruses doing in the guts of centenarians that helps keep them healthy?

Some of the viruses, at least, attack and kill off “bad” bacteria, the kind that can cause inflammation and nasty intestinal infections.

These particular viruses, known as bacteriophages, are very common and are increasingly being used in medical settings as an alternative to antibiotics, particularly when it comes to treating drug-resistant skin and intestinal infections.

That’s because, unlike antibiotics, bacteria don’t seem to be able to develop resistance against bacteriophages.

Researchers believe that in addition to killing harmful microbes, some of the viruses in the intestines of centenarians are also good at creating gaseous hydrogen sulfide.

At first glance, that doesn’t sound like a good thing because hydrogen sulfide smells like rotten eggs and is one of the reasons why some people produce such noxious fumes when they break gases.

But surprisingly, while hydrogen sulfide smells horrible in the open air, when generated in the intestine it has many potential benefits. One of the most important is that it helps maintain the lining of the intestine, a tight cell barrier that allows the body to absorb nutrients, but also prevents bacteria and toxins from escaping into the blood.

And if bad things go wrong, they can lead to chronic inflammation, which in turn is one of the main drivers of the diseases of aging, such as arthritis, heart disease, dementia, and cancer.

Hydrogen sulfide also has its own potent and direct anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, which might explain why studies have shown it to play an important role in preserving the health of our brain, heart, liver, and other organs.

In small doses, hydrogen sulfide has also been shown to improve the efficiency of mitochondria, the “batteries” of our cells, which in turn suggests that it contributes to improved energy and cellular health.

The idea is that fecal samples from centenarians could one day be used to grow the beneficial viruses, which would then be given to people who aren’t aging as well, either as a pill or a fecal transplant.

If you don’t like that, the best thing to do is do the kinds of things that have already been shown to benefit your overall health, as well as your microbiome.

This means eating plenty of fiber-rich fruits, vegetables, and legumes, including many sulfur-rich greens, such as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, and radish, which will help increase internal production of hydrogen sulfide.

Gardening is another great way to cultivate good gut microbes, as it brings you in closer contact with the soil, which is rich in insects. This could be one of the reasons, along with exercise and spending time outdoors, that gardeners tend to live longer. Spending more time with loved ones is another proven way to help you live to a ripe old age.

A study of 117 people, published in Nature in 2019, found that those who were happily married or had many close friends had richer and more diverse microbiomes than those who lived alone or socially isolated.

So it seems that keeping in close touch with friends is also a good way to keep your microbial friends happy, be they bacteria or viruses.

I hate the sound of traffic so much that many years ago I convinced my wife, Clare, to move to a quiet, leafy road.

Even now, I use earplugs and noise canceling headphones when I travel.

Clare thinks I’m being too sensitive, so I was delighted to show her the results of a recent Swedish study that found that playing the sound of traffic on people, even at volumes as low as 40 dB (similar to talking softly in a library ) had a significant impact on their ability to concentrate and get work done.

Why faking a smile is good for your marriage

Social isolation and wearing masks during the pandemic means some of us may have gotten out of the habit of producing a smile.

That seems to be true at least in Japan, where there’s been a recent boom in classes to teach people how to do it.

Although I wouldn’t want to spend time and money on this, there is a surprising amount of evidence on the beneficial impact of a smile.

In a 2001 study conducted by the University of California, researchers analyzed photos of women taken in their 20s and found that, decades later, those who were considered to smile more naturally were happier and much more likely to have smiled. married and stay happily married than those who had not smiled. ‘t.

This is possibly because “smiling people attract happier people, and the combination may lead to a higher chance of a long-lasting marriage,” the researchers said.

But if you don’t feel like smiling, faking it in a particular way can be beneficial. New research in the journal Human Behaviour, involving more than 3,800 people, showed that imitating actors’ smiling faces in photos makes people feel happier, as does making the corners of their mouths turn up. back up using facial muscles.

But the ‘pen in the mouth’ technique, in which you hold a pen between your teeth to make the facial muscles curl into a simulated smile shape, didn’t make much of a difference.

So why faking a smile should make you feel happier? One theory is that it stimulates the amygdala, the emotional center of your brain, to release chemicals that make us feel happier.

Whatever the explanation, the old saying rings true: “Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone.”