Older adults and healthcare professionals have limited awareness of the link between the Mediterranean diet and the gut microbiome for healthy aging

 the full paper is here.

Objectives: Strategies to improve the gut microbiome through consuming an improved diet, including adopting the Mediterranean Diet (MD), may promote healthy aging. We explored older adults’ and healthcare professionals’ (HCPs) perspectives of the MD, gut health, and microbiome for their role in healthy aging.

Design: Phenomenological qualitative.

Setting: Community-dwelling older adults and HCPs in primary and secondary care in Ireland.

Participants: Older adults (aged 55 + years), recruited through social, retirement and disease-support groups. HCPs recruited through researcher networks and professional associations.

Measurements: Semi-structured 1:1 interviews and focus groups (FGs) conducted remotely with older adults and HCPs separately. Interviews/FGs were recorded, transcribed, and coded using inductive thematic analysis.

Results: Forty-seven older adults were recruited (50% male; 49% aged 60–69 years; 28% 70 +), and 26 HCPs including dietitians (n = 8); geriatricians (n = 6); clinical therapists (n = 4); nurses, pharmacists, catering managers, and meal-delivery service coordinators (n = 2 each). Older adults considered the MD “a nice way to enjoy food,” good for cardiovascular health and longevity, but with accessibility and acceptability challenges (increased salads/fish, different food environments, socio-cultural differences). HCPs felt the MD is included in healthy eating advice, but not overtly, mostly through the promotion of mixed-fiber intake. Older adults considered “live” yogurt and probiotics, and to a lesser extent fiber, to maintain a “healthy gut,” suggesting the gut has “something to do with” cognitive and digestive health. Overall, microbiota-health effects were considered “not common knowledge” among most older adults, but becoming more topical among both professionals and the public with advancing scientific communication.

Conclusion: While “gut health” was considered important, specific effects of the MD on gut microbiota, and the significance of this for healthy aging, was under-recognized. Future efforts should explain the importance to older adults of maintaining the gut microbiota through diet, while appreciating perspectives of probiotic products and supplements.

Cholesterol, fat, and human metabolism: a microbiome-based paradigm shift

In 2014 Time Magazine reversed its position on dietary fat and CAD

At the age of 64, after a morning playing golf, president Dwight D Eisenhower had his first heart attack. As Pulitzer Prize winning author Gary Taubes describes in his book “Good Calories, Bad Calories” Eisenhower’s heart attack “constituted a learning experience on coronary artery disease (CAD).” After the event, his doctors, considered the top experts in the field, gave the public a “lucid and authoritative description of the disease itself”, followed by twice-daily press conferences held on the president’s condition. Soon, most of America, particularly middle-aged men, became intently aware of dogma promoted by these “experts”: the notion that CAD is caused by eating foods high in fat and cholesterol.

Like much of the rest of the nation, Eisenhower began to avidly lower his fat and cholesterol intake. Yet this plan of attack was counterintuitive for Eisenhower who, before his heart attack, had none of these supposed risk factors connected with CAD. His blood pressure was only seldom elevated, his weight throughout his life remained around 172 pounds (considered optimal for his height). His total cholesterol was below normal – his last measurement before the attack was 165 mg/dl, a level that heart disease specialists today consider safe. He had even quit smoking six years earlier in 1949.


[you can read the rest of this fascinating paper here: Cholesterol, fat, and human metabolism: a microbiome-based paradigm shift ]

Kefir Supplementation Modifies Gut Microbiota Composition, Reduces Physical Fatigue, and Improves Exercise Performance in Mice

one more interesting paper on the value of fermented dairy products

Kefir Supplementation Modifies Gut Microbiota Composition, Reduces Physical Fatigue, and Improves Exercise Performance in Mice

(a) Effects of kefir (KF) supplementation on principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) of the gut microbiota composition in mice based on the Bray–Curtis distance measure of samples in the relative abundance profiles of an operational taxonomic unit; (b) Effects of KF supplementation on the phylum-level gut microbiota composition of mice. Only phyla with top 10 average abundances were included, with other phyla collapsed into “Others”; the effects of KF supplementation on the phylum-level gut microbiota composition of mice in the (c) KF-1X and vehicle groups; (d) KF-2X and vehicle groups, and (e) KF-5X and vehicle groups. The cladogram was generated from the linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe) analysis, showing the most differentially abundant taxa enriched in the microbiota of mice in (c) the KF-1X (red) and vehicle (green) groups, (d) the KF-2X (red) and vehicle (green) groups, and (e) the KF-5X (red) and vehicle (green) groups. Significant differential abundances in LEfSe comparisons are sorted by p values in ascending order: vehicle (glucose water), KF-1X (2.15 g/kg/day KF), KF-2X (4.31 g/kg/day KF), and KF-5X (10.76 g/kg/day KF).

 

Abstract 

 

The present study evaluated the potential beneficial effect of kefir (KF) against fatigue. Furthermore, the composition of the gut microbiota is related to health benefits in the host; therefore, the study also investigated the effect of KF on the gut microbiota composition. Male ICR mice from four groups (n = 8 per group) were orally administered KF once daily for four weeks at 0, 2.15, 4.31, and 10.76 g/kg/day and were designated as the vehicle, KF-1X, KF-2X, and KF-5X groups, respectively. The gut microbiota was analyzed using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The results showed a significant clustering of cecum after treatment in the vehicle, KF-1X, KF-2X, and KF-5X groups. The KF-2X and KF-5X groups showed a decreased Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes ratio compared with the vehicle group. In addition, anti-fatigue activity and exercise performance were evaluated on the basis of exhaustive swimming time, forelimb grip strength, and levels of serum lactate, ammonia, glucose, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and creatine kinase (CK) after a swimming exercise. The exhaustive swimming time for the KF-1X, KF-2X, and KF-5X groups was significantly longer than that for the vehicle group, and the forelimb grip strength of the KF-1X, KF-2X, and KF-5X groups was also significantly higher than that of the vehicle group. KF supplementation also decreased serum lactate, ammonia, BUN, and CK levels after the swimming test. However, tissue glycogen content, an important energy source for exercise, increased significantly with KF supplementation. Thus, KF supplementation can alter the gut microbiota composition, improve performance, and combat physical fatigue. View Full-Text

Keywords: kefir; gut microbiota; antifatigue; exercise performance