Critical factors behind the development of physical frailty in aging humans and other mammals are possibly avoidable with development of a moderate jones for sharp cheddar cheese
This is stellar despite being an n-of-2. My partner and I can attest to similar changes, though ours was a general elimination diet dense in plant matter, meats, fish, and fats.
Sorry for the delay in responding -- had some vegetable sets I had to get in the ground, and wanted a little time to figure out how to provide the most all around useful response to your comment.
First off, for people in good health, the factors that lead to and maintain muscle growth usually act in concert with other body systems to simultaneously reduce excess body fat. So, it is not surprising that you and your partner experienced the same antithetical fat-muscle effects when addressing other limiting factors formerly reducing your general level of good health.
Increasing age, however, gradually tends to pull people wholesale away from a state of good health, and eventually things like increasing general nutrient density in the daily diet no longer quite "does the trick" for them any more as far as reclaiming and maintaining a biologically younger health state. That's the possible significance of our n=2 geezers experiment -- it suggests that a major upstream cause of this failure to continue to thrive in older years might be age-related polyamine depletion. Again, as you might recall, mammalian bodies become less and less able to produce their own polyamines as they age, and have to rely more and more on dietary means of compensating for this loss of biochemical synthesis ability.
What the results of our small experiment provisionally suggests is that -- at least for older, naturally polyamine-deficient people eating something like the average American diet -- focusing on moderately upping their putrescine and spermidine intake can markedly reverse or slow down the bone and muscle loss typical of aging, and also help reverse the fat accumulation that also comes with that increasing age.
Interestingly, there's some out-in-left-field external evidence that indicates that our short-term (4+ months) experimental results might be onto something very significant. There's a recent (2023) paper published in "Nature Scientific Reports" (Mendelian randomization analyses reveal causal relationships between the human microbiome and longevity: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-31115-8), that shows two very widely separated centenarian populations -- one in Finland and one in China -- are uniquely marked by the anomalously high presence of the non-colonizing bacterial species, Lactococcus lactis, in their intestinal microbiome. Lactococcus lactis is, in fact, the bacteria that makes aged cheddar cheese "sharp", and fermented vegetables like cabbage "sour" -- and it is also the bacteria that produces the polyamines putrescine and spermidine in abundance as a by-product of their bacterial growth within the cheese or fermented vegetable.
The significance of the "non-colonizing" label pertaining to Lactococcus lactis is that for the 100+ year old geezers to present reseaarchers with stool samples enriched in this particular bacterial species means that spermidine- and putrescine-rich foods like sharp cheese or kim-chi are still a consistent and important part of their daily diet -- otherwise these pass-through (non-colonizing) bacteria would not be there in their gut contents. (In mineral exploration-speak, Lactococcus lactis, is therefore a "pathfinder" for relatively high amounts of dietary spermidine and putrescine -- the bacterial presence in stool indicates spermidine and putrescine are both being dietarily introduced into these very old people in relatively concentrated and high amounts.)
It would be really interesting to see photos of these centenarians, to see just how much muscle they are hanging onto at their advanced age.
Finally, speaking of "pathfinders", the amount of skeletal muscle mass on an older person serves as a medical proxy for the state of health of all their other organs -- the development of conditions like sarcopenia, for example, indicate that all other unseen tissues in the body are also declining. General organ failure is a terminal circumstance, hard to dance to.
This is excellent and provides much to think on — and chew on. I may add sauerkraut back to my diet with longevity on my mind. Thank you. More studies/photos of centenarians would be valued indeed.
Be interesting to see if adding sauerkraut back to your diet boosts muscle growth and strength (getting close to 40 is when human enzyme systems start lagging, so you may already be losing a bit of ground to the aging process that might be 'corrected' by the bacterial by-products found in fermented cabbage).
This is stellar despite being an n-of-2. My partner and I can attest to similar changes, though ours was a general elimination diet dense in plant matter, meats, fish, and fats.
Sorry for the delay in responding -- had some vegetable sets I had to get in the ground, and wanted a little time to figure out how to provide the most all around useful response to your comment.
First off, for people in good health, the factors that lead to and maintain muscle growth usually act in concert with other body systems to simultaneously reduce excess body fat. So, it is not surprising that you and your partner experienced the same antithetical fat-muscle effects when addressing other limiting factors formerly reducing your general level of good health.
Increasing age, however, gradually tends to pull people wholesale away from a state of good health, and eventually things like increasing general nutrient density in the daily diet no longer quite "does the trick" for them any more as far as reclaiming and maintaining a biologically younger health state. That's the possible significance of our n=2 geezers experiment -- it suggests that a major upstream cause of this failure to continue to thrive in older years might be age-related polyamine depletion. Again, as you might recall, mammalian bodies become less and less able to produce their own polyamines as they age, and have to rely more and more on dietary means of compensating for this loss of biochemical synthesis ability.
What the results of our small experiment provisionally suggests is that -- at least for older, naturally polyamine-deficient people eating something like the average American diet -- focusing on moderately upping their putrescine and spermidine intake can markedly reverse or slow down the bone and muscle loss typical of aging, and also help reverse the fat accumulation that also comes with that increasing age.
Interestingly, there's some out-in-left-field external evidence that indicates that our short-term (4+ months) experimental results might be onto something very significant. There's a recent (2023) paper published in "Nature Scientific Reports" (Mendelian randomization analyses reveal causal relationships between the human microbiome and longevity: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-31115-8), that shows two very widely separated centenarian populations -- one in Finland and one in China -- are uniquely marked by the anomalously high presence of the non-colonizing bacterial species, Lactococcus lactis, in their intestinal microbiome. Lactococcus lactis is, in fact, the bacteria that makes aged cheddar cheese "sharp", and fermented vegetables like cabbage "sour" -- and it is also the bacteria that produces the polyamines putrescine and spermidine in abundance as a by-product of their bacterial growth within the cheese or fermented vegetable.
The significance of the "non-colonizing" label pertaining to Lactococcus lactis is that for the 100+ year old geezers to present reseaarchers with stool samples enriched in this particular bacterial species means that spermidine- and putrescine-rich foods like sharp cheese or kim-chi are still a consistent and important part of their daily diet -- otherwise these pass-through (non-colonizing) bacteria would not be there in their gut contents. (In mineral exploration-speak, Lactococcus lactis, is therefore a "pathfinder" for relatively high amounts of dietary spermidine and putrescine -- the bacterial presence in stool indicates spermidine and putrescine are both being dietarily introduced into these very old people in relatively concentrated and high amounts.)
It would be really interesting to see photos of these centenarians, to see just how much muscle they are hanging onto at their advanced age.
Finally, speaking of "pathfinders", the amount of skeletal muscle mass on an older person serves as a medical proxy for the state of health of all their other organs -- the development of conditions like sarcopenia, for example, indicate that all other unseen tissues in the body are also declining. General organ failure is a terminal circumstance, hard to dance to.
This is excellent and provides much to think on — and chew on. I may add sauerkraut back to my diet with longevity on my mind. Thank you. More studies/photos of centenarians would be valued indeed.
Be interesting to see if adding sauerkraut back to your diet boosts muscle growth and strength (getting close to 40 is when human enzyme systems start lagging, so you may already be losing a bit of ground to the aging process that might be 'corrected' by the bacterial by-products found in fermented cabbage).