The intestinal flora and its great influence on mitophagy and your age.
We show you 3 ways to improve both!
Have you ever heard of mitophagy?
Mitophagy is one of the main elements when it comes to living longer in a healthy body that radiates the energy we desire every day. Our intestinal flora plays a major role in this. Find out how you can boost both.
Image by: Karolina Grabowska
Your intestine is more than just a digestive organ,
it is your life center
There are days when we just don’t feel in our energy. Be it that we were sick or just had a stressful time. But there are also those days when we feel unmotivated for a longer period of time, listless and lacking in energy, just barely getting through the day.
Of course, this can have many reasons, but your first attention should be on your intestinal flora. Because it is your center when it comes to absorbing and processing nutrients. Those that have an impact on your energy, but also on your age.
300 to 400 trillion microorganisms enter the intestinal flora, an almost unimaginable number. Therefore, it is not surprising that we are not in our energy when they are imbalanced. The intestinal flora has a great impact on your immune system, your mitophagy, and therefore your overall energy and aging process.
Once again, we can only appeal to place a very special focus on the intestinal flora and to nurture and care for it. Integrating foods and a lifestyle that keeps the intestinal flora in balance is thus one of the most important points.
How to do it? Find out here!
The intestinal flora influences your energy and age more than you imagine!
The microorganisms of the intestinal flora play a big role when it comes to your mood, sleep, energy, and especially your age and the aging process.
Not only does it play a big role in digesting food, but our gut and its gut flora are also a protective shield and control the nutrients that enter our body, but much more.
The intestinal flora has an influence on our hormones, our mitochondria, and the associated Mitophagy (a special form of autophagy) and thus directly on cell renewal. But also on our brain, which is influenced by the Gut-Brain-Axis is in close contact with our intestines and thus significantly influences your mood as well as your skin, which is the mirror of healthy intestinal flora.
You can read more here Healthy intestine – beautiful skin.
What is mitophagy and how can you promote it!
Mitophagy is a special form of autophagy and takes place in our mitochondria. Without them, we would look pretty old and live a relatively short life.
Mitophagy removes damaged mitochondria and their cellular debris, promoting the preservation of healthy mitochondria, which are an important component when it comes to targeted cell death. Damaged mitochondria that are not broken down cause our cells to turn into senescent cells or so-called zombie cells.
One way to promote mitophagy is called urolithin A, which is a metabolite that can directly affect mitophagy. But like so many things that are good and important for us, this doesn’t happen all by itself. The basic base for the formation of urolithin A is ellagitannins.
Ellagitannins can only be converted to urolithin A in a healthy intestine. Since it needs certain bacteria for this. If your intestinal flora is out of balance, it cannot perform its extensive tasks.
Mitophagy is a special form of autophagy and takes place in our mitochondria. Without them, we would look pretty old and live a relatively short life.
When the “bad” intestinal bacteria start to displace the good bacteria, the balance in the intestinal microbiome is disturbed and thus not only the formation of urolithin A is disturbed.
It also comes to the disruption of hormones and other metabolic processes that have an impact on your age and energy.
A healthy intestinal flora and a healthy digestive system ensure that all metabolic processes run optimally. This increases your body’s ability to absorb nutrients and energy from food in such a way that our bodies can use them optimally.
A healthy gut helps you get as many nutrients as possible from your food and make the most of every bite.
to increase the intestinal flora and mitophagy!
1. the right food
To increase your mitophagy, we know that we need urolithin A, and the basic base of that, in turn, is ellagitannins.
Ellagitannins can be absorbed well from food, provided the intestinal flora is healthy.
The nice thing is, these are foods that are very easy to incorporate into your diet on a daily basis or establish into a routine. One of the foods that contain a lot of ellagitannins is pomegranates. 300 ml of pomegranate juice not only provides you with sufficient ellagitannins but also generally maintains the intestinal flora.
You can also use pomegranate seeds wonderfully in food. Here is our recipe for a summer pomegranate salad.
Other foods rich in ellagitannins include. Walnuts, raspberries, and mulberries. Generally berries of any kind only in different concentrations.
Image by: Engin Akyurt
2. eat more fermented foods
Now that you know which foods contain ellagitannins, they also need to be converted into urolithin A. This is only possible if your intestine has a healthy intestinal flora that contains all the necessary bacteria.
Fermented foods are at the top of our list when it comes to keeping our gut flora well-nourished. Because they especially support the good bacteria that we need. A large number and variety of microorganisms in the gut can prevent bad bacteria from multiplying and disrupting the immune system or causing inflammation and dysfunction.
During fermentation, microbes such as bacteria and yeasts feed on the sugars in food. Acids such as lactic acid or acetic acid and even alcohol are by-products of this process that can contribute to preservation, change flavor, and even increase the digestibility and nutrient content of food. Common fermented foods include sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, and our Mexican summer variety Tepaché, a kind of kombucha made from pineapple.
3. reduction of negative stress
The intestinal flora is not only influenced by our diet. Through our gut-brain axis, stress also has a big impact on it. It has been shown that an unhealthy gut can lead to depression, negative feelings, and stress, but also the other way around. Stress hormones that fire us up in a steady state can also throw our gut out of balance.
Therefore it is important not to avoid stress completely, because a certain amount of positive stress is very good for us, but to reduce and control the negative stress we are often under.
One way to control stress is to have morning routines that focus only on you. Because the way you start the day is the way it will be. This means, if you already rush in the morning, you are stressed and under pressure for the rest of the day.
Our 5 morning rituals for longer life help you have a less stressful day.
What can you take with you!
As you can see, it is not that difficult to do something good for the intestinal flora, and thus not only to promote your health in general, but also to stay young longer and to postpone old age. You will notice this not only externally, but also internally. You develop age-related diseases much later, you have more energy and a younger appearance. It doesn’t take much to do that.
