Those who move and care for their bodies and thus stay young as long as possible normally live to an old age.
But this does not seem to apply to the intestinal flora.
If we want to grow old healthily, it should better not be what it was in our youth.
It sounds paradoxical: every human being - whether big or small, young or old - consists largely of non-human beings.
Because around 40 trillion bacteria populate his intestines, which is about ten trillion more than his own body cells.
That this army of foreigners can have a positive influence on the health of its host is obvious and has been proven many times.
But studies also show that the intestinal flora must be flexible for this.
An international team of systems and microbiologists analyzed the intestinal microbiome of over 9,000 adults between the ages of 18 and 101 and compared its composition with the health status and death rate of the test subjects.
The result of this comparison showed that precisely those men and women were the healthiest whose intestinal flora had changed the most and had a unique consistency typical of the owner.