The Paleo Diet May Age You!

There was an interesting article in New Scientist on 28 September 2020 which looked at various diets and how they affected your biological age. The study by Viome (a California based company that sells test kits to measure gut bacteria) used a new way to calculate biological age using the bacteria in our gut. The company analysed 90,000 stool samples and came up with a strong finding that those that follow the Paleo Diet are nearly two years older than those not on the diet. It must be stressed that the above finding may be due to the fact that those on the Paleo Diet have poor health to begin with and may have sought it out to improve their health. Regardless the information is interesting. My personal thoughts on the paleo diet and why there may be a difference came up with these points:

1. Those following the Paleo Diet may not be getting enough fibre and other key fruits that our gut microbiome would use as food.
2. Those on the Paleo Diet may be eating too much meat which could adversely affect the health of there gut bacteria.

It is important to point out that the Micriobiome method is new and thus any results whilst interesting need to be validated and tested further.