Our diet shapes our health and appearance, and it surely affects how long we can live.
A new discovery shows that yeast can surprisingly affect our aging and potentially make us live longer.
Let's find out more about it.
More about the research
Scientists at the Babraham Institute have been studying yeast to find a link between diet and aging.
They discovered that making dietary changes, rather than restricting calories, can lead to healthier aging.
This research challenges the idea that getting older always means becoming less healthy.
Yeast and aging
In the past, it was believed that eating very few calories could make you healthier as you age, but only if you did it your whole life.
However, this new research in yeast suggests that changing your diet early in life can also have a positive impact on aging.
The scientists used yeast in their study because it shares some similarities with animals and humans when it comes to aging.
They changed the yeast's diet from glucose to galactose and found that many of the usual signs of aging didn't happen.
The cells that ate galactose stayed healthy even as they got older, which means they didn't experience the usual decline in health toward the end of their lives.
However, this dietary change worked best when the yeast cells were young.
Why it might be important
The study offers a more achievable way to improve healthy aging through diet, compared to extreme calorie restriction, but more research is needed to understand how these findings apply to humans.
