A Very Accessible New Way To Regenerate Your Gut

In fact, a plurality of ways:

Polyamines to the rescue

Polyamines are small molecules (by which we mean: small even by molecular standards) made of more than one amino acid. They occur naturally in our bodies, and in many of the foods we eat.

We’ve written about some polyamines before:

• Firstly: Spermidine For Longevity
• Recently: Spermine vs Alzheimer’s & Parkinson’s!

No, not all polyamines have sperm-themed names, but that’s just where several important ones were first identified. What can we say; apparently scientists just loved looking at that stuff in the 1800s!

Another important polyamine has the delightful name putrescine, whose name comes from…

The smell of death: evidence that putrescine elicits threat management mechanisms

Scientists (Dr. Nadja Gebert et al.) have identified why these polyamines and more should ideally form a good part of our diet.

Specifically, they found that after intestinal damage, the body increases its own polyamine levels, such as spermidine and putrescine to support protein homeostasis and regeneration. Upon testing further, they found that boosting the polyamine metabolism with dietary interventions and/or oral supplementation (which one might consider a dietary intervention in any case) restores regenerative capacity in aged intestinal cells.

In other words, the aging intestine remains capable of repair at the molecular level—it just needs the right molecular trigger to kick-start its regenerative capacity again.

And there’s more! Per the study authors,

❝By analyzing proteins and metabolites in intestinal tissue and conducting experiments to show how the intestine recovers after damage caused by 5-fluorouracil, we were able to determine that the reduced regenerative capacity of older intestinal cells is not an unavoidable effect of aging. Rather, it is directly related to a disruption in proteostasis.

Aging is not an irreversible process. If we understand how cells lose their balance—and how we can restore it—we may not be able to stop aging, but we can significantly mitigate its effects on our bodies.❞

You can read the paper in full, here: Polyamines sustain epithelial regeneration in aged intestines by modulating protein homeostasis

And if you’re wondering how to get more polyamines in your diet, then here you go:

Top 12 Food Sources Of Each Of The Most Important Polyamines

And if you’d rather go for a supplement-based approach then check out:

The Orchid That Renovates Your Gut (Gently) ← along with where to get it!

Want to learn more?

For a much more detailed overview of healing your gut, you might like this book that we reviewed a little while back:

Heal Your Gut, Save Your Brain – by Dr. Partha Nandi

Enjoy!