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Healthy aging starts in the gut

Your gut is the body's pharmacy. With age, it runs low.

The bacteria in your gut make molecules your body cannot make on its own. They guard the brain, steady blood sugar, recycle estrogen and keep immune cells young. Below: what they make, the studies that show it, and what age takes away.

Explore what your gut makes

What the pharmacy makes.

Tap a part of the body to see what the gut does for it.

Brain

Guards the brain

Makes Short-chain fatty acids (butyrate, propionate) · indoles from tryptophan · DOPAC, a dopamine metabolite

  • Mice raised without gut bacteria have a leaky blood–brain barrier. Give them a normal gut community and the barrier tightens again.
  • The brain's own immune cells, the microglia, need short-chain fatty acids from gut bacteria to mature and work properly.
  • Indoles that gut bacteria make from tryptophan reach the brain's astrocytes and hold down inflammation there.
  • In 1,054 people, butyrate-producing bacteria went with higher quality of life, and the gut's capacity to make DOPAC went with better mental well-being.
  • In old mice, gut microbes from young donors reset brain immunity and eased age-related memory and learning deficits.

Feeds it Fiber (short-chain fatty acids) · protein foods rich in tryptophan (indoles)

Sources

Braniste 2014, Sci Transl Med (mice) · Erny 2015, Nat Neurosci (mice) · Rothhammer 2016, Nat Med · Valles-Colomer 2019, Nat Microbiol · Boehme 2021, Nat Aging (mice) · Reviews: Loh 2024, Signal Transduct Target Ther · Ji 2025, Biomol Biomed

Metabolism

Steadies blood sugar

Makes Propionate and butyrate · the signals that release GLP-1

  • Short-chain fatty acids from gut bacteria trigger GLP-1, the gut hormone behind today's blockbuster diabetes drugs.
  • Propionate and butyrate switch on sugar production in the gut wall itself, which steadies blood sugar through a gut–brain circuit.
  • In people with type 2 diabetes, a high-fiber diet that boosted short-chain-fatty-acid makers improved HbA1c, partly through more GLP-1.
  • In 60 overweight adults, propionate delivered to the colon for 24 weeks kept insulin sensitivity from declining.
  • People with insulin resistance carry gut bacteria that leave more sugar behind in the gut. Bacteria linked to insulin sensitivity improved insulin resistance in mice.

Feeds it Soluble fiber from oats, legumes and vegetables

Sources

Tolhurst 2012, Diabetes · De Vadder 2014, Cell (mice) · Zhao 2018, Science · Chambers 2015, Gut · Takeuchi 2023, Nature

Women's health

Recycles estrogen

Makes β-glucuronidase enzymes that reactivate estrogen · equol, made from soy

  • Gut bacteria carry enzymes that free estrogen from its inactive, bound form so the body can reuse it. Researchers call this set of genes the estrobolome.
  • After menopause, gut diversity falls and that recycling weakens, which lowers circulating estrogen.
  • In 2,300 people, postmenopausal women's gut communities were less diverse than premenopausal women's and moved closer to men's.
  • Equol, made by gut bacteria from soy isoflavones, acts on estrogen receptor β. Only one third to one half of people carry the bacteria that make it.

Feeds it Soy foods (equol, for people who carry equol makers) · fiber

Sources

Ervin 2019, J Biol Chem · Wang 2025, Front Endocrinol · Peters 2022, mSystems · Setchell & Clerici 2010, J Nutr · Mayo 2019, Nutrients

Immunity

Keeps immune cells young

Makes Butyrate and the other short-chain fatty acids

  • Butyrate trains regulatory T cells, the immune cells that keep inflammation in check. Three papers showed it in the same month.
  • With age, short-chain fatty acids from the gut fall as senescent T cells build up. Butyrate held back senescence in aged T cells and lowered the inflammatory signals IL-6 and IL-8.
  • In old mice, butyrate-rich gut extracts from young mice stopped senescent cells from building up.
  • Mice kept free of gut bacteria skip the rise in blood inflammation that comes with age. Housing them with old mice brings it on.

Feeds it Fiber, especially resistant starch and whole grains

Sources

Furusawa 2013, Nature · Arpaia 2013, Nature · Smith 2013, Science (all three in mice) · Rees 2025, Aging Cell · Thevaranjan 2017, Cell Host Microbe (mice)

Aging

Rejuvenates

Makes Urolithin A · unusual bile acids · the signals of a young gut community

  • In mice, gut microbes from young donors rejuvenated aged blood stem cells.
  • Gut bacteria turn the polyphenols in pomegranate, berries and nuts into urolithin A, which renews worn-out mitochondria. About 40% of people made it from a glass of pomegranate juice.
  • Taken directly for four months, urolithin A raised muscle strength by about 12% in middle-aged adults.
  • Centenarians' guts are rich in bacteria that make unusual bile acids. One of them kills drug-resistant pathogens.
  • In more than 9,000 people, the way the gut community changed in later life predicted four-year survival.

Feeds it Pomegranate, berries, walnuts (urolithin A) · a varied, plant-rich diet

Sources

Zeng 2023, Blood (mice) · Ryu 2016, Nat Med · Singh 2022, Eur J Clin Nutr · Singh 2022, Cell Rep Med · Sato 2021, Nature · Wilmanski 2021, Nat Metab

One gut hormone became a blockbuster drug. Your gut and its bacteria make a whole catalog of signals.

What age takes away.

With age, the bacteria that make these signals thin out. Five findings:

  • The shared core shrinks. The bacterial families most adults share fall steadily in abundance from adulthood to age 105–109. (Biagi 2016, Curr Biol)
  • Losing the community goes with frailty. In 178 older people, losing the gut community typical of people living at home went with frailty. (Claesson 2012, Nature)
  • Butyrate falls. Short-chain fatty acids from the gut drop as senescent immune cells build up. (Rees 2025, Aging Cell)
  • An old gut drives inflammation. In mice, an aged gut community alone is enough to raise inflammation in the blood. (Thevaranjan 2017, Cell Host Microbe)
  • Modern life adds to it. Of 1,231 gut species humans carried for tens of thousands of years, 60% are now rare in or absent from industrialized guts. (Carter 2026, Nature)

Eating well is the floor, and nobody should skip fiber, protein and plants. But a perfect diet feeds only the bacteria that are still there.

Review: Ghosh 2022, Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol

Where Trilliome comes in.

Probiotics can deliver only about 1% of gut bacteria. The ones that matter most for healthy aging die exposed to air, so nobody can put them in a capsule. We reach the other 99%. Our plant-derived actives wake up the good bacteria you already have, and they make the body's own medicine again.

Our work spans three areas of healthy aging:

  • Brain. Our lead program targets a keystone species that protected neurons in mouse studies. The European Patent Office's search opinion noted it is "…plausible that a composition able to promote the abundance of A. butyriciproducens may be effective for treating cognitive impairment due to aging and Alzheimer's disease."
  • Metabolic health. Our first product is planned for 2027.
  • Women's health. Next from the same discovery engine.

How our science works Get the newsletter

Field-level science from published studies, linked on each card and in the section above. These are not claims about Trilliome products.