Posted on 10/30/2024 9:25:27 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
The mucosal layer in the small intestine degrades with age in rats, allowing digestive enzymes to slowly escape and leak into organs outside the intestine, including the liver, lung, heart, kidney and brain.
As the enzymes are unable to distinguish tissues from food, they break down collagen and destroy many receptors on cell membranes, such as the insulin receptor which leads to type 2 diabetes. The researchers call this process autodigestion.
Digestion requires powerful enzymes that are synthesized in the pancreas. They are delivered from the pancreas into the lumen of the small intestine, where they digest all the food we eat.
A barrier consisting of epithelial cells with a thin slimy carbohydrate layer, known as the mucosal layer, keeps these digestive enzymes from escaping outside of the intestine. But the thin mucosal layer can be damaged by the food that passes through the intestine. While the barrier is capable of repairing itself, over a lifetime, these repairs become less and less effective.
Researchers compared the guts of 4-month-old and 24-month-old rats. The team also looked for digestive enzymes in the organs of both sets of rats. They found that the older rats had high levels of digestive enzymes in their organs which were undetectable in young ones. The gut barrier was also an order of magnitude more damaged in older versus younger rats.
What can be done to minimize autodigestion–and therefore aging? In a study of 24-month-old rats, equivalent to human centenarians, the team blocked one of the digestive enzymes, pancreatic trypsin, using a two-week oral treatment with a serine protease inhibitor, tranexamic acid. This was designed to prevent autodigestion but not normal digestion. This intervention reduced the accumulation of pancreatic digestive enzymes in organs outside the intestine and allowed repair of damaged tissue in the older rat population.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
The effects in older mice were given it for just two weeks, and their organs’ damage was repaired by the body.
This is an Over The Counter supplement in Japan, according to Wikipedia. It is similar to lysine.
Well, I think I might abstain from eating old rats then.
.
If digestive enzymes are ‘leaking’...
...so is bacteria.
These are the brilliant minds performing medical research.
Feel better?
/s
ROFL!! Good one. I never ate young ones either.
I had a relative, a doc, who really got into the gut health thing in later life.
Also…. https://www.naturalnews.com/2024-10-30-midlife-exercise-reverses-years-of-inactivity.html
“has it got any rat’ in it’? nah, na, well a lit’le, actually qui’ a lo’t”
“Apalling”
(paraphrase from Monty Python riff on the topic.
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