The American Paradigm of Aging
In every culture, the concept of aging carries certain expectations and ideas, including generally accepted changes within the body. Essentially, what is common is considered normal.
The American experience has taught us that it is normal to experience a myriad of age-related changes, including:
- Deficits in our hearing and eyesight
- Loss of height due to spinal compression
- Alterations to our skin elasticity and coloration
- Memory lapses or slower cognitive processing
These are just a few of the common, and therefore normalized, parts of aging we have become accustomed to. While we wouldn’t suggest that aging can be avoided altogether, it is just as unwise to consider every possible symptom and degree of severity of the aging process to be completely inevitable.
As a functional medicine practitioner, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the difference between the physiological changes of aging that are fixed and those that are impacted by outside forces.
The value of a person never lies in the smoothness of their skin or the perfection of their eyesight. But it is certainly understandable when you encounter patients struggling to come to terms with different aspects of the aging process. To this end, as a functional medicine practitioner, it’s important to familiarize yourself with the difference between the physiological changes of aging that are fixed and those that are impacted, positively or negatively, by outside forces.
A few prime examples are toxic exposure and gut health, which have far-reaching and profound effects on the body’s systems.
Aging Symptoms as a Function of Toxicity and Gut Health
As you know, the whole purpose of functional medicine is to consider the well-being of patients holistically.
To do this for your aging patients, you must first learn to differentiate between symptoms of aging that are irrevocable and those that can be better mediated through appropriate lifestyle interventions and custom treatment protocols. This begins with a complete workup for your patient to determine what signs of aging they are experiencing. You must even include signs they have not taken note of before they engaged with you.
Once your patient has described the various health concerns that they have been experiencing as they have advanced in age, it is your job to educate them on which of those concerns can be reversed or addressed with lifestyle changes. The starting point is to begin with healing the gut and mitigating or eliminating toxic exposures.
Common Age-Related Gut Symptoms
The gut microbiome naturally changes as we age, but a committed patient has an excellent chance of moderating these changes by working with their provider to understand how to nourish a healthy gut, regardless of age.
Of commonly reported aging symptoms, those most clearly connected to the health of the gut microbiome include:
- Constipation
- Cognitive decline
- Higher cholesterol
- Increased blood pressure
- Decreased immunity or suppressed immune system
- Increased risk of degenerative disease, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s
Research reported in Science Direct specifically calls out aging as a primary risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases. However, it also notes a distinct causal link between the oral and gut microbiome, the amyloid-tau interaction, and the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
Given the broad array of aging symptoms that can be tied to gut health, it is important to learn how the microbiome changes with age.
Common Symptoms of Toxicity
Similarly, toxic exposure can cause adverse health issues that would be easy to write off as normal age-related changes. For example, heavy metals can accumulate in the body over a lifetime. Additionally, toxin levels can compound due to repeated and ongoing chemical exposures (think pesticides or industrial cleaning products).
Toxic exposure can cause adverse health issues that would be easy to write off as normal age-related changes.
As these toxins build up over time, health effects may have either a gradual or a sudden onset as a result. These symptoms can include:
- Decreased immunity
- Balance difficulties
- Cognitive difficulty
- Memory issues
- Arthritis
Ordering a blood toxicology lab can help reveal which of these symptoms are toxin-induced and which are truly age-related.
Gut Health in Every Life Stage
There are, of course, many changes to the body from birth through senescence, but the gut microbiome represents a significant element of these changes.
At birth, an infant’s gut is initially colonized by many of the mother’s microbes, and it develops rapidly in the first few years of life. The infant has a unique microbiome but very little diversity in the microbes present.
From the onset of consuming solid food and throughout childhood and puberty, an individual’s microbiome becomes more complex. As a result, it becomes increasingly differentiated from the microbiomes of others, including those within their community or even their own family.
Most older adults experience a loss of gut microbes that are usually found in a healthy gut microbiome.
The microbiome tends toward increased stability in adulthood, although temporary fluctuations are common in response to bouts of illness, changes in environment, dietary changes, and other variations in life. However, most older adults experience a loss of gut microbes that are usually found in a healthy gut microbiome.
Interestingly, very long-lived individuals have been found to have greater diversity in their gut microbiome than other seniors. The potential for ongoing study is endless, but it seems clear that microbiome diversity is at the center of healthy aging.
With this in mind, nourishing the microbiome gains new prominence as a key for both the quantity of years in a life and the quality of those years, especially the sunset years.
Why Neither Detoxes nor Probiotics Are a Silver Bullet for Health
The most common approach to trying to create a healthy microbiome involves adding a routine probiotic to the patient’s health regimen. But what if the force causing the most damage to the gut is the day-to-day toxins that we all encounter?
Identifying Toxins—Necessary but Not Sufficient
Your aging patients are counting on you to look beyond easy—but ultimately ineffective—answers. This means it is crucial to identify sources of toxins in your patients’ lives. Modern life involves certain inescapable exposure to toxins, but reducing and remediating this exposure can make all the difference for a life that is both long and enjoyable, unhampered by disease and dysfunction.
More often than not, detoxes make more money for their promoters than sense for their consumers.
At the same time, it is important to avoid rushing to detoxification methods that are unproven or ineffective or even increase danger in many cases. There are times when establishing a protocol to remove existing toxins from a patient’s body is the right choice. But more often than not, detoxes make more money for their promoters than sense for their consumers. And procedures like heavy-metal chelation may carry more risk than reward for the average person.
It is natural for your patients to have some concerns when they hear that they may have toxins in their systems. This makes it all the more important for you to be able to assuage their concerns without steering them toward—or worse yet, scaring them into—an ill-conceived detox plan.
Why Probiotics Are Not Right for Everyone
Even if toxins are not the ultimate culprit for neurodegenerative disease, dementia, arthritis, higher cholesterol, elevated blood pressure, or other symptoms for a particular patient, a probiotic may not be the answer either.
Dietary fiber is far more effective than probiotics at improving the diversity and health of the gut.
Truth be told, probiotics are an overly simplistic approach to nourishing the gut microbiome. The roughly 100 trillion microbes that comprise the microbiome are minimally complemented by a probiotic. In fact, dietary fiber is far more effective at improving the diversity and health of the gut.
Building Healthy Longevity by Stimulating Gut Health and Tempering Toxins
From the first visit and initial assessment of their health and concerns to a thorough workup and bloodwork and finally to a customized treatment protocol, aging patients will benefit from a practitioner who listens well and is well-versed in how toxicity and gut microbiome changes may be the catalyst for unwanted signs of aging. Once a deeper understanding and compassion for aging patients takes root, it only remains to build the knowledge of how best to address these issues.
Your aging patients are counting on you to look beyond easy—but ultimately ineffective—answers.
Fortunately, we now have unprecedented resources to learn about functional medicine best practices and protocols at our fingertips. Among these resources, the Kharrazian Institute is pleased to host a Clinical Master Class taught by Randy Vawdrey, NP-C. Dr. Vawdrey will open the world of neurological disorders and neurodegenerative disease and the functional medicine practitioner’s role in treating these concerns for their patients.
Randy Vawdrey graduated from BYU in 1998, and he has spent his career focusing on traumatic brain injury, long-haul COVID, neurological disorders, neurodegenerative disease, and the prevention of dementia.
