5 Gut Health Mistakes A Brain Ageing Expert Would Never Make

Expert comment provided by Dr Hariom Yadav, an associate professor of neurosurgery and brain repair, who looks at how gut health affects ageing. He is also a scientific advisory board member at WonderBiotics.

You probably already know that good gut health can make everything from your mood to your immune system better.

Some studies have suggested that changes to your gut could reveal dementia risk years before diagnosis, too.

And microbiome researcher Dr Hariom Yadav recently published some research which looked at how microbiome imbalances might affect brain ageing (neurodegeneration).

Here, we asked Dr Yadav to share why our diet might affect how our minds age, some gut health mistakes he’d never make if he wanted to keep his brain younger for longer, and what we can do to make our odds better.

Dr Yadav said, “people always ask me about the brain – memory, focus, dementia risk – and they expect me to talk about brain exercises or supplements. But I always tell them, start with your gut.”

He said that some foods can create weaknesses in our gut lining, leading to inflammation.

“And where does that inflammation go? It goes everywhere – but the organ that suffers the most, the organ that is most sensitive to inflammation, is your brain. It slows down your neurons. It mimics sleep. That afternoon fog you feel? That is actually a punch to your brain.”

He added, “If you are eating those foods three times a day, every day, for years and years, you are throwing punch after punch at your brain. And one day, those punches add up. That is cognitive decline. That is dementia risk. That is your brain ageing faster than it should.”

Dr Yadev said “the mistakes I see people making, over and over” are:

“These are the biggest gut lining destroyers. They disrupt your microbiome, they open up your gut barrier, and they flood your system with inflammation,” he said.

“If you feel sleepy after lunch, do not ignore it. Do not normalise it. Your body is telling you something. Listen to it.”

“Your microbiome is like a garden. If you are not putting in fibre, fermented foods, diverse plant-based foods – you are starving the very bacteria that protect your gut lining and regulate your brain communication.”

“Timing matters enormously. Late-night eating, skipping meals, irregular eating patterns – all of these disrupt the gut-brain conversation and throw off the signalling that tells you when to start and stop eating.”

“Stress directly damages gut integrity. The gut-brain axis works both ways – a stressed brain creates a leaky gut, and a leaky gut stresses the brain. It becomes a vicious cycle.”

Aside from not making these gut “mistakes,” Dr Yadav told us that eating healthily can make a huge difference.

“When we talk about ageing, people often feel helpless. They think, well, my genes are my genes. My age is my age. There is nothing I can do. But the gut? The microbiome? That is one of the most modifiable systems in the entire human body,” the expert told us.

“I would say conservatively, 60 to 70% of your brain ageing trajectory is modifiable through gut health strategies. Biotics – prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics – dietary diversity, meal timing, stress management – these are not small things. These are powerful, evidence-backed levers that we can pull every single day.”