Yogurt Probiotics and Longevity

We'd all like to live to 100. Have you set a goal to living longer, retain youthful enthusiasm and have greater vitality well into old age? It's certainly a worthy goal. We may not all live to 100, but there's many things we can do to live longer.

Exactly 100 years ago, the connection between consuming yogurt and longevity was established. This lens explores one of the many connections between probiotics and health. In this case, the consumption of yogurt.

Zaro Agha is believed to be the oldest person in modern times. Zaro, a Turk who lived to 162 years, was credited by Time Magazine as attaining the title of the world's oldest man. He was born two years before the signing of the American Declaration of Independence, and lived until 1934.

He attributed his longevity to eating massive amounts of yogurt all his life. He stayed physically active. . Zaro worked as a porter in Istanbul, a physically demanding job which he held for 100 years. Zaro was the subject of much scientific and popular curiosity.

The connection between eating yogurt and living a long healthy life was first seriously studied and promoted at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Russian biologist Ilya Mechnikoff in his treatise entitled "The Prolongation of Life".

Metchnikoff was intrigued that Bulgarian peasants lived much longer than other peoples. He theorized that it was their consumption of highly cultured food, particularly large quantities of yogurt, that was responsible for the longevity. He thought that if a person ate lots of yogurt they could live to be 150.

Metchnikoff established a relationship between disease and harmful bacteria in the bowel, and postulated that friendly bacteria which are in yogurt (probiotics) can neutralize the disease causing bacteria and thus prolong the normal lifespan.

Dr. Methnikoff shared the 1908 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine with Paul Ehrlich for his breakthroughs in understanding the human immune system. He identified the primary bacteria used in the production of yogurt, naming it Lactbacillus Bulgaricus, in honor of the yogurt loving Bulgarians that he studied.

Long before the publishing of Metchinkoff's theories, yogurt had been considered a miracle food by many ancient cultures that were aware of its curative powers. Ancient medicinal uses of yogurt were for curing dysentery and all stomach swellings, purifying the body and skin, arousing the sex drive and, of course, prolonging life.

Today there are still many cases of old men and women in the Caucasus region who have eaten yogurt every day of their lives and are well over 100 years in age. However, their longevity is not attributed to yogurt alone, but also eating other healthy foods, and staying physically active.