I am snooping in the larder at a breathwork retreat in Gloucestershire when I spot an enticing black-and-gold glass bottle: “Klotho Formula, microbial complex, food supplement, made in Switzerland.” I unscrew the lid. Empty! I was hoping to pinch one, though God knows, one probiotic wasn’t going to make a difference, not even one called “Immortalis”. “What are these?” I ask our host. “Pull up a chair,” he says, stirring butter and coconut oil into his “bulletproof” coffee: a high-fat, low-carb, “clean” ketogenic diet is part of the Immortalis protocol, along with drinking water, meditation and exercise. If I want in, I’m going to have to comply.
In 2017 Marco Ruggiero, a retired professor of molecular biology, launched what we laypeople call a probiotic supplement, which contains 10 bacteria commonly found in the human microbiome, as well as vitamins D and E, chondroitin sulphate, colostrum and kefir. These work together to produce something similar to the human protein Klotho.
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We need Klotho to repair cell damage, but you can’t eat it, inject it or transplant it, and until now, no one has claimed to be able to get it into the human body. But, Ruggiero claims, the Klotho these bacteria produce in your gut will in turn, through “quantum entanglement” (when unconnected cells can communicate), instruct our bodies to make Klotho, too; not just that, his concoction will also make time slow down through “relative time dilation”, so that cells have a better chance of repairing themselves before they get damaged or mutated. In short, Ruggiero states that Klotho Formula “will induce age-reversal”. It’s Benjamin Button stuff.
Grappling with quantum physics is not normal behaviour for me, but life changes when you start communing with your microbiome. Could the science behind this bacterial brew really stand up? If so, this is the secret of eternal youth. Surely it’s rubbish? My host insists that after a year on the microbes, he is planning his 150th birthday. “All I know is I feel great, and,” he removes his beanie, “my bald patch has gone.”
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Only a few hundred people take it, including Middle Eastern and Hollywood royalty. This is fun to hear but unverifiable. The Immortalis website is password protected after the first page: “Welcome to the greatest health-science innovation in history.” There are testimonials. Francine in England: “I am 57. I feel 35 again.” Jill in San Diego, 79: “… a subtle yet powerful decrease in the jittery feeling of anxiousness and unease”.
Ruggiero, who left academia to found a Swiss company developing microbiome medicine, has touted his theories at conferences and in medical journals for some time. Is he snake-oil salesman or renegade scientist? He has done no clinical trials because he doesn’t need to - it’s only a supplement - but customers are encouraged to do before-and-after blood tests. One man described a 70 per cent reduction in his PINI score (of inflammatory markers) in three months. What’s more - shock horror - he had not been sticking to the ketogenic diet.
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I have to get on that stuff. Supplies are limited, though. The Swiss clinic can make only enough for 800 people to take it a year, and the cost is prohibitive at £5,000 for a three-month supply of two capsules daily, presented in a satin-lined mahogany box. Most people, I am told, try it for three months and then sign up for a year’s supply at £20,000. It’s got the rarity of luxury goods, the promise of a magic bullet, and, far less irrationally, it exploits the potential for healing in our gut microbiome, the place that is the future of medicine.
Our microbiome is being compromised by the increase in antibiotic-resistant bugs, and Sally Davies, chief medical advisor to the UK Government, has said we are headed for “post-antibiotic apocalypse”. The solution lies, says Eve Kalinik, nutritional therapist and author of Be Good to Your Gut, “not in antibiotics but in probiotics”. Instead of killing our microbiome, we can tweak it to fight all kinds of issues. “The research is developing on a daily basis,” she says. “In 10 years, what we know now will look Neanderthal.” The human body contains many trillions of microbes. Their interactions create vitamins, break down our food, fight infections and communicate with our genes: without a microbiome we are royally buggered. A healthy person has several hundred different species of microbes in their gut; an unhealthy person can have as few as 30.
Caroline Le Roy, a researcher at King’s College London, has co-authored several studies on the microbiome. “The microbiome has amazing potential. For example, it predicts your visceral fat mass,” she says. Like genes, it dictates who we are to the point that some have mooted that we are completely steered by this quantum universe. Before the day when doctors start prescribing medical-grade probiotics targeted to treat illnesses, she says, we will see them being prescribed alongside drugs. All drugs, not just antibiotics, including over-the-counter ones, can affect the microbiome to some extent. I tell Le Roy about Immortalis, and the claims that it can tweak the biome to create life-lengthening Klotho and help us live to 150. She laughs cynically and shrugs (she is French). “It is not impossible.” But she does not really take the claims seriously, and suggests the best thing we can do is “eat organic seasonal veg, particularly cruciferous ones, and Jerusalem artichokes - there is a lot of research into their benefits on the microbiome. Eat lots of fibre and fruit, unpasteurised cheese, nuts, healthy fats, dark chocolate…”
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And what about probiotics and “symbiotics” (with added ingredients to activate the bacteria)? Their global market has risen from nearly $15 billion in 2007 to over $40 billion in 2017. “And expected to go to $66 billion in 2024. I’m not usually a probiotic fan,” says Le Roy. “Many introduce just a few bacterial strains in large numbers, but it is getting better.” For a really complex probiotic, you can’t get better than the faecal matter of a healthy person with a diverse gut flora. Faecal Microbiota Transplant (FMT), or poo transplants, have proved effective at treating many conditions that modern medicine cannot. Says Le Roy, “If you give someone obese with type 2 diabetes an FMT from the microbiome of a skinny person, you can improve insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism.”
In the future, will a pill made of supermodel droppings help the obese? Sadly, it’s not that simple. There are hundreds of trials around the world into these transplants, and while they show hope for diabetes, obesity, gut issues, autism, cancer and liver disease, a virus that sits quietly in one person’s gut can flare up when transplanted into another’s. Nevertheless, I nag my parents to consider FMT for my learning-disabled, anxious and autistic brother, who suffers from IBS. Study after study has shown that gut problems are more common in those with mental health issues. The age of microbes for the mind, of “psychobiotics”, is coming.
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After about a week I text the nutritional therapist Rosemary Ferguson, who has helped me transition into the ketogenic diet Ruggiero insists on, saying I feel really good. “Could it be the Klotho Formula?” “How do you know it isn’t the ketogenic diet and lower alcohol intake making you feel better?” asks Ferguson, who has also been trialling Immortalis; but after one week, she too feels good. “It’s impossible to know what is the diet and what is the pills, but I have a strong ‘everything is going to be OK’ feeling.”
Ruggiero is a 63-year-old man who looks 15 years younger. He has the genial and patient delivery of a scientist who spends a lot of time trying to explain things to people who do not really understand him. “The human microbiome is involved in the development and function of all organs and systems and most notably the immune system,” he explains.
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Why Klotho, though? There are many thousands of different proteins in the human body. “Yes, and each one is important in its own way. I couldn’t work on all of them. Klotho is an age-suppressing gene whose over-expression leads to extended life span. I am expecting, together with a healthy lifestyle, it will help prevent the onset of age-related conditions. We have a number of ultra-centenarians, and what is interesting is they have no special DNA, only they have a different gut microbiota. It contributes to life expectancy. This is confirmed in animal studies. In the next few decades, 150 is in reach. I believe this is the most powerful agent for human wellness available.”
After a month I stare into my empty black-and-gold pot and know I want more. Because I do feel different. I am more resilient, sharper, but most interestingly, the 21st-century perma-state of anxiety is somewhat lessened. Ferguson is right, some of this will be down to a ketogenic lifestyle. But not all. Our habits of sterilising food and endlessly cleaning our worktops have depleted our Western guts of variety. Stinky unpasteurised cheeses and raw milk are good sources of probiotics; milk in a carton that lasts for three weeks in the fridge, not so much.
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For now, the health of the population in our inner universe is the new outside edge of science. This is the future of wellbeing and medicine.