Hippocrates, the sage of medicine, famously said, "All disease begins in the gut," The gut-brain axis plays an extremely important role in a high-quality strategy for anti-aging throughout the roughly 100-year life span of humans. When the gut-brain axis is functioning properly, it is possible to maintain a healthy body, mind, and cognitive function, while dysfunction in the gut-brain axis can lead to increased risks of a variety of diseases and subsequent deterioration. From this point of view, we call the unlimited power of the gut-brain interaction "gut-brain axis power" and have focused our attention on the molecular medicine of diet and exercise to enhance gut-brain axis power. The degree of gut-brain power varies greatly from person to person, and the power of gut-brain axis is greatly affected by one's lifestyle, including diet, exercise habits, sleep quality, and stress management. Based on this notion, gut brain power is highlighted as a possible factor X to explain individual and constitutional differences in the development and worsening of complications as well as differences in response to diet, exercise, and drug therapy, all of which have occasionally been overlooked in preventive and clinical medicine. The ingested dietary contents are sensed by enteroendocrine cells (EECs) as nutrients, bile acids, or fermentation metabolites of gut microbiota, and are involved in the regulation of secretion of gut-derived peptide hormones, i.e. CCK, GLP-1, PYY, and ghrelin. These gastrointestinal hormones then act on the central nervous system (brain) to exert a considerable influence on the control of appetite and food preference. In addition to sensing by EEC, the various bioactive substances in the gastrointestinal tracts send information to the brain via blood and lymph flow or directly via spinal afferents, and determine all modes of behaviour, including eating habits and physical activity, whether consciously or unconsciously. The ultimate key to the "behaviour modification" that is being discussed in various aspects of society can be said to be gut brain axis power.

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The accumulation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) in the body due to glycative stress is a factor in the development and progression of aging and lifestyle-related diseases. In particular, the formation of protein cross-links associated with the formation of AGEs hardens tissues, resulting in the deterioration of biological functions. In this study, we examined the usefulness of the edible purple Chrysanthemum flower from the viewpoint of reducing cross-link formation in the glycated proteins, by examining its inhibitory effect on this cross-link formation, its degradation of glycated protein cross-linking, its inhibition of glycated reaction intermediate formation, its degradation of AGE cross-linking, and its enhancement of oxidized protein hydrolase (OPH) activity. A 50% ethanol extract (EE) of edible purple chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum morifolium) flowers was used as a sample. EE inhibited the formation of lysozyme dimer and trimer at sample concentrations of 0.01 to 1.1 mg/mL. EE inhibited the formation of fluorescent AGEs and glycation intermediates in a human serum albumin-glucose glycation model. This effect was similar to that of aminoguanidine, an inhibitor of glycation reaction. Furthermore, EE enhanced the enzymatic activity of OPH, which is an AGEs degrading agent, by cleaving AGE cross-links using the α-diketone bond of 1-phenyl-1,2-propanedione (PPD) as a model. The inhibitory effect of EE on the formation of glycated protein cross-links was suggested to be related to the inhibition of the formation of glycation intermediates and AGEs, and the degradation of glycated protein cross-links was suggested to be related to the involvement of various substances in Asteraceae plants and the pigment component of purple chrysanthemum flowers. EE may have an effect on repairing protein dysfunction by degrading and removing cross-linked proteins by glycation. There is a possibility that EE may have the ability to repair protein dysfunction by removing cross-linked proteins through glycation.

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Objective: The bran layer of brown rice contains a variety of nutritional components, which have been suggested to be useful in maintaining homeostasis of body functions and improving health. However, its effect on subjective symptoms in humans is still unclear. In this study, we investigated the effect of oral intake of a test food made from the sub-aleurone layer (part of the bran layer) of brown rice on subjective symptoms. Methods: A total of 1,023 healthy men and women (313 men and 710 women) were included in the study group. They consumed the test food (3.5 g per package) for one month, and subjective symptoms were investigated using the Anti-Aging QOL Common (53 items in total). A total of 3,002 age- and sex-adjusted cases (930 men and 2,072 women) from the Doshisha University Anti-Aging Research Center' (AARC) data were used as the hypothetical control Results: In the test group, the items with the highest improvement rates were (a) "constipation" (45.5%), (b) "liable to catch cold" (35.6%), (c) "lethargy" (33.7%), and (d) "skin problems" (33.3%) (p < 0.001 by χ-square test, Cramer's V > 0.2 except (b)). The prevalence of these four symptoms was significantly higher in the tset group than in the hypothetical group; after one month, the prevalence of "constipation," "susceptibility to catch cold," and "tiredness" was lower than in the control group, and the prevalence of "skin problems" decreased to the same level as in the control group. There were no dropouts in the test group and no adverse events were observed. Conclusion: The consumption of the test food may be an effective and safe functional food for the improvement of subjective symptoms such as "constipation," "susceptibility to catching colds," "tiredness," and "skin problems".

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Usefulness of anti-aging medicine cannot be judged solely by its contribution to our healthy life expectancy. It is of limited use if we cannot live our longer healthy life happily and comfortably, and for this, we need a social and economic environment that is suitable for longer-living individuals. This idea was implied by Yonei (2021), when he argued that we should build a "healthy society". Anti-aging medicine’s success will accelerate the increase of "old-age dependency ratio", which is already very high in Japan. An aging population poses a number of serious economic and economic-policy challenges, and unless we handle them well, we will not be able to build a “healthy society”. We therefore review the state of population aging in Japan, examine how the elderly live their lives now and in the future, and discuss economic policy issues that need to be addressed to help the Japanese economy adjust to aging. One of the most salient issues in this regard is how to re-design social welfare programs, since there will be an increasing number of the elderly poor in the future. Yonei (2021) makes an interesting proposal, which he calls "rice-sic income", that combines the provision of "basic income" for the poor with a policy for revitalizing agriculture in Japan. We evaluate this proposal from the point of view of standard economics.

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