Gut Mi­crobes and Ex­er­cise

by Roberto

These days there seems to be an ever-grow­ing num­ber of stud­ies aim­ing to as­so­ciate di­verse hu­man be­hav­iors with gut mi­cro­biome com­po­si­tion. My cu­rios­ity has been par­tic­u­larly piqued by stud­ies in­volv­ing ex­er­cise. One study sug­gested that the right fe­cal trans­plants could lead to im­proved run­ning times (in mice). An­other study noted the in­creased rel­a­tive abun­dance of Veil­lonella atyp­ica in stool sam­ples of marathon run­ners post­marathon and sug­gested this bac­terium im­proved run­ning times due to its con­ver­sion of ex­er­cise-in­duced lac­tate into pro­pi­onate. It made me won­der, will the World Anti-Dop­ing Agency (WADA) soon be screen­ing ath­letes for mi­cro­bial dop­ing? Then came one that I had a bit of a tough time di­gest­ing, an ar­ti­cle claim­ing that ex­er­cise mo­ti­va­tion was reg­u­lated by a mi­cro­biome-de­pen­dent gut-brain path­way. Briefly, the au­thors present ev­i­dence for mi­cro­biome-de­pen­dent pro­duc­tion of en­do­cannabi­noid metabo­lites that in turn lead to el­e­vated lev­els of dopamine dur­ing ex­er­cise. Yes, I re­al­ize ex­er­cise makes me feel good. But are my mi­crobes re­ally the ones mo­ti­vat­ing me to ex­er­cise? I re­main open minded but, I must say, some­what skep­ti­cal. One never knows for sure.

Ocean view at San An­drés Is­land. Photo credit: Me­chas Zam­brano

Why bring up mi­crobes and ex­er­cise now? This is a spe­cial week for us. Me­chas and I are headed off to the Caribbean is­land of San An­drés to par­tic­i­pate in a Sprint triathlon on Fri­day, a 5K race on Sat­ur­day, and an Olympic dis­tance triathlon on Sun­day. Have our mi­cro­bio­mes been our mo­ti­va­tors to train? I can't say for sure the mi­crobes we carry had no role. But the al­lure of the warm breeze, the turquoise wa­ters and the com­pany of hun­dreds of other par­tic­i­pants... I have no doubt those are our great mo­ti­va­tors. Wish us luck!

 

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