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Neuro Athletes,

Your body is not just yours. Your colon is home to trillions of hard-working bacteria who tirelessly attempt to keep your health in perfect condition. It’s an ecosystem called the gut microbiome and its composition, as well as its diversity, are influenced by factors such as food, stress and even exercise.

Gut health is at the forefront of complaints of Americans. Some 80% of our population now recognizes some disorder within the gastrointestinal tract—everything from reflux, to food allergies, to inflammatory bowel syndrome, and inflammatory bowel diseases—we are a suffering population when it comes to gut health.

Stress and exercise influence your gut microbiome. It’s a two-way street though because these microorganisms can influence your performance and recovery, too.

The microbes in our gut are responsible for the way in which we break down fiber, carbohydrates, protein, and regulate energy. They influence inflammation, stress resilience, and neurological function, even impacting mental toughness – all of which are incredibly important to high performance.

The research on the relationship between gut microbiome and performance has me questioning things like;

1. Will we one day be able to purchase “performance probiotics?”

2. What can we be doing to diversify out microbiome to directly influence our performance and recovery

Here is what I found to help me explore these questions.

Primer on Gut health and Athletic Performance

The gut microbiome can contribute to athletic performance both during and after intense exercise. First, an optimal gut microbiome can improve energy metabolism by supplying muscles with oxygen and nutrients during intense exercise. The gut microbiome can then also control inflammation and expedite tissue repair, helping to improve performance and expedite recovery.

Imagine a world where you could mimic Michael Jordan's gut microbiome to improve your athletic abilities. What if you could jump higher, run faster, and outlast the competition with a Michael Jordan probiotic? This may sound like it came straight out of a sci-fi novel, but take a look at some of the most fascinating related research.

Athletic performance, recovery, and even the type of sport athlete’s play have all been linked to certain microbes. These findings now have researchers looking for ways to increase the good guys for better performance and faster recovery.

In one study, a group of Harvard researchers sampled the gut microbiomes of athletes training for the Boston Marathon. After the marathon, they found a spike in one type of bacteria needed by the body to break down lactic acid. These scientists believe the bloom in this particular bacteria is a response to the increased lactic acid levels in the body because it’s their food source. Which begs the question – could this species be used to reduce lactic acid build up and speed up recovery time?

In another study, Harvard researchers compared the gut microbiomes of rowers and ultramarathoners. They found differences in composition, which suggests that certain sports might foster certain microbial ecosystems.

You probably aren't surprised to hear that the scientific findings have led to the quest for performance-based prebiotics and probiotics. What's even more interesting is that some scientists believe they will be able to mine the gut microbiomes of ultra athletes to help others.

It’s undeniable that the gut microbiome has an impact on athletic ability. Exercise also has the ability to affect the gut microbiome – making this relationship a two-way street.

Dr. Tyler Jean and Dr. Carrie Jones 

Yes I released a podcast that details and outlines the specifics of increasing performance by optimising your gut microbiome, hormones and nutrition.

Carrie:

“Inflammation is a symptom, it's not a cause the hormones are a symptom, they're not actually the cause, we still have to figure out what's going on to cause the hormones to sort of be out of the balance or the rhythm that they're supposed to be in. So that's honestly the number one thing that I say, hormones get vilified all the time.

But if we need them, they're required for metabolic health, cardiovascular health, neurologic health, our mood, skin, you mentioned inflammation, and like the active ageing, hormones play different hormones play a big role in how we age, how gracefully we age, or ungracefully. We age. And so I want everyone listening to realise that the hormones are trying to work for you. They're not honestly trying to work against you”

Why I Started Taking Vitamin B-12

If you listen to the podcast you will notice a segment on B12 deficiency- something that is very overlooked in nutrition optimisation.

Vitamin B12 — also called cobalamin — is a priority for vegans and vegetarians to address. Because the human body cannot ssynthesiseB12 and plant foods don’t contain it unless they’re fortified with B12. That’s why vitamin B12 is usually sourced from animal foods such as liver, fish, chicken and eggs.

Vitamin B12 helps the body to synthesize new DNA and maintain healthy red blood cells and neurons. Vitamin B12 deficiency, therefore, leads to a plethora of side effects including tiredness, anaemia, constipation, weight loss, memory problems, depression, tingling in hands and feet and other manifestations of neurological issues.

Vitamin B12 has the most complex structure out of all vitamins synthesizable by gut bacteria. Vitamin B12 synthesis requires 30 different genes in a bacterial genome to be activated in an intricate order.

In a 2019 review written by Japanese researchers in the Frontiers of Nutrition, they provided a list of gut bacteria that can make vitamin B12:

• Bacteroidetes: Bacteroides fragilis and Prevotella copri.

• Firmicutes: Clostridium difficile, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, Ruminococcus lactaris, Lactobacillus plantarum, L. coryniformis and L. reuteri.

• Actinobacteria: Bifidobacterium animalis, B. infantis and B.longum.

• Fusobacteria: Fusobacterium varium.

But these bacteria all reside in the large intestine or the colon. And receptors that uptake vitamin B12 are only present in the small intestine wherein they absorb dietary B12 after protein digestion in the stomach. The gut microbial B12 is, therefore, not bioavailable to the host.

Getting enough vitamin B12 through your diet is crucial. However, if you struggle to obtain enough or have a condition that affects absorption, supplements are a simple way to increase your B12 intake.

Until next time.

- Louisa

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