Do you have the Guts to Be Successful?
What goes through your mind when you think about getting in shape as an athlete? Putting in time at the gym? Most likely. Eating your leafy greens and cutting back on the sweets? Hopefully! Well, how about the health of your microbes? Eh, probably not.
If you paid attention in freshman biology class, microbes are tiny organisms that live basically everywhere in the world. They can survive at the mouth of volcanoes and in the deepest coldest depths of the Earth. They can even survive inside your body! In fact, many types of microbes enjoy living right inside your gut. Before you get grossed out, this is completely natural and the symbiotic relationship between your gastrointestinal tract and these millions of tiny microbes has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years.
In fact, rather than being weirded out, you should be happy about many of the great benefits that promoting good gut health can have for your athletic performance and your life in general.
Today we’re going to dig into how these microscopic organisms called microbes can impact performance for athletes, and how you can cultivate a lifestyle that will allow you to maximize performance. While the science on *why* and *how* gut health improves health and performance is still evolving, there is some interesting research out there, as well as products, that promote various facets of good gut health.
Probiotics
Probiotics are live bacteria and yeasts that are good for you, especially your digestive system. We usually think of these as germs that cause diseases. But your body is full of bacteria, both good and bad. Probiotics are often called "good" or "helpful" bacteria because they help keep your gut healthy.
I won’t get into a full breakdown of all the different types of probiotics but this fact sheet from the National Institutes of Health is a great starting point if you want to know more!
Benefits
Before we get into the details of how you can impact your gut health, let’s start with some of the benefits associated with positive gut health.
For starters, the gut microbiota also plays a fundamental role in the induction and function of the host immune system, and protection from pathogens. What this really means is that the health of your gut is tied to the health of your overall body and resistance to getting sick for instance. Any athlete knows that it can be hard to keep up good habits during the season because of the sheer amount of time and energy keeping up with travel, school work, social life, and everything in between. Because of this, many athletes find themselves sleep deprived, under high levels of stress, and other unhealthy habits that they may not otherwise engage in. The less time you’re on the shelf with illness or health issues, the more time you have to work on and improve your game!
Avoiding a weakened immune system is only one of the benefits though. There are many other benefits as well, and while I won’t discuss *all* of the potential benefits, here are a few of the key ones:
Increased energy - Accumulating evidence suggests that the gut microbiota plays an important role in the harvest, storage, and expenditure of energy obtained from the diet. It goes without saying that high energy levels are important for athletes to perform at their peak, so cultivating good habits for gut health could potentially help you perform at your best.
Mood Disorders - Growing evidence suggests that gut health can play a significant role in regulating mood. It seems crazy to think that your gut can impact your brain, but growing evidence suggests that’s the case. Many experts actually now call the gut “the 2nd brain.”
As everyone should know, you simply don’t perform at your best if you’re feeling down, depressed or anxious. While everyone is bound to have bad days, working to minimize negative thoughts and feelings through good gut health could be important towards keeping you at the top of your mental game.
Sleep - One of my favorite topics! A 2019 study found that total microbiome diversity was positively correlated with increased sleep efficiency and total sleep time, and was negatively correlated with wake after sleep onset. We’ll talk more in a bit about why microbiome diversity is important, but if you want to know more about sleep, you can check out Don’t Sleep On The Power Of Sleep over on the Fully Equipped Athlete Blog.
Exercise
Here is some good news for many athletes: You’re probably already ahead of the game when it comes to cultivating good gut health. Exercise has been shown to positively impact gut health, especially aerobic exercise.
A 2014 study examined players for the Irish Rugby World Cup squad and found that they had “exceptional gut health and microbiome diversity.” In fact, it was stated that “this is the first report that exercise increases microbial diversity in humans.”
Importantly, microbiome diversity is associated with good health and loss of this diversity appears to be correlated with health problems such as obesity and diabetes.
Even if you’re not an elite rugby player, you don’t really need to exercise in a very intense way in order to gain benefits to your microbiome. For instance, a 2019 study from Japan put a group of elderly women into two different training groups and found that those that did sixty minutes of brisk walking over a 12 week period were more likely to develop elevated amounts of “good” bacteria. If they can do it, so can you!
Foods
I hope that it doesn’t come as a surprise that the foods you eat have a massive impact on your athletic performance. Most likely though, you weren’t aware that the foods you eat can impact the microbiome of your gastrointestinal (GI) tract. While there are many studies still being conducted on what is the best way to develop positive gut health, there are certain foods that you can eat in order to “feed” the good bacteria in your system. These are called Prebiotics.
Prebiotics are special plant fibers that help healthy bacteria grow in your gut. This makes your digestive system work better.
Here are some examples of foods that you can eat in order to promote good gut health. The good news is that many of these foods are ones that you should already be eating as part of a healthy diet.
Apples
Artichokes
Asparagus
Bananas
Barley
Berries
Chicory
Cocoa
Dandelion greens
Flaxseed
Garlic
Green vegetables
Konjac root
Leeks
Legumes (peas and beans)
Oats
Onions
Tomatoes
Soybeans
Wheat
Yacon root
Tips for Gut Health
Make sure you’re getting quality sleep. I’ll plug Don’t Sleep On The Power Of Sleep one more time as a great resource to make sure you’re using sleep to your advantage as an athlete, and the benefits to your microbiome are an added and important bonus!
Avoid anti-inflammatory drugs when possible. (Personal note on that in a second)
Hydrate! I did another blog post about how you can Hydrate For Success
Focus on eating protein dense foods and a variety of fruits and vegetables. The more colors the better!
Avoid refined carbohydrates
Anti-inflammatory drugs are no good when it comes to gut health. For most of my life and playing career I had no idea. That is until I really started to dive into the importance of gut health on my performance and overall well-being back in 2016.
Although I felt good at the time, I was, and still am someone that is constantly looking to take my performance to the next level. So I decided to do just that and send off a stool sample (yes, the process is a little weird) to the Cleveland Clinic so I could get a detailed report on my overall gut health.
The results were pretty shocking: I had leaky gut syndrome. Harvard Medical School explanation of LGS is that, “an unhealthy gut lining may have large cracks or holes, allowing partially digested food, toxins, and bugs to penetrate the tissues beneath it. This may trigger inflammation and changes in the gut flora (normal bacteria) that could lead to problems within the digestive tract and beyond.”
After explaining my “diet” to them they said it couldn’t be from that. Then, after I told them I had taken anti-inflammatories (Advil) during the season, the doctors, and I, had the answer.
They explained that anti-inflammatories increase gut permeability (causing leaky gut), modify the gut flora, and can even cause more serious problems like gastric ulcers and intestinal bleeding. After I was made aware of this, I cut out anti-inflammatories and in no time the health of my gut improved.
If you are curious about the overall health of your gut, pictured below is a product from Viome that is a simple at home stool test. I recently found out about this company and actually just sent mine away to them to be tested to make sure my gut health is where it needs to be. Although I have not gotten my results back and it’s my first time using Viome for this, they are a highly reputable company in this space.
While we are still only scratching the surface when it comes to fully understanding how gut health impacts our bodies and athletic performance, there is enough evidence to suggest that cultivating good gut habits will have a positive impact on your performance and on your life. If your goal is to make the absolute most of what you have, I highly suggest doing all you can to optimize your gut health!
