Can Gut Health Impact Athletic Performance?

How does the gut microbiome actually impact athletic performance?

To answer this question accurately we have to examine the nitty gritty behind this question.

Here are some ways the gut microbiome impacts athlete performance:

Reducing Inflammation

The gut microbiome plays a significant role in inflammation – either increasing or decreasing levels. Inflammation interferes with athletic performance, slows recovery, and is the root cause of many chronic diseases. Gut microbiome imbalance, or dysbiosis, is associated with inflammatory conditions – so it’s important we maintain a healthy microbiome to help reduce bodywide inflammation.

Research shows that improving your microbiome balance reduces systemic inflammation, which provides both short term relief and long term risk reduction. Improving microbiome balance and diversity also provides a more stable environment, which reduces the impact of repeated stress athletes place on their bodies.

When it comes to inflammation, the gut microbiome can either work for you or against you. In the case of ultra athletes, they may be unknowingly optimizing their gut microbiome through experimentation OR causing chaos when they overtrain.

Boosting Energy Levels

When your gut microbiome is happy and healthy it helps boost energy levels, which can translate into better performance by:

• Reducing fatigue through better lactic acid breakdown.

• Controlling redox function, which can delay fatigue symptoms.

• Increasing ATP levels, your molecular energy.

• Modulating metabolism.

• Supplying essential metabolites to your mitochondria – your cell’s powerhouse.

• Regulating energy harvest, storage, and expenditure.

Athletes rely on their high energy levels to launch themselves past their competitors and beyond. They must have a gut microbiome that operates at peak performance if they want to stand a chance.

Improving Mental Strength

Your gut microbes actually talk to your brain along the vagus nerve. They have a huge role in the state of your mental health and when they are imbalanced, they can contribute to mental illness. Dysbiosis (gut microbiome imbalance) has even been linked to anxiety and depression.

On the flip side, a healthy gut microbiome composition can contribute to mental strength. The composition of the gut microbiome significantly affects:

• Mood

• Pain tolerance

• Cognitive performance

• Behavior

• Mental clarity

• Attitude

• Brain function

The gut-brain axis is an invisible hand that shapes mental fortitude, which is essential for professional athletes who can’t afford to buckle under pressure.

Shaping Ideal Body Composition

There aren’t too many overweight high-level athletes – well, maybe in sports like darts and bowling. But when it’s an activity that relies on strength and speed, the gut microbiome helps the body run more efficiently – like a well-oiled machine. So, when the gut microbiome is in good shape it can make being healthier, easier. This is because the gut microbiome influences:

• Body mass composition (muscle vs. fat)

• White vs. brown fat

• Blood glucose response to meals

Every athlete knows just how important these factors are to overall performance. Now we know that the gut microbiome plays a huge role in each, making it the new focus of forward-thinking training regimens.

Strengthening Bones

The microbiome helps build bone mass and strength through hormone and immune system regulation. A balanced gut microbiota can also increase mineral absorption of calcium and magnesium. This is especially good news in times of injury, because a properly functioning microbiome can speed up bone healing during sport-related trauma. ¹¹

So, forget about drinking enough milk for stronger bones – you’d be much better off making sure you’re eating the right foods for your gut microbiome to support optimal bone metabolism.

Nutrient Absorption & Use

One of the main takeaways about the gut microbiome should be that when it runs efficiently, the whole body runs efficiently. This is why scientists are so interested in mapping athletic gut microbiomes and using them to improve the health of others.

Due to this fact, it’s no surprise that a balanced microbiome is essential to proper absorption and nutrient use. ¹² If you have a toxic gut microbiome, then the microbes are fighting just to survive and don’t have time to pull out important vitamins, proteins, and enzymes – they’re just hanging on for dear life.

A healthy gut microbiome is essential to any athlete interested in getting the most out of their food. What use is it to train hard and eat right if your microbes can’t extract critical nutrients?

You get bonus results when you eat the right foods for your microbial digestive machine, because then they can pull out maximum nutrients.

What’s more, the gut microflora actually provides a lot of your nutrients. They take food your digestive tract can’t process and make it into nutrients you need to survive. As you can imagine, it’s ideal for athletes to have gut microbiomes that are thriving.

Elevating Hydration Status

Elevating hydration status sounds super official doesn’t it? It’s just a fancy way of saying that the gut microbiome has been linked to proper hydration regulation during exercise. Meaning, your body is using water more efficiently. Also, the integrity of the gut lining is a key factor in proper hydration, which a healthy gut microbiome also helps maintain. ¹³

Improving Sleep

Gut microbiome imbalance, or dysbiosis, is associated with poor sleep quality and lowered cognitive flexibility. This is because the gut microbiome controls levels of various hormones such as cortisol, serotonin, and GABA – all of which affect sleep quality. The microbiome also affects the production of melatonin – essential for proper sleep-wake cycles. ¹⁵

Quality sleep, good gut health, energy levels, and performance all exist in a reinforcing cycle that can either compound on one another and build you up – or drag you down. Athletes know they need proper sleep to perform well, but many might not yet realize that there’s a pharmacy of sleep-promoting neurotransmitters generated by their gut.

Antioxidant Defense System

You have an impressive system in your body called the antioxidant defense system or redox signaling, that uses antioxidant enzymes to keep you healthy. Athletes need this system to consistently perform well to recover in record time, keeping them at the top of their game.

A healthy redox status is associated with a balanced gut microbiome. This gut microbiome-regulated antioxidant enzyme system:

• Prevents tissue damage from exercise

• Protects against intense exercise-induced oxidative damage

• Is associated with the physical status of athletes

• Reduces physical fatigue

• Improve exercise performance

In general, intensive and sustained exercise training and high-level competition generate large amounts of free radicals that likely exceed the buffering capacity of a typical body. This makes  athletes susceptible to oxidative stress and more likely to build up damaging inflammation.