Exercise changes gut bacteria in just six weeks, new research reveals

Previously inactive people who exercise for at least 30 minutes a day three times a week experience increased levels of gut bacteria that produce butyrate, a study found.

Butyrate is an anti-inflammatory acid that has been linked to protection against bowel cancer, as well as weight loss and stronger immunity.

The same findings were previously found in mice, who became less likely to develop the inflammatory bowel disease ulcerative colitis if they were active. 

Lead author Professor Jeffrey Woods from the University of Illinois, said: 'These are the first studies to show that exercise can have an effect on your gut independent of diet or other factors.'

Yet, the catch is exercise's positive impact on gut bacteria is reversed if people revert to being inactive.

How the research was carried out 

The researchers analyzed 18 lean and 11 obese women.

All of the study's participants were previously sedentary before undergoing six weeks of endurance-based activity for three days a week that progressed from 30 minutes of moderate exercise a day to one hour of vigorous activity.

The participants then went back to a sedentary lifestyle for six weeks.

Their diets were consistent throughout the study.  

Fecal samples were collected before and after the participants became active.

Results reveal exercise changes gut bacteria, which is largely reversed if people revert to being inactive.

In particular, species that produce an anti-inflammatory acid known as butyrate increase, which has previously been linked to bowel-cancer protection, weight loss and stronger immunity.

For unclear reasons, the findings are greater in lean people than those who are obese.

The same findings also previously occurred in mice, who become less likely to develop the inflammatory bowel condition ulcerative colitis if they exercise.

Professor Woods said: 'These are the first studies to show that exercise can have an effect on your gut independent of diet or other factors.

'The bottom line is that there are clear differences in how the microbiome of somebody who is obese versus somebody who is lean responds to exercise. We have more work to do to determine why that is.'

The current study's results were published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 

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Healthy gut bacteria could help protect you from almost EVERY age-related disease

Changing your diet to maintain healthy gut bacteria could help to protect you from nearly all age-related diseases, new research suggests.

Imbalanced gut bacteria may to blame for many age-related diseases, according to the new study from University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands.

The researchers found that the poorly balanced gut bacteria in older mice could induce ‘inflammaging’ in younger mice when it was transplanted to them.

Inflammaging is a chronic inflammation condition associated with aging, which is linked to most serious age-related health conditions, like stroke, dementia and cardiovascular disease.

Scientists know that elderly people tend to have different gut bacteria profiles from younger people. This new research suggests that this change in balance is linked to inflammaging, which is in turn related to most late-onset diseases and disorders.

In recent years, we’ve found out that the gut is at the heart of just about everything, with many calling our second brain.

Inflammaging is a catch-all term for the tendency of elderly people to have generalized inflammation. It is thought to be related to evolved changes that the immune system undergoes as a person gets older.

It isn’t clear whether aging causes inflammation or inflammation causes aging, but the two go hand-in-hand, and susceptibility to many diseases goes along with both of them.

Since they knew that the bacterial microbiome also undergoes changes with age, the researchers, led by Dr Floris Fransen, wanted to test the relationship between the three factors.

They took samples from older mice – whose gut bacteria composition, like humans’, changes with age – and introduced them to the bodies of younger mice. After the procedure, the younger mice developed chronic inflammation, like the inflammaging that would normally have struck them later in life.

The scientists also transplanted gut bacteria from one group of younger mice to another group of mice of around the same ages to see if the immune response was just to the introduction of foreign bacteria.

But only the mice with transplanted gut bacteria from older ones developed inflammaging.

The differences in the responses suggested to the researchers that aging leads to an imbalance in gut bacteria, such that there are more ‘bad’ bacteria than good in the microbiome.

The proliferation of the bad bacteria leaves the gut lining more permeable to toxins that can contaminate the bloodstream and lead to disorders like inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, diabetes, anxiety, autism and even cancer.

The study suggests a causal relationship between aged gut bacteria and inflammaging in mice, and, though the same has not been proven in humans, the researchers report that a correlation has already been observed.

Still, the findings are enough to determine that ‘strategies that alter the gut microbiota composition in the elderly,’ such as developing a good diet and taking probiotics and prebiotics, ‘reduce inflammaging and promote healthy aging,’ says Dr Fransen. 

[dailymail]

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