21 ms·
Exercise Alters Our Microbiome
- lerie82 9y agoso exercise is good? weird.
- dang 9y agoWould you please stop posting unsubstantive comments here?
- dvt 9y agoThis is only tangentially related, but I've been practicing intermittent fasting for the past year, and I cannot recommend it enough -- it honestly changed my life. I feel better, I sleep more regularly, I have more energy, and my mind is more alert. I only eat from 12PM to 8PM. IF is also supposed to have an impact on your microbiome, reduce inflammation, and encourage autophagy (especially in the brain). PS: Please talk to your doctor before you make any major dietary changes. I'm just some guy on the internet. And I'm most definitely not a doctor.
- Meekro 9y agoCould you describe this in more detail? When do you stop eating, and for how long?
- dvt 9y agoI stop eating at 8PM and don't eat until the next day at 12PM (so my "breakfast" is actually at lunch). My fast lasts ~16 hours daily, giving me an 8-hour feeding window (my friends always make fun of that term). We're already used to an 8-hour fast (sleeping), so it's really not a huge lifestyle change. I don't do anything fancy with calories or macronutrients, anymore. I did when I was going to the gym more regularly, but it's really time-consuming measuring everything, so I just eat basically whatever. I do, however, try to limit my intake of processed foods and red meat.
- prostoalex 9y agoDo you allow for coffee (or tea) in the mornings, or is it just water?
- dvt 9y agoCoffee and tea are allowed during the fast. I've been drinking a lot more tea recently (I'm not a huge coffee drinker). There's a certain threshold where your body kicks into "metabolic" mode. The exact figure varies, but I think you want to avoid eating > ~50 calories[1] or your digestion kicks in and your fast is ruined. A cup of tea or coffee, for example, is around 3 calories. Even milk, in small quantities, is probably fine. It goes without saying that sugar is not allowed. [1] My figures are probably wrong. Someone feel free to correct me.
- wjnc 9y agoAny thoughts on the old adagium dat breakfast like a king, ...? Skipping breakfast - no dips in the morning?
- dvt 9y agoI've never been a breakfast person :P
- stevenwoo 9y agoI think this was a recent phenomena - from marketing in the 40's. https://priceonomics.com/how-breakfast-became-a-thing/ https://priceonomics.com/how-breakfast-became-a-thing/ Also, before this, what some people refer to as the father of modern marketing, Edward Bernays, used one campaign to make bacon and eggs the center of a hearty American breakfast.
- plinkplonk 9y agoSo essentially you are just skipping breakfast?
- carlmr 9y ago
- ak39 9y agohttps://medium.com/the-mission/the-sweet-spot-for-intermittent-fasting-9aae12a2158c https://medium.com/the-mission/the-sweet-spot-for-intermitte... According to Jason Fung the sweet spot is 18 to 24 hours of fasting for fat loss and autophagy benefits. A 48hr fast shows better results for autophagy but the question of sustainable life style then emerges for the 48 hr schedule. I fast for 20 hours everyday eating once in the evening. My anecdata confirms that it works for fat loss and improved morning concentration and better sleep.
- sdrothrock 9y agoHow large (calorically, macros if you know) are your evening meals?
- ak39 9y agoI rarely exceed 2000 calories. I am small framed (68 kg), what they'd call at the gym "skinny fat". I'm in my mid-forties with noticeable fat around the abdomen. I have never been obese to be concerned about fat accumulation but I have vowed to never grow older AND fatter. :-) I've been doing IF as habit now with some success not only because of my work schedule primarily being in the morning but also because I have to dash out of the house for school runs after the emotionally exhausting work of herding cats out of bed (food in the throes of such trauma doesn't appeal to me). Also, I can get 6 hours of concentrated work done when I know I have no breakfast to think about before fetching the boys from school. I have noticed accelerated loss of fat (I have fat calipers to measure) when I remove bread, pasta, rice and nuts for three consecutive days of the week.
- astura 9y agoI'm not the person you are asking but I can chime in because I also IF. For me, I simply eat one meal a day, it's really that simple. For me it's almost always dinner, but if I'm super hungry during the day I'll eat lunch and skip dinner.
- justboxing 9y agoI second this. I too started intermittent fasting ( 16 hours fast, 8 hour eating window) and can confirm benefits that OP has mentioned. I too noticed better sleep, increased energy and reduced GI inflammation (poop better lol). I started delaying my breakfast later and later until I was able to eat "breakfast" at 1 PM. I work out (boxing or weights) in the evening at 6 to 7 / 7:30 PM 5 days a week atleast, so my last meal for the day is at 8:30 or 9 PM. I don't eat any meat. 1 added benefit is that you also lose body fat and become lean because it seems that we start burning fat after 12 or 13 hours of fasting. Initially it was hard, I was feeling hungry, but once you get used to it, you don't miss it. If you are a morning person, do your fast from 5 or 6 PM to 9 or 10 AM. If you are evening person, then do it like me, i.e. fast from 9 or 10 PM to 1 or 2 PM (next day). Also don't worry about whether you'll have energy for your workout. You get used to it.
- tinymollusk 9y agoIn a similar situation I've felt subjectively less hungry / performed better if I take some branch chain amino acids in the AM. Dunno if this makes the IF "invalid" -- I never felt significantly different during an IF. But commuting on my bike, I frequently felt weak if I was fasting, and BCAA stopped that. YMMV.
- Najtmare 9y agoAnything besides water breaks the IF period.
- 2218653 9y agoWhile BCAAs do break your fast, that's not entirely true. For example, green tea, black coffee, ACV, and likely others do not break your fast.
- maloney 9y agoThis is a pretty hardline approach. Most people allow for coffee and tea without sugar or cream. If there are no calories you're not breaking a fast in my opinion. BCAA's do have calories so I would say they would break a fast though.
- swah 9y agoI tried for a while but didn't find many benefits (other than, of course, having more time). And sometimes I told myself that "maybe I don't feel good today because I'm fasting", and I rather avoid those thoughts by having 2 or 3 boiled eggs or a banana in the morning. And now that I'm trying to eat 160-200 grams of protein every day, eating all of that in a small window is kinda tiring.
- Svenstaro 9y agoHow do you still fit in around 2.5k cals in the short time where you do eat? In other words, how do you ensure that you maintain your weight while fasting? I imagine one has to force feed quite a lot in in that period.
- dvt 9y ago> I imagine one has to force feed quite a lot in in that period. It's 8 hours, so I have plenty of time to eat two, three, or even sometimes four times. What IF cuts out is the late-night snacks that I think are most detrimental.
- jnordwick 9y agoIF is based on the idea that nutrient timing isn't important partially because digestion is along process that you have little control over. The idea that late night snacks are bad for you is based on the idea that nutrient timing is important, that you are sedentary at night so you don't want to eat then. (This idea has lost most of its support recently and now eating at night is seen the same as eating during the day -- your body doesn't care when you eat). These two ideas are fundamentally at odds with each other. I find the IF people to be a strange bunch with a lot of contradictory ideas.
- astura 9y ago>IF is based on the idea that nutrient timing isn't important partially because digestion is along process that you have little control over. What? No, IF is based on the premise that periods of fasting are physiological beneficial and/or it decreases total calories consumed overall.
- jnordwick 9y agoNot sorely based on that idea, but IF definitely relies on the idea that nutrient timing isn't important. Its almost definitional.
- majewsky 9y agoHow long did it take for you to observe the positive effects of IF? I tried it for 1 or 2 weeks last year, but didn't observe any benefits.
- dvt 9y agoI'm not sure how you were sleeping, but my sleep patterns got better almost overnight. Wish I had a Fitbit to track it.
- cycrutchfield 9y agoSo anybody that regularly skips breakfast now adheres to an IF diet? It cannot possibly be that important if the only difference between your eating schedule and the norm is that you omit breakfast and midnight snacks.
- dvt 9y ago> It cannot possibly be that important if the only difference between your eating schedule and the norm is that you omit breakfast and midnight snacks. And yet it is[1]. To borrow from Nassim Taleb, humans have a terrible habit of undervaluing small incremental change and overvaluing large sweeping change. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3106288/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3106288/
- cycrutchfield 9y agoWell TIL that I have been “intermittent fasting” for my entire adult life. Edit: your linked article is a study on rats which intermittently fasted for periods of 24-48 hours. That is a very far cry from what you have described.
- dvt 9y ago> Well TIL that I have been “intermittent fasting” for my entire adult life. If you snack at night or until midnight (or drink any sugary drinks at night), as many casually do, no you haven't. You'd need to make sure that calories are completely restricted when the feeding window closes. Check out this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8238506 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8238506 done on adult men -- with that said, IF hasn't been studied much. My original post is purely anecdotal. YMMV.
- astura 9y agoThat's a pretty huge assumption, I've never snacked at night and I can't understand why anyone would.
- barrkel 9y agoI've only eaten at 12 noon and 8pm for years, but just because that's lunch and dinner and I don't eat breakfast. I wasn't aware it could be called fasting.
- Graziano_M 9y agoWhy do you think breakfast is called 'break fast'?
- swah 9y agoIn portuguese, its "morning coffee" ;)
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoBecause historically people would fast for religious reasons, eg Lent, and a rich meal after that period would be a break-fast. A meal like eggs, pancake, bacon might form a break-fast. Then as ordinary people grew richer they'd take a rich meal of similar form much more often, habitually in the morning. Finally all morning meals became known as breakfast, even the ones that resemble a traditional fasting diet (oatmeal and water, or dry bread, say). Am I close? Modern usage of "fast" tends to mean not eating at all. Historic British usage would be most associated with the Lenten fast I'd imagine.
- SirZimzim 9y agoYeah, I can understand the difficulty behind something like Ramadan but 12 to 8 seems typical among those who skip breakfast. As someone who sits around mostly I never saw the need to eat so much.
- Graziano_M 9y agoDo you drink coffee before then? I could probably do this diet most days (I've done many days within a 10 hour window) but I 'start the clock' early if you count black coffee, since it's something I start every morning with. EDIT: See you answered that question. I should get back on this.
- provost 9y agoI 'CTRL+F' for coffee, but only see it mentioned in your comment. Where else was it mentioned?
- sharmi 9y agoAs a counterexample, I tried to fast from 8PM to 11PM and it triggered a starvation response in me and 4 days in, it made binge on what ever I set my eyes on. I do a bulk of moving around in the morning. So maybe I should do it in the evening, may be like a 7AM to 5PM. I am a woman. So the physiological differences may also come into play. I dunno. I am just adding this comment because, invariably articles on food & health results in comments about intermittent fasting with glowing reviews. It really does marvels for some/many. There are also cases like me for whom it does seems to hurt. Maybe I am approaching it wrong. Just adding my anecdote for a balanced view.
- DrScump 9y agoI tried to fast from 8PM to 11PM I hope you meant 11AM.
- sharmi 9y agoYes.
- miranda_rights 9y ago> I am a woman. So the physiological differences may also come into play. I dunno. I looked into IF and decided against it for that reason. The documentation on it recommended longer feeding windows for women to the point that it didn't seem like intermittent fasting - it was just eating breakfast an hour later. I just looked it up again now [1] and I guess it does have to do with our hormones. Either way, I appreciate you speaking up to balance out the raves. [1] http://paleoforwomen.com/shattering-the-myth-of-fasting-for-women-a-review-of-female-specific-responses-to-fasting-in-the-literature/ http://paleoforwomen.com/shattering-the-myth-of-fasting-for-...
- mtgx 9y agoYour body needs about 2 weeks to adapt. Also, for instance, even though it's recommended to exercise while fasting, it's recommended to do the exercise right before eating. So that may have something to do with it. Try the 7am to 5pm thing, but give it 2-3 weeks. Also, I think some studies show that the fasting period begins after 12h (others say 8h), but it's much more pronounced after 18h. So the more you fast, the better. But take it gradually the first few weeks. As for binge-eating, you can also try eating normally every other day or every 3 days, especially in the beginning. Then the next day or two try to "compensate" and eat less in those fasting periods. But it's important to keep a low-carb diet, because a high-carb diet is also what makes you hungry more, and looking for sweets, too (and proven to lead to many chronic diseases).
- DrScump 9y agoI only eat from 12PM to 8PM. The proper term for that strategy (which I follow as well, but I need a smaller window, generally 6 hours) is time-restricted feeding, or TRF. Intermittent fasting generally refers to periodic fasts of 1600 kcal/day or less spanning multiple days, such as the Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD).
- tgb 9y agoIs that a typo or do you really consider a 1600 kcal/day diet a fast? Wikipedia lists 500-600kcal as usually being allowed on a 5:2 intermittent fast. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- krzat 9y agoCan recommend. Not sure about physiological benefits (although by common sense it should at least help with dental health), but it feels great to be able to control food intake like that. And first meal of the day tastes much better.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoFor me, intermittent fasting would basically mean just skipping breakfast; after that I have lunch at around noon and dinner at about six, outside of that I don't really eat (maybe in the weekends). So yeah, before going full IMF (?), try sticking to just eating three times a day, sticking to regular, traditional eating habits.
- jasonkester 9y agoI've done this for probably 20 years now, but I just call it "I don't eat breakfast." Now I have a cool name for it though. Thanks! It seems to make sense: first, American breakfast is essentially a giant dessert, optionally with a pile of fat on top, so it doesn't seem particularly healthy. But mostly, eating in the morning seems to get my body thinking about food, so I'm actually hungry for lunch a lot earlier than if I had skipped it. Normal days I eat lunch around 1pm if I remember. "Breakfast" days, I'm starving at 11:30am. I never realised I got to describe myself as "fasting" though.
- meuk 9y agoI am amazed at this. I eat 3-4 times a day, and often go to bed hungry and wake up hungry. I eat quite a lot, but am still quite skinny (on the other hand, I run 2-3 times a week and I never heat my apartment, which might be reasons for my appetite). I might give IF a try, but am afraid that I will be in eternal hunger.
- luhn 9y agoYou might be surprised. Our body's have a circadian rhythm that regulate hunger. After a couple weeks of IF your body stops expecting food in the morning. When I ate breakfast, I was ravenous by 10am, now that I fast I don't start thinking about food until noon. Even if it doesn't work for you, it's easy enough to try for a couple weeks.
- RepressedEmu 9y agoWhat is it like living without heat? My heat went out in my apt for a week recently and although coming out from a hot shower was noticeably unpleasant the rest of my routine was unaffected since I'm normally wrapped up in cozy blankets on the couch anyways. I'd be very interested in the caloric impact of living without heat too.
- Rainymood 9y agoI just skip breakfast and eat lunch and dinner as regular ... trying to opt for the healthy options most of the time. Works out great so far.
- reubenswartz 9y agoI "accidentally" started doing this about a year ago-- after big dinners the night before, realizing I wasn't hungry and shouldn't eat just because it was "time to eat." Gradually, I realized that I'm not really hungry in the morning. I have a cup of black coffee (inconceivable a few years ago) and some water. Then I have a healthy lunch with low carbs. This was the original reason for changing my diet-- I was getting really sleepy in the middle of the afternoon and I realized it was the carbs. Then I have dinner, which I try to keep reasonably healthy but I'm not too stressed about it. Benefits are better energy throughout the day, no "hangry" episodes where my blood sugar falls off a cliff, better mood, and it's much easier to insist on being healthy for one meal a day than 3. I can even work out right before lunch and be fine. YMMV. P.s. Also cool that I now can call skipping breakfast a fancy health term. ;-)
- sillysaurus3 9y agoI dropped all forms of sugar and corn syrup a few months ago. I was never a health nut. Quite the opposite. It's incredible how much your physiology alters just from that. Water tastes good now. I used to drink water with crystal light, because it was so bland. Shed 20lbs without even exercising. I eat bananas, apples, peanut butter and chicken. Learned to cook a few things. You sort of have to, if you want to avoid sugar and corn syrup. Any ingredients with dex-, wheat, corn starch, -ose, dairy, added sweetener, agave, artificial sweeteners, etc – you can drop it, if you try. No pasta, no bread. No white potatoes. I wonder how much the input to our body affects us vs exercise? It seems substantial. And it's crazy how much more you have to spend on food just to make it work. Easily 2x or 3x. EDIT: To clarify, the interesting part is that I'm never hungry. I eat as many bananas and apples as I want. When I want some variety, my go-to is Nathan's hotdogs with no additives (no dextrose/corn starch), or throwing coconut milk into chicken with spices and garlic. For whatever reason, the weight keeps coming off, for months now. Grain and dairy seem worth avoiding. I don't know why. FWIW I drank diet soda before this, but it was easy to eat sugar: chocolate covered pretzels were my feel-good food. It's easy to dupe yourself into thinking you're eating healthy by doing one thing in one area, but totally the wrong thing in a different area but "in moderation." My only solution was quitting it cold turkey.
- jventura 9y agoTwo years ago I did something similar to what you've done, ie drop sugar, but I never stopped eating pasta, bread or white potatoes (although I dropped considerably my intake of bread), and I still did lose some weight. I did not increase my exercise levels significantly. I have wrote something about my experience at my blog: http://joaoventura.net/blog/2016/chart-diet/ http://joaoventura.net/blog/2016/chart-diet/
- dawhizkid 9y agoBananas and apples have plenty of sugar in them FYI. Depending on the brand, same with peanut butter.
- drdrey 9y agoA banana has 30g carbs (15g sugars), while the Trader Joe's peanut butter I am looking at has 7g carbs (2g sugars) in a 32g serving.
- teekno 9y agoI was shocked to read that the gut microbiome's gene set is about 150 times larger than the human gene complement [1]. I don't know a ton about microbiology, but it seems like that wouldn't drastically increase the time to sequence these microbes since we are talking about total set size, not the size of individual genomes? There is still so much to learn from the human genome alone - I fully expect many of our next great medical advances will come from studying these gut flora. Hopefully that will also bring a little more science to the probiotics industry :) [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3779803/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3779803/
- tstactplsignore 9y agoIt's a bit of a tricky comparison. Bacterial genomes are jam-packed full of protein-coding genes, while human genomes have genes spread out between much larger regions of both "junk" (viral elements, pseudogenes, and repetitive elements) and regulatory regions. A human genome is 3 billion base pairs, and a bacterial genome is ~3 million base pairs. Considering there are probably 100-1000 bacterial species of clinical / gut ecological importance in a person's gut, it happens to sort of work out that it takes roughly the same amount of sequencing to sequence your gut microbiome as it does your genome. Studies like this one do not do that. They only sequence marker genes which describe which bacteria are there (however, this process doesn't include all bacteria, doesn't tell you what those bacteria do, or what their small differences are). It's like a census where you just ask for people's last names. That being said, after reading I think this was a nice little study. It had a small sample size but pretty clear effects that fit in with a lot of priors that we already have about the gut with regards to butyrate production by specific species.
- starjockey 9y agoAre they doing the exercises outside?Maybe they are measuring the effects of normalized vitamin D3 levels... I smell a great purge in healthy articles.Myself im going to stick to my guns and common sense http://www.unz.com/jthompson/diet-is-iq-test/ http://www.unz.com/jthompson/diet-is-iq-test/
- lsc 9y agoYou used 'vitamin D3 levels' and 'just use common sense' in the same post. You have no way of knowing if vitamin D3 makes any difference at all without delving into scientific literature and statistics.
- starjockey 9y agoYou know im just a programmer,right? http://www.timeforwellness.org/blog-view/vitamin-d-improves-gut-bacteria-566 http://www.timeforwellness.org/blog-view/vitamin-d-improves-...
- lsc 9y agoI'm not saying you are wrong; I personally believe vitamin D3 is important, too. (I'm also not a medical professional) I'm just saying that the importance of vitamin D3 is not something that can be figured out by common sense; it's the sort of thing that requires a double-blind study.
- draugadrotten 9y agoThe importance of vitamin D3 can also be seen in the Somalia diaspora in Nordic regions. The veiled Somali women, with their dark skin, burka clothing and home-dwelling habits, have very low vitamin D levels, leading to health issues in themselves and leading to autism spectrum disorders in their offspring. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4396835/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4396835/ https://www.somalispot.com/threads/new-research-somali-immigrants-in-sweden-suffering-from-severe-vitamin-d-deficiency.32980/ https://www.somalispot.com/threads/new-research-somali-immig... https://www.vitamindcouncil.org/new-research-somali-immigrants-in-sweden-suffering-from-severe-vitamin-d-deficiency-during-pregnancy/ https://www.vitamindcouncil.org/new-research-somali-immigran... https://www.gnc.gu.se/digitalAssets/1349/1349916_s----f-severe-vitamin-d-deficiency-.pdf https://www.gnc.gu.se/digitalAssets/1349/1349916_s----f-seve...
- provost 9y agoHas anyone done research on the probiotic industry? Are there brands that are considered safer, better, than the rest? I was reading about the vitamin pill industry, and that made me stare questionably at the probiotic bottle my wife buys -- where does it come from and is it safe? Two questions I have no answers for.
- iceman7733 9y agoI had a physician recommend VSL3 (the powder form). I believe you can buy it w/o a prescription, and it's available at most Costcos. My understanding is the powder is more bio-available than any pill form.
- provost 9y agoThanks!
- lwansbrough 9y agoI have pretty mild IBS symptoms, but I concur - exercising at the very least has helped regulate my gut. At least to the extent that I can live a normal life without having to be constantly aware of the nearest bathroom. Can’t recommend regular exercise enough to those experiencing similar issues. Running would be my recommendation. I wonder if the rhythm of exercise is partially responsible.
- dcx 9y agoCan I ask for more details on how you are exercising - frequency, duration, any special tips? I have mild IBS-D but find that running sometimes seems to exacerbate my symptoms. I've found research pointing both ways on this.
- lwansbrough 9y agoEvery other day approximately. Not too much running - 15 mins maybe. Then an hour of weight training. The most important thing has been regulation. I stay away from foods I’ve recognized as being triggers. I was taking probiotics for a while. I was stressed, anxious. All contributing factors. Learning control has been a key for me.
- dcx 9y agoVery interesting, thank you! For a while I was running in the 30-60 minute range and my gut was getting more and more irritable over time. Your experience lines up with the research I found - that intense, prolonged or overly frequent exercise can worsen leaky gut / intestinal permeability symptoms, but regular exercise at a relatively low intensity may improve it. This makes me want to try reintroducing running into my routine. Also very interesting that weight training doesn't trigger any symptoms. Can I ask - how hard do you push during weight training? Are you on a program like StrongLifts 5x5? I was running and then doing weights back-to-back and stopped both after I realised it was making things worse. I have the same experience as you in terms of biggest improvements - spotting and cutting out trigger foods has been a huge help. I miss a lot of foods, but I like having a stable gut much more than I miss the foods...
- QasimK 9y agoI stopped reading as soon as I saw: > They began by recruiting 32 men and women who did not exercise. This is not worth reporting - certainly not in the matter-of-fact manner that they did. It is far far more likely there is nothing worth seeing here. I wish I had the resources on hand to explain why I believe this. It relates to p-hacking and finding results that just fade away with more in-depth investigations. 32 doesn’t mean the criteria for something that should be reported to the general public. Investigated further? Sure.
- dcdanko 9y agoWhy? 32 is a big for a human study. They recruited 32 people that didn't exercise, they didn't choose them after they already had the data.
- Wohlf 9y agoIt's far too small of a sample size for something as complex as human diet and exercise. You'd need a much larger sample size with people of varying types of diet and exercise regimes.
- QasimK 9y agoThe evidence required for these kinds of studies is far greater than it might initially seem. The sheer number of other variables (environmental factors) makes it very easy to assign causal relationships incorrectly. I mean to say that I’m willing to bet most individual studies involving “32” participants (or on that ballpark) are basically wrong. By individual studies I mean those where the evidence for the phenomena is almost just that study. Some anecdotal evidence (lacking being able to share the resources that I’ve read in the past) is the “science” in (and media reporting of) the fields of nutrition, psychology, sociology and similar fields where the environment is impossible to fully control. They seems half-baked (or outright contradictory) because the media reports on findings that don’t have very strong evidence behind them (need further research) while making it seem like it is an established fact.
- basicplus2 9y agoTLDR The scientists found that the animals [mice] with gut bugs from the runners were better able to resist and heal tissue damage and tamp down inflammation than those whose microbes had come from sedentary mice. ...recruiting 32 men and women who did not exercise. About half were obese and the rest of normal weight. they had the men and women begin supervised workouts, during which their efforts increased over time from about 30 minutes of easy walking or cycling to about an hour of vigorous jogging or pedaling three times per week. The subsequent analysis showed that the volunteers’ gut bugs had changed throughout the experiment, Most of these changes were not shared from one person to the next. Everyone’s gut responded uniquely to exercise. But there were some similarities, the researchers found. In particular, they noted widespread increases in certain microbes that can help to produce substances called short-chain fatty acids... believed to aid in reducing inflammation in the gut and the rest of the body. They also work to fight insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes, and otherwise bolster our metabolisms.
- nyc111 9y agoTitle: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome The first sentence of the article: Exercise _may_ change the composition and activity of the trillions of microbes in our guts... Kind of a title bait. Also, if you measure your microbiome every day you would see that it varies widely from day to day. So these results based on one measurement before the experiment and one measurement after are not reliable.
- agumonkey 9y agowhat are other MB influencing factors ? mood ? circadian rhythms ? diet ?
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y agoOh, is this going to be like "X changes your brain"? Where it turns out that doing literally anything changes your brain because it's designed to optimize against absolutely any environment.
- dcdanko 9y agoEven the composition of your microbiome itself can alter your brain chemistry (actually, it's usually called the gut brain axis). The study here used fecal transplant from lean to obese mice as well as a less invasive test; so it really does seems like a meaningful distinction.
- agumonkey 9y agobackfeednack
- dcdanko 9y agomood, circadian rhythm, ancestry, region of the world, diet type, infection, sex, certain diseases, and probably more!
- nyc111 9y agoA regime of antibiotics can kill good microbes as well the bad.
- koolhead17 9y agoThe course on Coursera about Microbiome (https://www.coursera.org/learn/microbiome https://www.coursera.org/learn/microbiome) has been extremely helpful for me in understanding gut bacteria and Microbiome. Hope it helps.