How Gut health impacts endurance athletes
Amidst the focus on training plans, recovery strategies, and equipment optimization, there's a fundamental, yet often overlooked, aspect that can profoundly impact athletic achievement: gut health.
Your gastrointestinal (GI) system isn't just a passive participant in your athletic endeavors—it's a dynamic ecosystem that influences everything from nutrient absorption to immune function.
In this blog, we delve into the critical connection between gut health and endurance performance, offering insights and strategies to help you fuel your success from the inside out.
Importance of Gut Health in Athletes
Your gut is home to trillions of bacteria, collectively known as the gut microbiota, which play
a vital role in digestion, nutrient absorption, and immune function.
In recent research, theres been a growing body of evidence indicating a connection between the composition of the intestinal microbiota and levels of physical activity .
This suggests that changes in the makeup of gut bacteria could play a role in influencing physical performance. For endurance athletes, maintaining a healthy gut is essential for several reasons:
1) Reducing GI stress while training/competing:
Endurance athletes frequently experience gastrointestinal discomfort, which can have a substantial influence on performance.
By improving your gut health, you can reduce symptoms like bloating, cramps, and diarrhoea, allowing you to exercise and perform more
easily.
2) Nutrient Absorption:
Endurance activities place high demands on your body for energy and nutrients. Thats why its crucial to ensure your body can effectively break down food to get the energy and nutrients it needs.
Maintaining gut health boils down to keeping the trillions of bacteria in your gut content and nourished. When these bacteria are thriving, they excel at breaking down food, facilitating better nutrient absorption in your body.
Why do we want nutrients?
In the realm of sports, nutrients serve as the fuel that powers athletic performance, aiding in muscle development, endurance, and recovery. For example, macronutrients such as carbohydrates, proteins, and fats are nutrients needed in large amounts.
When these are optimally broken down (with the help of bacteria) and used by the body, we can use them for fuelling and recovery. Furthermore, micronutrients are nutrients we need in smaller amounts but play crucial roles in various biochemical processes within the body.
This category of nutrients includes vitamins and minerals. While all vitamins and minerals hold significance, here are examples that are particularly crucial for athletes:
3) Immune Function:
Intense training can suppress the immune system, making athletes more susceptible to infections and illnesses. A balanced gut microbiota supports immune function, helping to reduce the risk of infections that could sideline your training.
4) Inflammation Regulation
Endurance exercise can trigger inflammation in the body, which, if left unchecked, may impair recovery, and increase the risk of injury. A healthy gut microbiome helps regulate inflammation, promoting faster recovery and reducing the risk of overtraining.
How to Improve Gut Health through Better
Nutrition?
Eat a Diverse Range of Foods
The best way to imagine our microbiome is to picture an African Savannah. Try to think of the diversity of populations that inhabit this plain – lions, zebra, giraffes, elephants, antelopes… the list goes on. A thriving ecosystem is one that contains a huge diversity of animals, each with their niche function.
A healthy microbiome should display the same level of diversity as an animal’s ecosystem. The more types of bacteria in our gut, the better our gut will be at digesting and absorbing nutrients.
However, all these different types of bacteria need to be fed! Our gut bacteria actually have preferences on their favourite foods! Therefore, it is important to consume a variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and lean proteins which provide a wide array of nutrients and fibre to feed as many bacteria as possible.
Aim to incorporate different types and colours of plant-based foods into your diet to promote microbial diversity.
Implement More Fermented Foods into your Diet.
Foods that have undergone fermentation, like yogurt, kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, miso, and kombucha, harbour probiotics—live beneficial bacteria capable of colonizing the gut and promoting digestive wellness.
Integrating fermented foods into your daily eating habits can aid in restoring and sustaining a flourishing gut microbiome.
Limit Processed Foods and Added Sugars
Highly processed foods, sugary snacks, and beverages can disrupt gut health by promoting the growth of harmful bacteria and contributing to inflammation. Minimise your intake of these foods and opt for whole, minimally processed alternatives instead.
Ensure Sufficient Fibre Intake
Fibre is crucial for promoting regular bowel movements and sustaining optimal gut health. Additionally, it functions as a prebiotic (explained later in blog), nourishing beneficial gut bacteria. Strive to incorporate a variety of soluble and insoluble fiber sources such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and seeds into your dietary routine.
Control Stress Levels
Chronic stress can negatively impact gut health by altering gut motility, increasing inflammation, and disrupting the balance of gut bacteria. Practice stress-reduction techniques such as mindfulness, deep breathing, exercise, and adequate sleep to support gut health.
Drink Enough Water Daily
Drinking plenty of water is essential for maintaining optimal digestion and supporting gut health. Adequate hydration helps keep stool soft and facilitates the movement of waste through the digestive tract.
Eat Foods High in Prebiotics
Foods rich in prebiotics include onions, garlic, leeks, asparagus, bananas, oats, and legumes. Consuming these foods can help stimulate the growth of beneficial bacteria in the gut.
What are probiotics/prebiotics ?
Prebiotics and probiotics are both beneficial components of a healthy diet, but they play distinct roles in supporting gut health. Probiotics are live beneficial bacteria or yeasts. They help to populate the gut with beneficial microorganisms, helping to maintain a healthy balance of bacteria in the gastrointestinal
tract.
Probiotics can be found in certain fermented foods such as yogurt, kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, miso, tempeh, and kombucha.
Prebiotics are non-digestible fibres that serve as food for beneficial gut bacteria, stimulating their growth and activity. Prebiotics act as fuel for probiotic bacteria and other beneficial microbes in the gut. found in certain types of fiber-rich foods, including onions, garlic, leeks, asparagus, bananas, oats, barley, legumes, and some fruits and vegetables.
Should I take Probiotic/Prebiotic Supplements?
Like everything, nutritionists would prefer to see populations get their nutrients from whole- food sources and therefore minimize the need for supplementation. By diversifying your diet, you are optimizing your chances of consuming adequate amounts of probiotics and also enough prebiotics to fuel these probiotics. There are however circumstances in which one may need that extra boost to bring back up the quality of their gut health such as after a course of antibiotics or after an illness.
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Key Takeaway Points
Gut health is directly related to athletic performance.
Athletes should consider improving their gut health as this can result in reductions in gastrointestinal stress while training/ competing (such as cramping, nausea, bloating, etc), better nutrient absorption, optimized immune function, and inflammation regulation.
You can improve your gut health by eating a diverse range of foods, implementing more fermented foods, limiting processed foods and added sugars, consuming adequate fibre, drinking enough water, eating foods high in prebiotics, and managing stress levels.
Probiotics are live beneficial bacteria or yeasts, and prebiotics are non-digestible fibres that serve as food for probiotics. By diversifying your diet, you are optimizing your chances of consuming adequate amounts of probiotics and also enough prebiotics to fuel these probiotics.
References
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dietary patterns are associated with pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory
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