Does Exercise Help Gut Bacteria?

Looking to heal your gut? Exercise might be the key to reaching your gut health goals. Read on to learn how exercise helps gut bacteria (and vice versa).

What does a healthy gut microbiome look like?

One of the best ways to reach your goals — in any form — is by knowing what the end result is. That’s why some people hang inspirational pictures on their fridges when trying to lose weight or why others have a vision board when starting a new business. 

Knowing what your end result looks like, helps you to stay on track to reaching your goals. 

It might sound funny to think of improved gut health as a goal. However, with diseases on the rise, optimizing your health has never been more important. What most people don’t realize is that starting in your gut is the best place to begin your journey to a healthier you. 

A healthy gut can boost immunity, improve health, and maintain a healthy metabolism — to name just a few of its many benefits.

So with all these benefits, what does a healthy gut microbiome look like?

A healthy gut microbiome will consist of:

• Strong intestinal integrity — impermeable tight junctions, well-lubricated mucosa, etc.
• High microdiversity 
• An abundance of healthy microbiota

Now you won’t be able to physically see any of these things, but you’ll know you have them if you:

• Rarely bloat
• Generally in a good mood
• High energy levels
• Low-stress levels or can manage stress more easily than others
• Healthy metabolism
• Sleep well

Conveniently, these are a lot of the same effects you get from working out. So what’s the correlation between exercise and gut bacteria?

How does exercise affect digestion?

Your gut microbiome is built up by trillions of microorganisms like bacteria, protozoa, fungi, and others. All of these gut bugs help to break down your food. Ideally, they are strains that coexist with us and help to extract nutrients from our food that we wouldn’t be able to access without them. 

Having the right balance of microbes in our gut is crucial to good health. 

This is where you often hear about good vs bad gut microbes. 

Exercise increases our blood flow throughout our body. The increased blood flow and oxygen to our muscles and organs helps to promote digestion. This keeps the digestive system moving at a healthy rate meaning less likelihood for bacteria to end up where they don’t belong because of slowed motility.

In addition to healthy motility speed, exercise helps to determine which microbial communities inhabit our guts. Studies show that after just 6 weeks of consistent exercise — 30-60 minutes, 3 times per week — the composition of the microbiome can change for the better. If the person goes back to a sedentary lifestyle, these changes are quickly reversed and the microdiversity is lower. 

Does exercise help gut bacteria?

Yes, it absolutely does.

On a more microscopic level, we want to know exactly what exercise does for the gut microbes themselves.

Enriched microdiversity, that we mentioned above, means that there are more healthy bacterial strains in our gut. When this happens, they’re able to replicate to create even more healthy strains. 

When looking at the guts of marathon runners versus nonrunners, they actually have specific bacteria that help their bodies to break down the lactate that is produced when exercising. Not only do they have a higher quantity of Veillonella — the increased bacteria — their gut knows to kick that production into higher gear when they start training. 

Our bodies are equipped to handle most things we throw at them that are healthy. If our bodies know when they’re training for a marathon and to increase this microbe, then they know how to work with moderate exercise levels too. 

When exercising moderately, our gut microbes begin to create more butyrate-producing microbes.

Butyrate is a short-chain fatty acid that is released when our gut microbes ferment certain carbohydrates. Some of the benefits of butyrate include:

• Reinforced intestinal barrier
• Reduces intestinal and systemic inflammation
• Potential prevention and improved management of colon cancer
• Improvement of insulin resistance
• Reduced metabolic disease and hypercholesterolemia

Studies have shown that an increase in butyrate-producing bacteria has been associated with regular exercise routines. Imagine getting all of these effects just because you become more consistent with your workout routine. 

This isn’t just a one-way street, though…

How does a healthy gut microbiome affect exercise?

If you’re looking to improve your gains or just your ability to exercise in general, focusing on getting a healthy gut first is a great idea. A healthy gut contributes to increased athletic performance in many ways, like:

• Reduced inflammation — meaning shorter recovery time between workouts
• Higher energy levels
• Improving your mental strength which will help you maintain motivation
• Lower fat-to-muscle ratio which helps reduce stress on joints and makes working out more optimized
• Better nutrient absorption so your bones, muscles, cells, metabolism, organs, and everything else can benefit from the healthy foods you eat. When you can absorb more nutrients, you can perform at a higher level.
• Reduced oxidative stress and muscular damage from workouts. This is especially true when you get a lot of polyphenols in your diet. The polyphenols + the workout = better performance and shorter recovery times.

And it’s amazing how when you focus on one thing, the other benefits. So no matter which you focus on first, your gut health or beginning a regular exercise routine, you’re going to reap the benefits either way!

What exercises are the best for good gut health?

So now that you have all the facts, what exercises help gut bacteria? 

Some of the best exercises for gut health are:

• Walking, jogging, or running — doing it outside is the best because the vitamin D and fresh air both promote good gut health
• Dancing
• Yoga
• Pelvic floor exercises to promote good digestion
• Qigong and other forms of martial arts
• Abdominal exercises — crunches aren’t really the best choice here, think more along the lines of yoga-esque abdominal work and even weight lifting

Exercise doesn’t have to be strict. It doesn’t have to be boring or tedious or something you absolutely hate. Do something fun for 30 minutes a day that gets your heart pumping and you’re well on your way to a healthier and happier gut and life.

• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4848870/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5357536/#:~:text=Recent%20studies%20suggest%20that%20exercise,host%2C%20improving%20its%20health%20status.
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29166320/
• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-019-0485-4
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070119/#sec-15title
• https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.637010/full