Intensity vs Duration of Exercise: Which exercise types are best for gut health?

When it comes to exercising and getting healthy, we tend to be jerked in all different directions on what actually makes our bodies healthy. 

Here, our goal is to give you the truth based on scientific evidence. So today we are talking about the best types of exercise for gut health. 

With schedules being so busy, our exercise opportunities are shorter, but is it still beneficial to have a short, but high-intensity exercise? Or is less intense exercise for a longer period of time better?

Read on to find out!

How does exercise affect gut health?

It’s been long-known that exercising is good for our health. In the last few decades of research on the gut microbiome, we have come to learn that exercise is especially beneficial for our gut health which has proven to affect our overall health. 

Exercising allows your gut to digest food easier. Even when people ate high-fat diets, exercising kept them from becoming obese. This is largely associated with the way the gut is affected. When we exercise we get our heart pumping the blood through our veins at a better rate. This delivers oxygen and nutrients where they need to go more quickly. 

As the blood flows, it allows our body to not only use up those nutrients better, it tells your digestive system what it needs more of. This gives us cravings based on what our body needs and our gut microbes have a large say in what we crave. If we keep a healthy group of microbes in our gut we crave healthy things. If we don’t keep them healthy our cravings tend to be more out of control (and fattening).

How does gut health affect your ability to exercise?

Your gut microbes do more than just control your cravings. In regards to exercise, your gut can affect everything.

• Your motivation to exercise is affected by your gut
• Your cravings are affected by your gut
• The way your muscles use nutrients from your food is affected by your gut
• The ratio of gut microbes has an impact on your VO2 max affecting your cardiovascular system during and after exercise

And that’s just to name a few. Our gut bugs control nearly everything in our bodies — explaining the nickname “second brain.” So the fact that our exercising abilities are influenced by our gut microbiomes, isn’t all that shocking. 

Now how do we get the two to work together optimally? 

Duration vs Intensity: Which type of exercise is best for gut health?

There have been multiple studies on this topic and they’ve all come out with interesting results. 

Type 2 diabetes patients were separated into two groups. One group did high-intensity workouts while the other did moderate-intensity workouts. The differences were as follows:

• While both groups experienced increased microdiversity, the lower-intensity group had more (and generally healthier) taxa. The higher-intensity group experienced more methane (gas-producing) microbes than the lower-intensity group.
• The lower-intensity group also experienced more metabolic pathways than the higher-intensity group.

In another study, they found that microbiota changes in the gut were dependent upon BMI more than exercise types. People with higher BMI, even when exercising, experienced an unhealthier microbiome in the duration of this particular study. We do see changes in gut microdiversity as patients continue exercising for extended periods of time. 

This study found that exercising for at least 150 minutes per week was enough to induce positive changes in the gut microbiome. 

That equates to 20 minutes per day if you’re exercising every day of the week or 30 minutes for 5 days a week.

Yet another study found multiple clues to what could be the best exercise for our health. 

• Aerobic exercising reduced splenic blood flow and improved intestinal transit time. 
• High-intensity exercise was found to improve mitochondrial function which improves energy while increasing the bacteria that are responsible for lactate metabolism. High-intensity exercise was also found to increase urease production.
• Duration exercises were found to have positive effects on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis which can help the gut-brain axis and in regulating your stress responses. 

All of these things can promote a healthy microbiome. And this understanding opens the door to the potential of finding an exercise to help your overall health goals. 

If you’re experiencing stress-related gut disturbances, like many people who have IBS do, then duration exercise is probably best for you. Duration doesn’t have to be a 3-hour hike either. Remember, duration was found to be 150 minutes per week. So don’t let the word duration prevent you from trying to use exercise to achieve your health goals. 

Which exercises should I do for better gut health?

Getting better gut health will help you to achieve nearly any goal you set for yourself. It’s the foundational groundwork for better health. It controls the inflammation in your body to help boost your immune system, reduce disease potential, and maintain composure when life throws stressors of all kinds your way. 

The best exercises for your gut will be individual to you and your specific condition. Starting at a baseline of no exercise and moving right into large commitments of exercise is not only overwhelming for your muscles and brain to get used to, but your gut as well. These quick and drastic changes will surely have you running to the bathroom. 

However, if you’re already doing exercises and want to improve your digestive health, trying one of the other options like adding duration, aerobics, or HIIT workouts to your regimen might be a good way to add in the diversity your gut bugs crave. 

The last study we mentioned, lets you see how each type of exercise can benefit you. Incorporating a few different types of exercise into your week can add the diversity for your muscles, gut, and mental health that you need. 

Try some of these workout options to achieve your health goals:

• Qigong
• Swimming
• Walking
• Jogging
• Boxing
• Yoga
• Hiking (the altitude changes give you a different result than just walking or jogging)
• Pilates
• Sports that you enjoy (basketball, soccer, softball, etc.)

Whatever gets your body moving, makes you smile, and lets you forget about worldly stresses, is the right workout for you. Do some inward reflection to see what feels right to you right now. Start with baby steps and start expanding. Diversity is the key to health.

Diversity of healthy foods.

Diversity of hobbies and habits.

The diversity of exercise is no different. 

But always aim for that 150 minutes per week. That goal will help be the framework to fit the rest into. 

What is your favorite type of workout? Let us know in the comments below!

• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36517598/
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270213/#sec-26title
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6487229/#S4title
• https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17461391.2022.2035436
• https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1096/fj.202201571R
• https://journals.lww.com/acsm-csmr/fulltext/2022/03000/type,_intensity,_and_duration_of_exercise_as.5.aspx