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Exercise also has been associated with variations in the microbiome. Past studies have shown that endurance athletes tend to have a somewhat different collection of microbes within their intestines than sedentary people do, especially if the athletes are lean and the sedentary people are not.
But those studies have been associational and could not show whether exercise actually altered microbes or how any microbial changes might later affect health.
So for the new study, which was published in November in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign decided to track the guts of people who undertook an unfamiliar exercise routine.
The study was designed, in fact, as a follow-up to an earlier, interesting animal study by the same scientists. In that work, the researchers had allowed some lab mice to run and others to sit around for most of their adult lives. Gut material from the mice was then transplanted into animals that had been bred to be germ-free, so that their guts would easily incorporate these new tribes of bacteria. After the animals’ microbiomes were established, the scientists exposed the mice to a substance that can cause tissue irritation and inflammation in the colon.
The scientists found that the animals 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.
