One difference between elite athletes and the rest of us might be in what hangs out in their guts.
Microbes that flourished in the guts of some runners after a marathon boosted the time that lab mice ran on a treadmill, researchers report June 24 in Nature Medicine. These particular microbes seem to take lactate, pumped out by muscles during exercise, and turn it into a compound that may help with endurance.
The study “adds to our understanding of how the bacteria in our gut may influence all sorts of different facets of health and disease,” says Kim Barrett, a gastrointestinal physiologist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved with the study. While most studies of the microbiome — the medley of microorganisms that live in and on the body — rely on correlation, this work shows that specific bacteria, as well as the products that they make, can improve athletic performance in mice, she says.