Saturday, November 5, 2022

Exercise Improves Gut Health and Healing!

 


The benefits of exercise are endless – and this includes gut health!   Yes – you heard that right – research has proven that regular aerobic exercise may be one of the most effective ways to promote gut health and heal intestinal issues.  

Aerobic exercise increases gut bacteria that produce butyrate which is a short chain fatty acid that is the preferred fuel for the intestines and reduces inflammation and speeds up intestinal healing!  Amazingly this increase in Butyrate levels in the gut occurs independent of diet! 

Like all the many benefits of exercise this benefit occurs through a hormetic effect referring to the fact that exercise is a stressor that stimulate a positive adaptive response by the body.    

This means that vigorous exercise actually causes a short-term increase in intestinal permeability and inflammation!   However, the gut responds to this short-term stressor by increasing butyrate-producing bacteria and decreasing proteins involved in gut permeability.

In the same way exercise causes an increase in oxidative stress and free radicals which we traditionally think of as being bad.     However, this short-term increase in free radical stress literally turns on antioxidant and detoxification pathways at the cellular level meaning that the end result is a significant decrease in oxidative stress damage!

For more information on the many benefits of exercise for gut health click here:  https://www.ombrelab.com/blogs/gut/exercise-and-human-gut 


No comments:

Post a Comment