Probiotics and Prebiotics: How They Affect Your Workout

When you’re lifting heavy things at the gym, running your eighth mile or holding warrior three for what seems like three excruciating minutes, the last thing on your mind is probably your gut health. And rightly so. Our fitness goals so often revolve around performance, achievement and stamina that the delicate balance of bacteria in our bellies can easily slip our minds.

But everything in our body is connected and your gut health can affect a lot more than just your, ahem, regularity. The tiny but numerous bacteria hanging out in your digestive system can make a big impact on your workouts, weight loss and overall health.

Getting right with your gut could take your fitness and physique from good to great. Read on for all the information you need to start taking advantage of the benefits of probiotics and prebiotics.

What Do Probiotics Do?

Probiotics are already living inside of you. Yep. Living. Probiotics are bacteria and yeast that hang out in your digestive system and keep your body healthy. According to Dr. Geoff Lecovin for the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM), your good gut bacteria, part of your microbiota, are always at odds with the bad ones.

“You’re basically trying to outnumber the bad guys with the good guys,” Dr. Lecovin says. “Probiotics are live food ingredients that can alter the microbiota and confer health benefits.”

When you consume food or a supplement containing probiotics, you’re basically sending reinforcements to the front lines of battle against bad bacteria in your digestive system. You’re welcome, microbiota. Keeping your healthy gut bacteria in charge can enhance immunity, maintain internal homeostasis and keep your upper respiratory tract, skin and urogenital tract in top condition, according to a study published in the Exercise Immunology Review.

Your gut bacteria is also in control of the production of some hormonal compounds, so their effects can be felt in the rest of the body and the brain, too. The NASM claims that probiotics can even be helpful in the treatment of depression. As if you needed another reason to get your gut in order.

How Are Probiotics And Prebiotics Different?

Probiotics can’t work without prebiotics. In science speak, a prebiotic is a “a selectively fermented ingredient that allows specific changes, both in the composition and/or the activity in the gastrointestinal microflora that confers benefits upon host well-being and health.” Basically, prebiotics are food for the good bacteria in your gut. They are essentially fiber sources that your body can’t handle, but the microbiota in your gut go crazy for them. They feed on prebiotic fiber, making them even healthier and more effective.

How Can Probiotics And Prebiotics Help Your Workout?

In addition to keeping your whole body healthy and functioning properly, probiotics and prebiotics can help you achieve your fitness and physique goals too. Those little bacteria are terrific allies.

One study, called The Microbiota: An Exercise Immunology Perspective, examined how our microbiota function in reference to the rest of our body. The researchers looked at our gut bacteria almost like part of our endocrine system, because it produces and releases hormonal compounds that have far-reaching effects on our body and our health. They also found that exercise can have an impact on your gut health, since it’s an external stimuli. Diet influences gut bacteria composition, too.

Because of this, researchers think that poor gut health can have consequences like autoimmune diseases or leaky gut. Operating under the assumption that obesity is at least in part an immune-mediated disease, meaning that it lacks a definitive cause but could be related to your immune system, researchers propose that a healthy gut maintained with probiotics and prebiotics could aid in weight control.

Exercise can mean a lot of good things for gut health and good gut health can mean a lot of positive things for the results of exercise. According to Emily Bailey, director of nutrition for NutriFormance, for NASM, athletes in general have a more diverse intestinal ecosystem. The more diverse your good gut bacteria are, the more bases you have covered so the good can dominate the bad.

Probiotic supplementation can help with workout recovery, too. According to a study in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, athletes that took a probiotic supplement with their protein saw reduced incidences of muscle damage, increased recovery and even might see improved performance after muscle damage, should it occur. Take care of your gut and you could see better results and fewer injuries in the gym. Seems like a no-brainer.

What’s The Best Way To Get Probiotics And Prebiotics?

There are a number of foods that provide good sources of probiotics and prebiotics. Yogurt, for one, packs good bacteria like lactobacillus or the bifidobacteria you may have heard Jamie Lee Curtis going on about in a certain cult favorite yogurt commercial.

Fermented foods like sauerkraut, kefir, kimchi and miso are also sources of probiotics. Some cheeses, like delicious gouda, and even sourdough bread have probiotics tucked away inside of them, too. You could make a really great probiotic sandwich and follow it up with some yogurt, or you could try a probiotic supplement, most of which contain several billion good bacteria.

Prebiotics can be found in foods like asparagus, artichokes, bananas, oatmeal and legumes. Nature played a cruel trick on your gut since there aren’t any food sources that contain both probiotics and prebiotics, but you can snag a supplement with both pre and pro.