EndurElite Chief Endurance Officer Matt Mosman discusses how runners, cyclists, and other endurance athletes who take a probiotic supplement on a daily basis can improve overall health and performance.
Video Transcription:
Should Runners And Cyclists Take A Probiotic Supplement?
Good morning family of fast, Matt Mosman, the Chief Endurance Officer over at EndurElite coming at you with today's fast fact. Now, today we're gonna be talking about probiotics.
What Are Probiotics?
Now, probiotics are basically ingested bacteria that reside and alter the overall bacterial population in the colon. Now, probiotics as a supplement have become kind of a hot topic over the last few years with a bunch of research coming out showing that certain probiotics like lactobacillus, acidophilus and Bifidobacterium improve various aspects of overall health.
How Probiotics Improve General Health In Endurance Athletes
They have been shown to improve signs of depression, they can help with seasonal allergies, they can help with overall gut health and mood. But the problem is, or not the problem, a lot of these studies again are done in the general population, and not a lot of studies have been done on the beneficial effects of probiotics in endurance athletes. But the other day, I got my little glasses on, I dug through the research, and I actually found a couple different studies examining the effects of probiotics in endurance athletes as it relates to upper respiratory tract infections.
How Probiotics Increase Performance In Highly Trained Endurance Athletes
So, let's discuss one of these studies and see what the researchers found out. So, for this first study the researchers gathered 84 highly trained male and female endurance athletes. They separated them into one group that received the probiotic lactobacillus on a daily basis, and one placebo group. And they examined the effects of these probiotics over a 12-week period while they were training hard during the winter. So, during this time the athletes also recorded what they were training on a daily basis and then recording any kind of illnesses that occurred, and when the study was done and the researchers crunched all the numbers, they actually found something pretty interesting.
They found that the placebo group, the subjects within that, had 36% more incidences of upper respiratory tract infections compared to the group that was taking the lactobacillus probiotic. But, they also found that the severity and duration of the upper respiratory infection really didn't differ from the group that was receiving the probiotic and the placebo group. So, really the take-home point of this study is probiotics taken on a daily basis, more specifically, lactobacillus, may decrease the incidence of upper respiratory tract infections in endurance athletes. Which we know it's important to stay healthy, so we can put the training days in and get better.
So that is about all I have for today my endurance friends. If you have a friend that takes probiotics, please share this video with them. If you want other videos like this, please subscribe to the EndurElite YouTube channel or head on over to the EndurElite blog at www.endurelite.com, get social with us on Facebook and Instagram. And until next time my endurance friends, stay fueled, stay focused, stay fast, and stay informed.
