Exercise Decreases Inflammation
As a physical therapist, professor, public speaker, and the author of six books on various health topics, I seem to spend a great deal of my time trying to convince my patients, students, listeners, and readers that most everything that ails them would be helped, in part, by incorporating a moderate level exercise routine into their lives.
Exercise keeps our bodies strong and flexible, both physically and mentally. It can ward off obesity, regulate blood sugars, prompt new brain cell production, and ease the progression and discomfort of arthritis, just to name some of its many benefits. But are you ready for this? Recently, scientists have discovered that regular exercise can actually have beneficial changes within the microcosm of our gut (our digestive tract).
This may come as a surprise to some of you, but there is an entire world of organisms living within your gut! A microbiome is what scientists refer to it as. Without these trillions (yes, I said trillions!) of individual bacteria, we could not digest food properly or ward off infections. In fact, many studies have shown that the particular strains of bacteria a person has living in their gut can alter their metabolism and resistance to disease.
In a recent study, published this past November in Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ran a 2-stage study, first on rats, and then on humans, which revealed that the demographics, if you will, of one’s gut bacteria was altered for the better when non-exercising people began a regular exercise routine. Most notable was the widespread increase in bacteria that manufacture short-chain fatty acids which are believed to reduce inflammation both in the gut and throughout the entire body.
Yet here is the bad news: once exercise was discontinued, the gut bacteria changes reverted back to pre-exercise status within six weeks’ time. Also, a bit disappointing, was that the rise in inflammation fighting bacteria which was demonstrated to occur, was more dramatic in those study participants who were not obese* at the beginning of the study.
*Defining Obese: BMI of >30.0. Curious as to where your body weight lands you: Healthy, Overweight, or Obese? Check out my Body Mass Index Calculator.