Don’t want to play sports? It may be due to your intestines – Wel.nl

One puts on his sneakers with a big smile, the other can’t move forward. It may be related to your gut flora. At least this is the case in mice.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania saw that a group of mice had just run 30 kilometers in 48 hours in their wheel, while the other mice were hanging around lethargic in their cage. Genetically, there were no differences, but the composition of their gut bacteria turned out to be different.

“Whenever the sports mice spun the wheel, bacteria in their colon produced substances that traveled to their brain’s reward center and stimulated dopamine production there,” says Professor Danny De Looze of UZ Gent. against HLN. “The more they exercised, the more dopamine their brain produced and the more they were motivated to exercise even more.”

But if their intestinal flora was partially destroyed with antibiotics, the animals became much less active. “The reverse also happened: lazy mice in which gut bacteria from active samples were transplanted spontaneously began to exercise more,” says De Looze. “From all this, the researchers concluded that the composition of the intestinal flora determines the animal’s motivation to exercise.

Whether this also applies to humans, of course, is not known. However, it has already been shown that there is a link between the intestinal flora and sports performance. “Several years ago, scientists compared the intestinal flora of top athletes with that of ‘ordinary’ people. Then, it turned out that the intestinal flora of top athletes was more diversified,” explains Professor De Looze. “But whether the latter was a result of the sport or the fact that the muscular rugby players simply had different eating habits – they ate a lot more carbs and pasta – was unclear.”