Gut bacteria and Heart Health: Is there a link?

A groundbreaking study has found a link between our heart health and our gut health, underscoring the importance of physical activity to maintaining good levels of performance.

If new medical research has taught us anything, it's that our gut bacteria are the key to our health.

The trillions of microbes living in our gut seem to control every aspect of our lives, from the size of our stomachs to our risk for chronic diseases and even our mental health.

So, it's important to keep your gut healthy. The bacteria in our bodies can keep us healthy and happy, but we must give it back.

Keeping a diversity of microbes ensures that we have more "friendly" bacteria that are good for us. Having a healthy and varied diet may be the obvious way to go, but the new study adds an important factor: good exercise.

Keeping your heart healthy and healthy through physical activity may also increase the number of good gut bacteria, the new study suggests.

Ryan Durk, of the Department of Kinesiology at San Francisco State University in California, was the author of the new paper, published in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism.

Study gut and heart health

Durk and his colleagues tested the cardiovascular health of 20 men and 17 women on a treadmill.

The researchers also determined the participants' body fat composition by putting them into a so-called BOD POD -- a chamber that measures a person's fat mass and their lean body weight -- using an aerophotometry.

The participants were also asked to keep a food diary for seven days and to provide stool samples to the researchers at the end of the study.

Durk and his team examined the bacterial composition of the stool samples, focusing on the ratio of one type of bacteria called Firmicutes to another called Bacteroidetes.

The firmicutes to Bacteroides ratio is a standard measure of intestinal health, and studies have linked this imbalance to conditions such as obesity or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

Exercise is key to healthy gut bacteria

Studies have shown that people with higher levels of cardiovascular fitness also have a higher percentage of firmicutes and bacteroidetes.

As the researchers explain, the abundance of firmicutes is associated with metabolites that prevent harmful bacteria in the gut from migrating to other parts of the body.

"These metabolic by-products help strengthen the lining of the gut and help prevent intestinal diseases," Durk says. He added that the findings further support the idea that exercise is medicine.

When we say this, we think it means that exercise can help people stay healthy and live a long life. "But you wouldn't think that your gut bacteria play a crucial role," the authors say.

"We now know that exercise is essential for increasing the number of good gut bacteria." Ryan Durk

In the future, the researchers hope similar studies will give them more insights that could lead to personalized exercise programs that could be used to improve gut health.

"We're not there yet," Durk says, "but this study helps build that foundation, and we'll get there in the future."