Taking probiotic supplements and eating probiotic-rich food supports your gut health and offers many benefits to your body and mind. The link found between a healthy gut and your physical and mental health has resulted in probiotics being labeled as ‘super supplements.’ Adding these gut-friendly organisms to your diet is even more important if you are physically active or plan to start working on your fitness. Probiotics can impact your fitness routine, both directly and indirectly. Here are a few tips on how and why you should add probiotics to your daily diet when starting your fitness routine.

Probiotics helps your food transform into hard-working fuel for your body.

In order to put in your best effort and gain maximum benefits from your workout routine, it is important that the food you eat translates into increased stamina and energy. Probiotics help boost the efficacy of the process of assimilation of nutrients in your body. This allows your gut to absorb complete nutritional value from food.

Probiotics may aid in turning protein into muscle mass.

Some amino acids can only be obtained via food as they are not produced in the human body. Recent research on certain probiotic strains suggests that probiotics may boost the absorption of amino acids from the intestine. These amino acids were found to be essential for muscle growth in the body. Studies to check whether all probiotics do the same are underway. However, since probiotics aid better absorption of nutrients in the intestinal tract, this may be a likely conclusion.

Probiotics boost high-intensity workouts by promoting a healthy immune system.

Putting in many hours of training or doing high-intensity exercises requires your body to handle high stress. In general, low-intensity workouts are recommended for most people as such workouts help to improve immunity against common conditions like colds and flu. While probiotics like our Colds Suck are ideal for supporting your immunity you'll need another type of probiotic to support your high-intensity workout.

High-intensity workouts require a high base level of immunity at the start itself – and this is something probiotics, like Here's the Skinny, can help you build. Studies have shown that endurance athletes came down with only 50% of infections when their diet was supplemented with probiotics. In addition, their bodies had higher quantities of infection-fighting proteins at the end of the study. A common condition suffered by active female athletes, vaginal yeast infections could be prevented entirely with the help of certain probiotic bacterial strains found in our Yeast is a Beast product.

Probiotics can reduce your recovery time.

You may have noticed your muscles reacting painfully to vigorous workouts. Your body needs a certain amount of downtime after your fitness routine for the day. Higher recovery time means a lower number of workouts as you are still recuperating. Probiotics can help reduce your recovery time and make your journey from one workout to the other shorter and less painful. Gut-healthy bacteria also helps regulate the stress hormone, cortisol. Working out causes eustress or positive stress. By reducing fitness fatigue, probiotics make it easier for you to stick to your fitness routine.

Probiotics may reduce muscle inflammations after exercising.

Every athlete has had some experience with muscle damage and a drop in performance felt after exercising. This is particularly true after exercises like weight-lifting, vigorous running, and plyometric workouts. Studies show that using probiotics helps reduce muscle inflammation and leads to peak performance.

Probiotics help you maintain optimal digestive health.

The most obvious and well-researched benefit of probiotics is its effect on your digestive health. Endurance exercises and intense training sessions tend to cause physiological stress, stomach aches, and in some cases, diarrhea. Probiotics help build a strong gastrointestinal microbiome by improving the constant communication between your gut and immune system. Studies show that using probiotic supplements reduces the number and severity of gastrointestinal infections and disorders.

Probiotics help offset the workout-related reduction of beneficial bacteria in your body.

The human body draws beneficial bacterial strains from certain fermented food products like yogurt, kombucha, sauerkraut, and buttermilk, to name a few. Following a fitness routine generally goes hand in hand with restricting certain types and quantities of food. While these changes are directed toward losing weight and belly fat, they often have an undesirable effect – a reduction of gut-healthy bacteria that your body is no longer getting from the food you eat. Adding probiotics via food, beverages or supplements helps offset this reduction.

Probiotics boost your motivation levels.

You may have heard that fitness is all about mind over matter or that pain is temporary while glory is forever. You cannot deny the fact that the journey toward a fit and healthy you starts in the mind. Your mood and level of motivation have an important role to play in whether or not you make it to the gym or workout on any given day. Dubbed the ‘happy hormone’, the neurotransmitter serotonin is largely responsible for keeping your mind happier and motivated. Around 90% of this happy hormone is synthesized in the gut. Recent research suggests that probiotics improve your mental health and mood by boosting the health of your gut.

Support Your Fitness Routine With Probiotics

The right probiotics restore your gut health and repopulate the gut microbiome with good bacteria. If you are trying to lose those extra pounds and become your fittest self, LoveBug Probiotics’ Here’s the Skinny supplement helps you reach your weight loss goals. Formulated to improve digestive function, these tablets have 10 billion live cultures. LoveBug’s patented delivery technology makes the supplements 15X more effective than capsules. Here’s the Skinny has eight different strains of probiotics including the most-studied #1 strain LGG.

References

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C. J. Tuck and S. J. Vanner, Dietary therapies for functional bowel symptoms: Recent advances, challenges, and future directions, Neurogastroenterology & Motility, 30, 1, (2017).

F. Azpiroz, C. Dubray, A. Bernalier‐Donadille, J.‐M. Cardot, A. Accarino, J. Serra, A. Wagner, F. Respondek and M. Dapoigny, Effects of scFOS on the composition of fecal microbiota and anxiety in patients with irritable bowel syndrome: a randomized, double blind, placebo controlled study, Neurogastroenterology & Motility, 29, 2, (2016).

Steenbergen L, Sellaro R, van Hemert S, Bosch J, Colzato L. A randomized controlled trial to test the effect of multispecies probiotics on cognitive reactivity to sad mood. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 2015.