Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: It's Christian saga. Are you feeling sluggish during your runs?
Speaker 1: In the near future, Rather than reaching for an energy drink,
Speaker 1: you may opt to chuck a concoction of your favorite athletes.
Speaker 1: Gut Bugs, a team of microbiotic researchers affiliated with Harvard
Speaker 1: University Medical School plan to launch a company this fall.
Speaker 1: The aims to find and purify the best bugs from
Speaker 1: the feces of elite athletes and then market them as
Speaker 1: probiotics supplements in pill liquid or powder form. The company
Speaker 1: in the works, fit Biomics, taps a swiftly expanding field
Speaker 1: of science analyzing the human microbiome. Now that news may
Speaker 1: be repellent to some, but the massive micro organism swarming
Speaker 1: inside our bodies also smacks of a great business opportunity.
Speaker 1: According to a t the sixteen assessment published in the
Speaker 1: journal Cell, every person hosts at least tens of trillions
Speaker 1: of micro organisms, and that amounts to about five pounds
Speaker 1: or two point three kils of bacteria and other micro organisms.
Speaker 1: The trillions of microbes in each person's microbiome work in
Speaker 1: concert with the human body to fend off disease, promote digestion,
Speaker 1: facilitate fuel burning, aid in recovery, and even sharpen mental
Speaker 1: health and acuity. Now some believe that feeding the right
Speaker 1: mix of microbes to our guts could offer a new
Speaker 1: approach to enhancing athletic performance. Rather than using sophisticated genetic
Speaker 1: sequencing technology to zero in on disease causing microbes, why
Speaker 1: not hunt for microbes that help support elite athletes instead. Now,
Speaker 1: fit biomics aren't the only scientists interested in athletes poop.
Speaker 1: Lauren Peterson, a professional mountain bike racer and a postdoctoral
Speaker 1: associate at the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine in Farmington, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: has sampled cyclists FECs to determine what makes the top
Speaker 1: athletes microbiomes unique. In a paper recently published in the
Speaker 1: journal Microbiome, Peterson and Jack's professor George Weinstock noted an
Speaker 1: abundance of two microbes in the top cyclists micro bioms.
Speaker 1: One is thought to play a role in breaking down
Speaker 1: carbohydrates for fuel, and the other could play a role
Speaker 1: in recovery. Researchers at University College Cork in Ireland, meanwhile
Speaker 1: isolated what they believe is a critical microbe from fecal
Speaker 1: samples of Irish rugby players. The bacterium has been linked
Speaker 1: with a lowered risk for obesity and systemic inflammation. Another group,
Speaker 1: associated with the University of California at San Diego is
Speaker 1: looking at how the microbio elms of surfers may be
Speaker 1: unique and perhaps encompass microbiomes associated with their local ocean environments.
Speaker 1: Other groups are casting their microbiome nets even wider. The
Speaker 1: American Gut Project is a crowdsourced venture housed in the
Speaker 1: lab of renowned UCSD biologist Robert Knight. The group solicits
Speaker 1: fecal samples from people all around the world in an
Speaker 1: effort to build a comprehensive library of microbiome communities. The
Speaker 1: project includes samples from UCSD athletes, but is far more
Speaker 1: focused on improving overall science in the microbiome field than
Speaker 1: on enhancing athletic performance. Today's episode was written by Amanda Onion,
Speaker 1: produced by Dylan Fagan and from More on this and
Speaker 1: other topics, please visit us at how stuff works dot com.