As a fitness individual, your health is at the top of your priority list. After all, you spend hours ensuring that you are fueling your body right, in order to get through the workouts that you’ve designed to achieve the optimal body type that brings you the most satisfaction. Therefore, it is important that you are performing at the highest level as often as you can.
Let me ask you a question though – during all of this, how much time have you spent thinking about your gut? If your answer was not much, the good news is that you’re not alone. Proper digestive nutrition is not something that is often at the top of our minds. Unfortunately, the bad news is that despite your hard work in all other areas of your life, you may have been holding yourself back by not giving this area the attention that it deserves.
Did you know that the bacteria in your body actually outnumber your cells 10 to 1? It’s true, when it comes down to it, your body is more bacteria than it is… well, you, and the majority of these bacteria are located in your digestive tract. However, if this fact is starting to set your skin crawling, we have another one for you. Only about 30% of the bacteria in your gut, typically, is considered “bad”. The other 70% of this bacterium is actually good bacteria, and aids with many of your body’s natural functions including digestion and, importantly, your immunity. 70% of the body’s immune cells are located in the gut – which is as good a reason as any to ensure that you’re giving that gut the attention that it deserves.
So, let’s break this down a little further. We’ve explained the overarching reasons as to why your gut is so important to your health, but let’s dig a little deeper. First of all, good digestion is an asset to anyone, however it’s even more important to athletes. You’re spending hours counting your macros and ensuring that you’re fueling your body with the right nutrients – therefore, you’re going to want to make sure that your gut is breaking those nutrients down in the most affective manner, and getting you those benefits quickly and efficiently.
Moreover, we all know that protein is an essential part of an active lifestyle. It is the building block of so much in our body – unfortunately, a typical body can only break down about 25g of protein per meal, and for some individuals, even less. Some research has shown that supporting your gut health with probiotics can play a role in breaking down that protein and absorbing the amino acids – essential to making that protein consumption useful in the first place.
That’s just the digestion portion of a health gut. We can’t forget about the immunity that is strengthened when you ensure that the bacterium in your gut is at it’s strongest. Everyone wants to have a health immune system; it is the most essential part of making your day-to-day life bearable. However, were you aware that as an athlete, you are actually temporarily decreasing your immunity after each workout? As we should all be aware, exercise is the process of creating acute stress to your body, in order to help strengthen it.
However, due that that stress, your body’s immune response can weaken, and athletes can actually be more prone to both bacterial and viral infections up to 72 hours after training. Now, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t stop training. The benefits of training far outweigh this momentary decrease in immunity. However, it does mean that any athlete should be ensuring that their immune system is at its optimal performance before entering into their training.
DE111 BACILLUS SUBTILIS PROBIOTIC
Now that we understand why it’s so important to be focusing on our gut’s health the next question is what are we going to do about it? How do you ensure that are strengthening your guts microflora? Well, the answer is quite simple – Probiotics. Probiotics are one of the best ways to ensure that you are giving your gut the right fuel to ensure optimal performance. Probiotics can be found in many foods such as yogurt, kombucha, sour dough, fermented cheeses and more.
However, we’d like to draw your attention to a specific probiotic: DE111. DE111 is a probiotic spore that is clinically proven to regulate microbial populations in the gut. The study also demonstrated the strain’s ability to improve digestion of dietary fats and complex carbohydrates. DE111 aids in the digestion of fats and sugars into beneficial small chain fatty acids, such as butyric acid.
The genome sequencing of DE111 indicates that the strain indeed contains genes that produce butyric acid, a fatty acid that supports the health of the large intestine. As for our immune system, DE111 has shown the ability to adhere to intestinal cells, as indicated by testing using Caco-2 cells.
In addition, the genome sequencing of DE111 shows that the strain contains genes that support the body’s production of the antibodies IgG and IgA. The presence of these antibodies primes one’s system to be prepared when foreign bodies attack.
For an added bonus, a clinical study of twenty-three collegiate female athletes (soccer and volleyball), indicated that the probiotic DE111 produced statistically significant improvements in the reduction of body fat percentage and a strong trend indicating proved performance of the deadlift exercise.
PVL ISOGOLD – THE GOLD STANDARD PROTEIN
Among other things, you can find DE111 in PVL’s premium protein supplement, ISOGOLD. Not only has this probiotic been shown to support, among other things, healthy gut functions, healthy GI tract and healthy immune functions, but when combined with high quality whey protein, it will go a long way to ensuring that your fitness goals are met.
So, stop ignoring the importance of your gut, and start consuming products that will promote digestive health and stimulate normal microflora in the gut. Your body will thank you, trust us.
Written by Jillian Kent from Inside Fitness
