Healthy Eating and Exercise

We all know that it's important to eat healthily and exercise regularly, especially as we age. This week I'm going to explain why exercising regularly is beneficial in relation to my favourite subject of the gut microbiota.

Researchers from the University of Cork in 2014 and many other studies backing this up found that the microbiota of athletes is very very diverse so the hypothesis arose that doing exercise can increase gut diversity.

As we age our body produces more pro-inflammatory cytokines which are cells that tell the body to produce more inflammation. If you have a diverse microbiota by consuming anti inflammatory antioxidants in your diet eg fruit and vegetables this will have a protective effect against these proinflammatory cytokines. These antioxidants must come from food rather than supplements. If you exercise your body produces more antioxidant enzymes which unlike dietary antioxidants can be used over and over again by the body thus giving you a more protective function from those proinflammatory cytokines. So an antioxidant diet plus exercise is a double win!!!

Terminology

Oxidants are reactive molecules that react with protein, dna and lipids in the body causing bad effects.

Examples of oxidants are smoking, consuming high levels of sugar, fat and alchohol in the diet, radiation and pollution.

Antioxidant are substances that can prevent or slow the damage to cells caused by oxidants. Examples are vitamin C, E, selenium and carotenoids.

Antioxidant enzymes such as SOD, CAT and GPx, need cofactors to catalyse such as iron, copper, zinc and selenium. These cofactors can be obtained from the diet.

Reference

Clarke, S.F., Murphy, E.F., O'Sullivan, O., Lucey, A.J., Humphreys, M., Hogan, A., Hayes, P., O'Reilly, M., Jeffery, I.B., Wood-Martin, R. and Kerins, D.M., 2014. Exercise and associated dietary extremes impact on gut microbial diversity. Gut, 63(12), pp.1913-1920.