To Your Health
August, 2022 (Vol. 16, Issue 08) |
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The Exercise Killer
By Editorial Staff
With so much emphasis on physical activity these days – and so many people trying not just to lose weight and get more fit, but also improve their athletic performance in general, it's time to discuss something that can compromise all of the above: antibiotics. That's because new research implicates antibiotic use in diminished exercise performance.
Specifically, we're talking about exercise motivation and endurance, two critical components of any exercise routine. Both appear to take a hit if you take antibiotics. Using a mouse model, researchers discovered that active ("high runner") mice bred for voluntary exercise reduced their daily wheel-running distance after a 10-day course of antibiotics. Daily running distance did not decline in mice (the control group) that did not receive antibiotics.
Now here's the interesting part: The researchers speculate that the reason for diminished activity following antibiotic use may be due to gut microbiome disruptions caused by antibiotics. In their study, findings from which appear in the journal Behavioural Processes, "A broad-spectrum antibiotic cocktail was used to greatly reduce the gut microbiome." The GI microbiome is alive with "healthy" bacteria; unfortunately, as we've discussed before, antibiotics don't discriminate; they kill all bacteria, bad and good. Whenever there's a non-antibiotic option available, ask your doctor for more information. Your body will thank you for it.
