Sunday Science 2026 Episode 7 Microbiome Enhancing Endurance and Strength

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSplYgvmPh0

Spectacular Speaker-Centric Summary: Unlocking Microbiome Power for Endurance and Strength in Sunday Science

Summary of Each Speaker

Dr. Brent Laartz: Hosted the discussion on the bidirectional microbiome-exercise relationship, covering mechanisms like lactate clearance and short-chain fatty acid production, citing studies on Veillonella, Lactobacillus salivarius, and Lactobacillus plantarum, and outlining practical takeaways for enhancing performance.

Key Points and Decisions

Exercise improves microbiome diversity and gut health overall, though excessive intensity may temporarily increase permeability; elite athletes show enriched beneficial bacteria like Veillonella due to lactate-rich environments.

Key bacteria (Veillonella, L. salivarius, L. plantarum) clear lactate, boost short-chain fatty acids (propionic, acetic, butyric acids) for muscle energy and glycogen sparing, and support intestinal barrier integrity via tight junctions.

Mouse and human studies (e.g., Scheiman 2019 in Nature Medicine; Lee 2020 in Microorganisms; triathlete trial with L. plantarum PS128) demonstrated 2-3x increases in endurance and grip strength without altering VO2 max.

Decision: Prioritize natural approaches like exercise and diet over unproven supplements; Veillonella products exist but require further evaluation.

Next Steps

Incorporate exercise to foster lactate-utilizing bacteria and consume prebiotic fibers (inulin, chicory root, garlic) to support their growth.

Explore targeted Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium strains via diet or supplements while ensuring adequate fiber for colonization; consider homemade yogurt with verified lactate-utilizing species.

Follow Sunday Science episodes on social platforms, podcasts, YouTube, and GoOnPro.com for ongoing science-based wellness insights.

Announcer Lucas

[ 00:00:00,000 ]Welcome to Sunday Science, where we dive into a few recent scientific articles and their translation into our modern lives. Here is your host, Brent W. Lartz, M. D.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:00:10,980 ] All right, everyone, welcome to another episode of Sunday Science, and this one is titled 'Microbiome Enhancing Endurance and Strength.' This is Sunday Science. That I think is relatively unknown in the sphere of health and wellness, and however I do see a few occasional TikToks or Instagram posts on this because they are actively trying to make a couple of these bacteria into yogurt. etc. and one actually with a little bit of perhaps misinformation, because you can't really make Veillonella into yoga with just putting Veillonella into milk, because it doesn't make lactose. But I digress. Or as... We get along here. All right, so. There is a bi-directional relationship between your microbiome and exercise and strength and endurance. Certainly, exercise is definitely shown to improve your microbiome and gut health.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:01:23,930 ] However, overdoing it can sometimes decrease the permeability of your membranes temporarily. But overall, exercise is good for your microbiome and good for your gut health. So that's with high-intensity exercise, such as marathons and really long-distance racing, etc.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:01:46,650 ]  what What possible mechanisms could we have here to... improve our exercise endurance or strength?

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:01:59,000 ] With our microbiome. And certainly, we all know that microbiome— the bacteria in our intestines— can clear lactate out of the intestines and clear it out of the body as well by digesting it. And there are only certain types of bacteria. And as a matter of fact, thank you. Even within a genus such as lactobacillus, only certain species of lactobacillus will be able to digest lactate and clear it out of your intestines and therefore out of your body.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:02:28,049 ] It could also enhance what is the issue with muscles when they are under fatigue. They have excess lactate. So if you can clear lactate, all the better, right? So I thought I didn't have to explain that, but I definitely, I think I do. You could also, because of increased short-chain fatty acids that these same bacteria produce, increasing that availability for muscle to use as a power source, as an energy source, okay, so in that also those short-chain fatty acids can increase glycogen availability to muscle. And again, we talked about decreasing the permeability of colonocytes because those same short-chain fatty acids, that's propionic acid, acetic acid, and butyric acid, those are used as fuel by colonocytes. And colonocytes don't have a lot of sources of fuel.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:03:29,579 ] Accept this. So if you don't have—these types of good, beneficial bacteria in your intestines— you could actually have some permeability issues with your colonocytes because then they won't be able to produce the tight junction proteins that make a tight junction in between the colonocytes. Okay, so now let's get into... exercise affecting the microbiome. There are multiple, multiple studies showing that in marathon runners and other elite athletes that they have certain... Bacteria and their... microbiome. That actually are beneficial for them. And this is probably related to hypoxic episodes, creating the need for a lactic acid substrate utilizer.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:04:18,480 ] And then those increasing short-chain fatty acids, those marathon runners would actually get better if they did have these bacteria. So it actually makes sense. Right. So these and especially this was from some different studies, one by Scheiman, S-C-H-E-I-M-A-N, back in the late 2010s.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:04:42,380 ] Showing Veillonella, that's V-E-I-L-L-O-N-E-L-L-A, increased in those marathon runners. There are also multiple other bacteria that are increased in certain different... Uh oh. Elite athletes, another study showed that there was Bifidobacterium longus in that was increased in gold metal weightlifters. And there's also been shown that there's actually an increased diversity, but I think that diversity is a diversity of these good bacteria and not such a diversity in... The... poor bacteria that we see in certainly sedentary individuals. So. Now let's talk about the meat of this, and that is how your microbiome affects recovery and lactate removal.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:05:36,350 ] What do you want, if you're a marathon runner, if you are at least any kind of runner who feels like they get fatigue at a certain level, you break through into that lactate. zone. Level that zone, two, three, to four or maybe even to five, zone, and you are getting to the point where you need extra source of muscle fuel. and you don't want the lactate around. So we talked about that. And so, we're going to talk about three particular bacteria, and there are more than this. Any, any. bacteria that potentially gets rid of lactate out of your system. And is a lactate utilizer. And this is different from lactose. So there's lactose fermenters. Lactose is what is in milk. And lactose is what a lot of lactobacillus bacteria can. digest but we're talking about lactate okay so this is the byproduct of anaerobic activity okay So these three are Veillonella, again, lactobacillus salivarius, and lactobacillus plantarum, okay?

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:06:51,000 ] So the Veillonella... story starts with Scheinman and a lot of other different studies where they showed that these marathon runners had it in their intestines. So they said, hey, wow. Let's try this experiment. Let's put this into mice and see if it increases any of the parameters of a mouse's Um, exercise tolerance and strength. And so what they did was they gavaged. So in other words, they suck a tube down their throat and into their stomach and probably further into their small intestine, they introduced Veillonella. And they gavaged these mice, and it increased treadmill endurance.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:07:34,440 ] Mice were.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:07:36,230 ] And we'll show, let's get some, let's get some of these.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:07:44,330 ] Let's pull this one up.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:07:47,530 ] We're going to talk about, actually, this is in a later article.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:07:54,640 ] And that same increase in treadmill endurance could be replicated by infusing rectal propionic acid or short-chain fat. Acids into the rectum of those mice and hence, those short chain fatty acids provided the fuel for the muscle and so that increased treadmill endurance. Say they basically ran these mice on a treadmill, a probably a wheel of some sort, and forced them to do it until they couldn't do it anymore. And that endurance was what increased. And I think it was a very significant increase, like 130%. So that was from Scheinman. And again, that... That Scheinman article is in Nature Medicine, 2019 July issue. Okay, Scheinman, S-C-H-E-I-N-M-A-N. Okay, here's another study by Lee et al. And this was in... microorganisms 2020.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:08:56,380 ] Okay, so here they took um they found that weightlifters again they had this bacteria, lactobacillus salivarius, and there was a particular um strain of that that they used. And they said, 'Hey, well, let's try giving this to mice, similar, similar, um, study, but they, in addition to doing endurance, they also use grip strength and they had a method that they could make the mouse grip, um, and see how strong their grip was. And it increased that. And we'll, uh, let's look at this, um, Here.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:09:35,570 ] Let me pull this.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:09:39,010 ] into here by sharing this.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:09:47,790 ] into the, um, into the lecture here let's see where's my share here we go and let's uh I'm going to take the PowerPoint slideshow and share that in here. And if you are viewing this as... an audio podcast, certainly bear with me and I'll try to describe it as much as possible.' So this is Lee's study where they took one, two, and five times of this, called sa03, and um, and the vehicle uh was obviously 1. 0. So that's your placebo. And the time to exhaustion, especially with the five times, was 2. 7 times the minutes of time to exhaustion. So, with the vehicle, the mouse could stay on this treadmill for seven minutes before and it was a very fast— I don't know what exact speed it was, but 1. 0, so seven minutes, but was able to go out to 20 to 22 minutes with this.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:11:05,200 ] Bacteria instilled into them. So they basically increased by three times their threshold to exhaustion. Okay, so again, this is mice, so this is not necessarily a lead athlete.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:11:19,570 ] Let's take this a step further, okay? So the next study actually was taken and it used lactobacillus plantarum. But it did so in triathlon athletes. So this is not just a mouse study and all, you know. We talk about in the longevity space, a lot of these mouse studies. And really, can you? Really. Translate that into a human. And I think it's somewhat valid, but also not completely. So mice and humans are obviously different. But this was actually in triathlon athletes. And we'll look at this.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:12:07,290 ] And... So look at this again. This is endurance of a... Triathlete, okay. So you can see and PG is basically the placebo. Okay, and LG is the um is this lactobacillus lactobacillus plantarum PS128? And you can see that um it is statistically significant. So this is taking a person who is a triathlete. And increasing their endurance, right? So, wow, is that significant or what, right? So, let's... So let's talk about that.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:13:08,330 ] All right, so let's talk a little bit more about this slide here because you can see that it didn't increase VO2 max. So it didn't actually increase anything related to the cardiovascular effect, right? So, um, and it didn't increase any kind of bone fat or muscle content or anything like that. So that's the bottom left there. You can see on the top right that's the VO2 max. Really stayed the same between the two groups. It is the endurance, so a little bit. Again? Telling us that that is significant, right? That, that, um, that you're Bacteria are really looking at this and improving upon.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:14:03,490 ] The... Improving upon the lactate removal and providing food because you're even providing the short chain fatty acids to the muscle. Increasing the endurance by removing the lactate, that's not going to improve your VO2 max really, right? So again, right there. So short-chain fatty acids. Butyrate, propionate, and acetate, or if you include it as their acids, it's butyric acid, propionic acid, and acetic acid. These are produced by these particular bacteria and in general lactate-producing bacteria and also potentially other bacteria. Could produce it. Also, that food for the muscles. Okay. So, um, and the other thing that they showed in this study was that it did increase in those triathletes— the acetic acid, the butyric acid, and the propionic acid.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:15:14,870 ] In their stool in their intestines, so obviously, then it has to also get into the bloodstream. Um, and it doesn't, but it— as opposed to what we thought— actually decreased the diversity of the non-lactate-producing bacteria and decreased the diversity of potentially, and not proven, but decreased the diversity of uh those bacteria that—uh, that were potentially a bad bacteria for them. Right. So the takeaways here, and I'm going to share the screen again here because I want to show this slide. Just this is from a review by sales, very interesting to show here. Let's get to the sharing. Again.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:16:06,270 ] This is just showing kind of the commensal gut microbiota at the top, probiotic microorganisms, and Velanilla atypica.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:16:16,280 ] What's happening here? Potentially, propionic acid could increase the bioavailability of propionate, but also some of these other probiotic organisms can increase the acetate and butyrate. Also, getting to the muscles, and also and also... basically sparing the use of glycogen. Since you are in an anaerobic state and you're running out of glycogen stores, this enhances energy utilization.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:16:46,840 ] Into the Krebs cycle in the bottom left. And also in the middle here, you can see the butyrate is the food for your intestinal barrier and you enhance your intestinal barrier and again improving your exercise performance. Again, that's from the 'Sales KM' article from the Journal of Sports Health Sciences from 2023. So, um, all right. So we're going to stop the share on that.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:17:35,410 ] I have a little difficulty here. All right, so let's stop the share. Let's stop that little slideshow. Just three little slides today. Not a big... study, um, sharing here, but let's talk about this some more. The takeaway, okay. So what do you need to do to increase your bacteria into this?

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:18:02,950 ] Thank you. Type that would be from a marathon runner, right? Well, the first thing would be exercise. Why do these marathon runners have the increased valenil in the first place? They created a lactic acid type environment, which... improved. They're experience and their endurance, if they had Villanella and/ or some of these other bacteria. So exercise, obviously. So that improves your microbiome, exercise, and improves it to the point, and can improve your exercise tolerance. Okay, but the other ways with your diet, obviously, right? Diet, if you get increased fiber, these types of bacteria are increased in persons who have increased fiber in their diet and those types of diet and types of fiber that they use are actually a little bit less—um— of just an increased fiber as the general um, recommendation here.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:19:07,850 ] It's inulin, it's chicory root, it's fiber from these types of soluble fiber sources, garlic, and then other prebiotics because that is food for your good bacteria. And then also you could try supplements with lactate fermenters. I try to use the natural route if I can. But again here.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:19:32,810 ] Not all lactobacillus creates the lactate utilization, okay? So it's only some species of lactate. Lactobacillus, some species of Bifidobacterium, and some species of Villanella, though I think probably most species of Villanella. But Lactobacillus. Plantarum, Salivarius, and Bifidobacterium longum are the ones that have been studied. And then this Villanella, not widely available. There is one... particular product out there. I'm not going to mention it necessarily because I haven't delved into it enough to say that it is recommended anyway. But I think that, you know, you're not going to suddenly, because you put Valanella into your intestine or any of these other supplements, you really need all of the rest of the situation. Okay. So you put Villanella in, and if you don't have fiber in your intestines, they're not going to stick there and they're not going to stay there.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:20:33,040 ] So this is something that I'm looking into is making my own yogurt. I already have some different lactobacillus species and bifidobacterium species that I use. But I'm pretty sure that they are not lactate users, so that's something that could be used okay. So again, thank you for or joining me for Sunday Science. This is something that we're going to try to do more often on more Sundays. And follow us on our Instagram, on our TikTok, on our... on everything you follow us with, Facebook, threads. We're on Substack, okay? Our podcast, this Go On Pro podcast, is on anywhere you get your podcasts. We have two separate kind of podcasts, one that's a video. Podcast and one that's audio— you'll be able to get this audio on a lot of different audio podcasts. But you also, if you're listening to this, and you're like, 'Hey, I want to see these slides' and 'I want to see some of this' and 'I want to see this guy's face' because I want to see how ugly this dude is. That's where you need to go to your video podcasts. And we're available on Apple Podcasts and video. And we're also available on Spotify on video. We are also available on Substack and Video and YouTube and YouTube Music, all available on video, okay? So the other way to get us is on Google. GoOnPro. com. That GoOnPro. com has basically the YouTube feed within it.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:22:07,100 ] It also has some printing out of the different things that we say here. And again, as usual, I love you guys. I love myself. And this is why I'm doing this. This is the important thing. And again, Diet, exercise, sleep, all of these things affect your microbiome, your intake of plastics, your intake of unprocessed foods and processed foods for that matter can detrimentally affect your microbiome. So thanks for joining with me. I love doing this. I love getting some of this information out because it's... helping me. And so I want to help me, but I also want to share this information with everybody. So thank you very much for coming with us along this journey to an unprocessed life. life, but also sticking with the science. And the science is important because that's where some of these gym bro people go get wrong. And we're here to set the record straight. So thank you very much for joining with us.

Dr. Brent Laartz

[ 00:23:08,030 ] Peace out.

Announcer Lucas

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Scheiman, et al.  Nat Med. 2019 July ; 25(7): 1104–1109. doi:10.1038/s41591-019-0485-4.

Sales KM, Reimer RA. Unlocking a novel determinant of athletic performance: The role of the gut microbiota, short-chain fatty acids, and "biotics" in exercise. J Sport Health Sci. 2023 Jan;12(1):36-44. doi: 10.1016/j.jshs.2022.09.002. Epub 2022 Sep 9. PMID: 36089243; PMCID: PMC9923434. 

Huang, W.-C.; Pan, C.-H.; Wei, C.-C.; Huang, H.-Y. Lactobacillus plantarum PS128 Improves Physiological Adaptation and Performance in Triathletes through Gut Microbiota Modulation. Nutrients 2020, 12, 2315. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12082315 

Lee, M.-C.; Hsu, Y.-J.; Ho, H.-H.; Hsieh, S.-H.; Kuo, Y.-W.; Sung, H.-C.; Huang, C.-C. Lactobacillus salivarius Subspecies salicinius SA-03 is a New Probiotic Capable of Enhancing Exercise Performance and Decreasing Fatigue. Microorganisms 2020, 8, 545.