Picture this: your next 5K, marathon, or sports competition is on the horizon. You’ve marked the date on your calendar and created a training schedule, and you’ve been working hard to stick to it. You hit the pavement each morning to make sure you get in your daily run, and you have been on top of it when it comes to meal planning and staying hydrated. But even with all of that, you seem to have hit a wall. No matter how well you eat or how hard you train, you don’t feel like your performance is improving. Sound familiar?
Even if you aren’t training for the next competition and are simply hitting the gym as a way to reach your health goals, it can be frustrating to suddenly stop making any progress, especially if you are doing everything right. When this happens, you may be missing an important but often overlooked aspect of all-around wellness—probiotics.
What Are Probiotics?
According to the World Health Organization, probiotics are live microorganisms that confer a health benefit to the host when administered. In more simple terms, they are living beneficial bacteria that promote a healthy gut microbiome.
Your gut microbiome naturally has colonies of good bacteria living in it that are working hard to keep you healthy from head to toe. But sometimes the food we eat, medications we take, or pathogens we are exposed to can wipe out all those good bacteria. That’s where probiotics become helpful. The bacteria in probiotics are similar to your body’s natural beneficial bacteria and can help replenish those colonies and restore balance to your gut microbiome.
Just like with your gut bacteria, there are hundreds of different strains of probiotics out there. However, some of the most popular ones come from 2 common groups—Bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus.
Bifidobacteria is one of the first groups of probiotics that we are exposed to because it is present in breastmilk. They exist primarily in the gut, and their main function is to aid with the digestion process. Some of the most popular strains include Bifidobacterum bifidum, Bifidobacterium lactis, Bifidobacterium longum, and Bifidobacterium breve.
Meanwhile, Lactobacillus can be found all throughout the human body, from your mouth to your intestines. It is responsible for a number of things, including regulating your body’s pH levels, keeping your system functioning optimally, and aiding in the creation of food-digesting enzymes. Common strains of Lactobacillus include Lactobacillus acidophilus DDS-1, Lactobacillus acidophilus, and Lactobacillus bulgaricus.
Are Probiotics Beneficial For Athletic Performance?
The short answer is yes! Probiotics can be beneficial for anyone who leads an active lifestyle. Why? Because your gut is at the core of your health, keeping it healthy is key to keeping the rest of your body in tip-top shape.
A healthy and balanced gut microbiome will help your body be ready for all those intense training sessions and be better prepared to recover afterward. Let’s take a closer look at three ways probiotics can help your gut, and the rest of your body, be prepared to perform at its best.
Improves Digestion
When you are pushing your body to its limits, nutrients like proteins, minerals, and antioxidants become even more important. Your body needs to be prepared to digest the foods you eat and absorb these important nutrients so it will be up for the challenge—and a healthy, balanced gut will help it do just that. By adding a daily probiotic to your routine, you will be providing your gut with the boost it needs to keep up with the rest of your body.
Boosts Immunity
While a strong immune system is important for everyone, the strength of an athlete's immune system often affects their performance. After all, even if it’s not causing you to miss workouts, feeling under the weather makes it hard to give it your all. Thankfully, over 70% of your immune system is located in your gut, which means it can reap the benefits of probiotics and a healthy gut microbiome.
Regulates Your Gastrointestinal Tract (GI)
Digestive discomfort is no joke, and it happens to all of us on occasion. While gas, bloating, and heartburn are unpleasant for all of us, they can also easily impair both performance and recovery for athletes. Your gastrointestinal (GI) tract is responsible for delivering nutrients and fluids throughout your body during your training sessions. Needless to say, if it isn’t working properly, the rest of your body can suffer, resulting in reduced performance and slower recovery time. The best way to combat this is to keep your GI tract as healthy as possible, which is exactly what probiotics do.
Choosing a Probiotic Supplement
While you can get probiotics from certain foods, like yogurt, sourdough bread, and kimchi, the simplest way to make sure you are consistently seeding your gut with beneficial bacteria is to add a probiotic supplement to your daily routine.
When it comes to selecting your probiotic supplement, it’s important to remember that not all supplements are created equal. First and foremost, different supplements use different strains of probiotics. While all types of probiotics can help improve your digestion and immunity, it’s important to remember that some are more effective than others. So if you are looking for a single-strain probiotic supplement, you’ll want to do your research to make sure that the strain you are choosing will impart the specific benefits you are looking for.
Alternatively, you could opt for a supplement that contains a mixture of multiple different strains. This will allow you to reap the benefits of a variety of probiotics while also ensuring that your gut microbiome is healthy and diverse so your body will be ready to take on your next athletic challenge.
Additionally, quality and safety is of the utmost importance here. So before you go grab a probiotic off the shelf at the grocery store, take some time to do your research. Specifically, you’ll want to look for third-party certifications, which are an excellent way to ensure quality and efficacy. After all, you want to know that you are receiving nothing more or less than what is listed on the label.
Boost Your Performance with Spectrabiotic®
Probiotics are an essential part of maintaining a healthy gut, which is necessary to help ensure your body is performing at its best. Here at New Earth, we understand this, which is why we created Spectrabiotic.
This convenient daily supplement not only contains 12 of the best probiotic strains possible, but it combines them with the prebiotic inulin and the superfood organic Wild Microalgae, which provide ideal nourishment for the live probiotic cells. This powerful combination of ingredients works together to support and nourish your gut and keep your body as healthy as possible.
What’s more? We put quality and safety at the forefront of what we do, which is why we manufacture Spectrabiotic in an NSF registered facility to the FDA’s Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) and GMP for Sport. So you can rest assured that you are getting a high-quality and safe product every time.
The best part is that you can put it to the test risk-free with our 60-day money-back guarantee.