 Hi, this is Dr. Ruscio and let's discuss the impact that either being active or sedentary has on the microbiota or the world of bacteria in your gut. And I'd like to share with you a study, I'll put the abstract up here on screen, the study entitled differences in gut microbiota profile between women with active lifestyle and sedentary women. So firstly, let's start off with a few of the quotes from this research paper that are very interesting. Quantitative PCR analysis, a method of testing the gut microbiota, typically done via stool, revealed higher abundance of health promoting bacteria species in active women, including fecal bacteria and presidency, rosberia hominins, and archymesia municophilia. So what this tells us is being active leads to higher levels of healthy bacteria or at least what we think are healthy bacteria in the gut. Secondly, body fat percentage, muscle mass, physical fitness significantly correlated with several bacterial populations. So what this shows us, and I think this is very important to help keep one grounded amidst some of the unfortunate nefarious claims circulating on the internet regarding being able to custom manipulate your bacteria in order to produce weight loss, what we're seeing here is that the active lifestyle may be driving a healthier body composition and that may be correlating to or that may be the cause of a healthier bacteria and not the other way around. Now certainly interventions to improve the health of your gut can help with weight loss or optimization of one's body composition. Yes, I think we can say that, but it's another thing to say that we can do a mapping of all the bacteria in your gut and try to custom manipulate those bacteria in order to produce weight loss. In other posts and videos I've reviewed that really the evidence is not support that when you look at much of the literature regarding the microbiota and its impact on obesity. There was early excitement about something called the formicidicebacterial disease ratio and that pretty much has been, I don't want to say disproven but a fairly large, I'd say the majority of evidence actually shows that that ratio has no real bearing or nothing that can be treated to aid in weight loss or optimization of body composition. So moving on. In summary we provide the first demonstration of interdependence between some bacterial genre and sedentary behavior parameters and show that not only does the dose and type of exercise influence the composition of the gut microbiota but also the breaking of sedentary behavior. So essentially what they're hinting at here is by breaking sedentary behavior or exercise and becoming active you can have a positive impact on the bacteria in your gut. Again this is just important to understand because I'm trying to bribe you with some reasonable information to help keep all of us grounded amidst what is sometimes a very overreaching, over speculative crop of recommendations that are kind of popping up on the internet saying that you should do these very robust gut assays and then try to treat that data, those gut bacteria levels in attempts to try to improve your weight. And unfortunately there's not really any data to support that and it's a little bit kind of preying on someone's perhaps insecurities or desires to gain weight because there's not really good evidence to support that. But let me share with you a few of my other thoughts here in close. Why does exercise improve the gut microbiota? Well it's likely because when you exercise that has a slight immunosuppressive effect and a little bit of immunosuppression can actually be good because we want to prevent your immune system from being overzealous and overly attacking. So some exercise can help prevent your gut immune system from being overzealous and attacking your healthy bacteria. Now if we go even further we do see when athletes over train they actually go too far and they have a higher incidence of infection. So no exercise, no immunosuppression that could mean that some of your good bacteria ends up getting killed off because your immune system is too aggressive. The right amount of exercise, a little bit of immunosuppression allows bacteria to live, thrive and have a healthy overall bacteria community. Too much exercise overly suppresses the immune system and increases the risk of infection. So I think it's important spectrum to kind of visualize. And in close you have more power over your microbiota than you may think. It's been shown that simple things like exercise, stress reduction, diet can have profound impacts on your microbiota. Also probiotics and if you're struggling after those things you may want to get a little bit deeper into some clinical interventions like antibacterial agents or highly specialized diets but the point is with some basic interventions you have more power to positively or negatively influence your microbiota. And I just say this to help hopefully keep you grounded because unfortunately, and I think these things are hopefully predominantly done in a well-intentioned light, there are many claims circulating about the microbiota that are not true. That push one to do testing and try to custom manipulate their microbiota under the guise that the microbiota is the ultimate cause of all health and disease. And if you can then change the microbiota you can improve said disease state. And there's some truth to that but usually that truth is not this highly meticulous treating of the entire world of bacteria or the microbiota but rather is identifying key imbalances or infections, clearing those and allowing the community of the microbiota to balance out after that issue has been addressed or something like SIBO, H. pylori, Candida. Addressing those in my opinion and I think much of the evidence really supports this is the best way to help have a gut intervention that improves your gut microbiota. Along with that, very important to realize that there are simple things that you can do like if you're not sedentary or you're over exercising, rectify that. You've got adequate sleep, manage your stress, aim for a healthy diet and there's a few different ones to consider there. And those things can have a very positive impact on your gut, your gut microbiota and you don't necessarily need to do or get pulled into these highly elaborate programs that want to map out your gut bacteria and try to give you a highly specific treatment plan for that because unfortunately oftentimes those claims are not met when someone actually goes through said intervention. So anyway, hopefully this is helpful for you to stay grounded and realize that when it comes to the microbiota you have more positive impact than you may think with some simple interventions. So this is Dr. Ruscio and hopefully this helps you get healthy and get back to your life. Thanks.