Would You Drink A Probiotic With The Gut Bacteria Of Elite Athletes?

Can sneaker endorsements, cereals, protein powders or electrolyte cocktails get any of us closer to the peak level performance of our favorite athletes? Despite billions in sales, the answer is probably no. But how about an elite athlete’s biology? With 100 trillion cells in the human body, bacteria outnumber our own human cells 2 to 1, and bacteria in our gut affect all our key organ functions. The microbiome plays a role in our health, development and wellness, including endurance, recovery and mental aptitude. What if we could tap the gut bacteria of elite athletes to produce customized probiotics ― and what if those probiotics could give recipients access to some of the biological advantages that make those athletes elite? This is a question George Church, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, professor of health sciences and technology at Harvard & MIT, and founding core member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, would like to answer. Jonathan Scheiman confesses that being a research fellow in Church’s lab was not his dream job. “I wanted to play in the NBA. I played basketball at St. John’s in New York. We won a Big East championship my freshman year, an NIT championship my senior year, but I didn’t make the NBA. My backup plan was a Ph.D. in molecular biology.” One day he mentioned to his mentor that he’d like to sequence LeBron James’s genome, to which Church responded, “So...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news