Author response: linking lifestyle and microbes

Marlicz and Loniewski1 offer complementary comments regarding the design and execution of our study of exercise and associated dietary extremes on gut microbial diversity.2 They expand on some of the caveats already raised by us. First, we were careful not to transmute correlation into causation. As implied in the title of our study and explicit in our report, we acknowledged and recorded the dietary changes that accompany exercise, particularly in professional athletes. A further study has been designed to control for and examine the separate contributions of diet and exercise in a prospective manner in non-professional athletes. We are pleased to report that such study is already underway. Second, Marlicz and Loniewski refer to the multitude of effects that exercise may have on host physiology, many of which were outside the scope of our study but which collectively support our conclusion that the relationship between...
Source: Gut - Category: Gastroenterology Authors: Tags: PostScript Source Type: research