Scientists Say That Everything About Being An Elite Athlete Comes Down To Poop
Source - Scheiman holds an ice-caked box in one gloved hand and with the other withdraws a small plastic vial. At its bottom, a tiny hint of brown.
"This is fun stuff," he says. "This freezer is literally boxes full of s---."
Each specimen in this freezer is a fecal sample from an athlete, mostly from marathon runners. The collection process is rather simple. Participants take a tube with a little plastic tip and dip the tip into a piece of used toilet paper, then place it right back into the tube. "It's not invasive, no time commitment, totally done in private," Scheiman says. And -- this is key -- donors don't have to touch any stool.
...Scheiman is one of a handful of researchers investigating whether there is a link between athletic performance and the gut microbiome -- the ecosystem of hundreds of types of bacteria that live in the intestines and play a key role in almost all of our body's essential processes. The potential link makes sense. Many of the functions of microbes in the gut, including breaking down food into energy and protein, modulating our immune function, even regulating our thoughts and moods, correspond directly to elements of athleticism: endurance, strength, mental toughness and recovery.
Okay obviously there's a lot to unpack here but before we really get going, let’s think about how much it must suck to be the scientists who have to work on studies like this. I mean you have to imagine that these nerds went to school thinking that they’d all turn out to be the next Albert Einstein. They thought that their brain was going to cure all of the problems in the world, and probably had all of these big fancy dreams and aspirations. Fast forward a few years and now they’re asking a bunch of athletes if they can check out their shit because they're trying to find out if athlete poop is elite or not. Like they don't even know the answer yet. There's a chance they could be digging through a ton of turds for absolutely nothing.
If you think your job sucks, just know that there are a bunch of nerds who went to years and years of schooling just to dig through the shit of some athletes to see if it makes mice faster. Imagine having to wake up every morning, get yourself ready to go to work, and then when you clock in that’s what you have to do. Kind of makes having to stare at a bunch of spreadsheets all day seem like a dream.
But with all these guys sifting around through turds trying to unlock the key to athletic greatness, that means that it's also going to become someone's job soon to start making a bunch of pills out of shit for athletes who want to gain that edge.
Source - Right now, most researchers working in this field assume that their work will lead to some new probiotic -- a pill that contains one or several types of bacteria to seed the microbiome -- that will shake up the booming supplements industry. The probiotics industry is expected to top $75 billion by 2025, and most of the probiotics currently on the market are derived from just two strains of bacteria. Meanwhile, there are millions of microbes in the human gut, almost none of which have been harnessed or monetized. Scheiman and others are betting they are on the bleeding edge of an industry with potential that is just barely being tapped.
If there’s one thing I know about elite athletes, it’s that they’re willing to do anything and everything to gain any sort of advantage over the competition. Being the best in the world is what drives this people. They sacrifice so much to get to the top and then they’ll do anything they can to stay there. So the question then becomes “how bad do you really want it? Are you going to pop a pill full of other people's shit just to be the best in the world?” And I have to imagine the answer for most of them will be yes. Just as long as they keep it in pill form, though. We don't need to start making microbiome protein shakes or anything like that. Freaks.