Short-term physical exercise impacts on the human holobiont
Objectives: Human well-being is linked to the functional capacity of the intestinal microbiota. As regular exercise is known to improve human health, it is not surprising that exercise was previously described to positively modulate the gut microbiota, too. However, most previous studies mainly focused on either elite athletes or animal models.Study Design: We conducted an intervention study including six weeks of intervention period that focused on the effects of different types of training (endurance and strength) in previously physically inactive, healthy adults in comparison to controls that did not perform regular exercise. In addition to 16S rRNA gene sequencing of longitudinally sampled fecal material of participants, detailed body composition measurements and analysis of blood samples were performed to obtain overall physiological changes within the intervention period.Results: Different biometric responses between endurance and strength activities were identified, such as a significant increase of lymphocytes and decrease of mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration only within the strength intervention group. In the endurance group, we observed a significant reduction in hip circumference and an increase in physical working capacity. Though a large variation of microbiota changes were observed between individuals of the same group, we did not find specific collective alterations in the groups.Conclusion: We showed that different types of exercise have distinct but moderate effects on the overall physiology of humans and diverse microbial changes in the gut arguing for microbiome variations specific to individuals. The observed overall changes during the intervention highlight the importance of physical activity on well-being.