Can I Borrow Your Poop? Fecal Transplant Helps Microbiologist Win Races and Start Athlete Microbiome Project

In Connecticut, microbiologist Lauren Peterson used fecal matter from an elite athlete to transplant into her own intestines and found amazing results with improved health, more energy, and going from barely being able to train on a bicycle to winning cycling races.

As head of the Athlete Microbiome Project, she discovered through collecting fecal samples from elite athletes that most of them have a certain microbiome living in their intestines that help them perform better than average people who don’t have that same microbiome. In particular, she noticed that the top athletes had the microorganism Prevotella which helps muscle recovery, whereas most people do not. The statistics were amazing – a mere 10% of non-athletes have it, whereas 50% of cyclists have it, but the most elite top performing racers all had it. Peterson also found another possibly performance-enhancing microbe called Methanobrevibacter archaea in elite athletes, but it’s still not clear exactly how that improves athletic performance yet.