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Athletes Looking for a Competitive Edge May Find It Within Their Gut Microbiome When milliseconds can mean the difference between silver and gold, endurance athletes in sports like marathon running, cycling, rowing and swimming optimize every aspect of their physiology for a competitive edge. Many of these efforts result in enhancing the performance of mitochondria, the tiny but mighty energy-generating powerhouses within your cells. Carefully calibrated doses of exercise combined with beneficial stress – altitude, cold and heat – and optimized recovery in the form of nutrition, meditation and sleep, positively affect the number and health of mitochondria in the cells of your muscles, heart and brain. But there is another aspect of endurance training that may have largely been overlooked by athletes and trainers – the role of the gut microbiome in optimizing your mitochondrial health and fitness. I am a physician-scientist and gastroenterologist who has studied how food affects the gut microbiome’s role in health and disease for over 20 years. While research evaluating food’s effects on the microbiome and mitochondria is improving our understanding of conditions like obesity, cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease, it might also help athletes achieve new levels of performance through innovative approaches to nutrition.