Would You Swallow That to Live Longer?
He had done strange things before. Fasted for 3 days. Ran a 42K with nothing but water and salt on a 400m track. But then he was only 17. Participated in over a hundred fecal transplants. But this was different. This time, the recipient wasn’t sick. This time, the goal wasn’t survival – it was potential.
He first heard of Veillonella back in 2019. A researcher from Harvard Medical School described a bacterium enriched in the guts of Boston Marathon runners, one that turned lactate – the burn of effort – into propionate, a compound linked to endurance and recovery. In mice, a dose of Veillonella extended treadmill time by 13%. It was as if the microbes had unlocked a hidden gear. He knew Olympic athletes would kill for 2-3% increase in stamina.
That talk lodged itself in his mind like a seed. What if, he wondered, elite athletes didn’t just have better hearts or stronger minds – but a gut ecosystem fine-tuned by training? One that can digest almost everything? And what if that ecosystem could be borrowed?
So he asked three friends—all ultrarunners, different in many aspects – for a favor. Not training tips. Not pacing strategies. Well….those too. But samples. In the laboratory they screened one of their microbiota with his colleagues, checked for pathogens, and encapsulated it. Sixty capsules. Twenty times the normal dose. Stored dried. Ready to deploy.
He started to take them one morning with lemon water and chamomile. For ten days, with doubling the dose every single day. No ritual, no drama. Just data and a gut feeling. And then, he ran. Not a test run. Not a jog. Seventy-one kilometers, around the lake Velence, with the three that helped him. The numbers weren’t record-breaking. Not at all. It was suffering. With a bad knee he was aiming for completion. But what struck him was the absence of suffering from tiredness. No bonk. No real cramps. A strange, lucid ease.
Was it the Veillonella? The butyrate from Faecalibacterium prausnitzii? Or just placebo dressed in lab coat confidence? He didn’t know. But recovery was faster. Sleep deeper. Hunger more intuitive. Something inside had shifted—not just in his microbiota, but in his belief. And then he remembered the ultra swimmers. How they accomplished in Paris after receiveng an increased those of their own microbiota.
Sure to protect them. But now he knew. They all knew. Something was happening. And one year later the two Olympic athletes failed to deliver the same results without receiving the boost. Another coincidence? Maybe…
He’d always known FMT could save lives. Now he suspected it could upgrade them.
Next week: “The Enemies in My Pantry” — processed food, metabolic decay, and what it does to your microbes.