Guts?

October 25th, 2025| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

Your guts are linked to your exercise regimen (in addition to other things). Who knew? Well, scientists from the University of Tübingen, Germany, did. So they claimed in bioRXiv recently: “Resistance Training Reshapes the Gut Microbiome for Better Health.”

Bacteria, fungi, viruses, and who knows what else thrive in our intestines. (Just bacteria alone, it is estimated that there are 100 trillion of them hiding out in our guts. That’s twice as many as the cells we have in our body!) It’s all a delicate balancing act, with many of these parasitic beasts doing us a lot of good, helping digestion, producing vitamins and other chemicals that affect our bodies (and our minds), overcoming the dangerous ones of their species …. So the gut microbiome (the sum total of all these foreigners residing in us) is almost like another organ of our bodies (albeit with different DNAs and RNAs than ours!), and an important one at that. Maintaining a healthy gut microbiome is crucial to our health, and we’re only beginning to understand much of this symbiosis between humans and all of those critters.

Of course, diet plays an important role. But now this.

Reported Study Finds:

Lifting weights just 2–3 times a week for eight weeks changed participants’ gut microbiomes, even among people who’d never exercised before. Those who gained the most strength showed unique bacterial shifts, including increases in Faecalibacterium and Roseburia hominis, microbes linked to gut and metabolic health.”

How about that!

Said the authors:

150 participants completed an 8-week supervised resistance training program 2–3 times a week— chest presses, abdominal work, leg curls, leg presses and back exercises. Session-level training data, including weights and repetitions, were recorded alongside metrics like load and compliance. Fecal samples were collected throughout the study period at designated timepoints … to assess microbiome composition and … to evaluate microbial metabolic activity.”

Everyone’s gut has a differently constituted microbiome, so the authors could not assess whether exercise increased the “good” or “bad” bugs. And it was also not clear if the strengthened muscles somehow caused the changes or the changes caused the muscle strengthening, but there you go: exercise is linked to more than just those sculpted midsections, washboard abs, chiseled stomachs, and ripped biceps. Add your guts to the results, too.

And yes, God desires changes in our guts, too, did you know that? What exactly does God want?

Here’s what he doesn’t want:

Sacrifice and meal-offering You have not desired
(ears You have dug out for me [to make me listen]);
whole-offering and sin-offering You have not required.
Psalm 40:6

Instead—and here is the psalmist’s desire, consonant with God’s desires:

Then I said, “Behold, I have come—
in the scroll of the book it has been written pertaining to me.
o do what is acceptable to You, my God, I have desired;
Your law [is] in the midst of my guts.
Psalm 40:7–8

There it is: God’s law working out in his life (and ours) from the inside out. Notice the clever structure:

The “desire” of God synchronized with the “desire” of his people. What God had written in his law (40:7), the the people of God internalize and etch on their “guts” (40:8): to do what was acceptable to God (40:7), living righteously.

Yup, gut changes. Transformed lives. Dedicated to God. From the gut.

Nope, exercise isn’t enough!

SOURCE: Study Finds; bioRXiv