👋 Hey. Welcome to issue #133 of The Everyday Athlete Newsletter.
Here are my 3 favourite ideas, learns and resources to help you improve your performance this week (4 min read):
🦵 The gut-joint axis
The "gut-joint" axis is a fairly new concept in health science.
It suggests poor gut health can cause poor joint health.
How?
Think of our gut walls having these little doors all over them.
These doors should stay closed to keep stuff like toxins, undigested food, and bad bacteria inside our digestive tract (and shot out the back side after our morning coffee).
But a protein called zonulin loves opening these doors—what a lemon.
And when more zonulin is produced (from bad bacteria or foods like gluten), it forces these doors to open wider.
This makes our guts “leaky”.
So toxins get into the bloodstream, travel to the joints, and cause inflammation and cartilage breakdown.
A recent study found higher zonulin levels resulted in worse:
- 🦵 Knee osteoarthritis
- 🦴 Joint health: walking speed got slower, grip strength dropped, overall physical performance tanked
So how do we left-right-goodnight zonulin?
- 🍏 Fibre: Aim for 25-30g+ daily from veggies, fruits, beans, lentils
- 🍦Probiotics: Get those good gut bugs through foods like yogurt, kimchi, sauerkraut, kefir, kombucha, or quality supplements
It’s all connected.
📕 The vitality performance encyclopaedia
Built by two of my most trusted sources of quality health and performance info – Dan Garner and Andy Galpin — the vitality performance encyclopedia has over 300 articles on human physiology and performance.
All organised by category.
Relevant example: let's click on gut health.
We get an:
- 🔍 Overview of what gut health actually means
- 🏃 Its role in performance
- ⚖️ How to optimise it
- 🩸 Associated patterns & biomarkers
In doing so, we've got two additional ways to improve gut health:
- 💊 Supplement glutamine: Repairs gut lining and seals those leaky doors(10g daily)
- 🚶 Walk outside: Reduces stress hormones that mess with your gut (20 min/day)
Note: the encyclopedia isn’t just info you’ll find from chatGPT. It's their read of the science, plus their decades of experience working with thousands of athletes and everyday athletes.
Check it out here.
💪 Less pains, niggles and injuries
The research suggests to improve flexibility, doing strength training to full range of motion is the best way to go.
But flexibility aside, I feel 10x better when I do stretch.
The last few months I’ve had less pains, niggles and injuries than I can ever remember.
And I put it down to the fact I’m running 3-6 training sessions a day—where I lead the warm up — 5-minute full body mobility flow.
So should you open a gym and run 3-6 warm-ups a day to get the benefits of added mobility work? Look, it’s probably not the only way.
You’d get away with a 5-min daily dose of something like this ground-up mobility flow. First thing of a morning would certainly lube the body up for the day ahead.
Bonus: Do it in the morning sun and you’d turn andrew huberman on like a tap.
Stay supple.
That's it!
Have a great weekend 🤙
Matt
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The Everyday Athlete Newsletter is not a licensed health service nor a substitute for professional health advice, treatment or assessment. The information shared in this email is general and written for a specific audience. If you’re struggling, please see a healthcare professional.
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