Is it possible for a perfectly average middle-aged man to change his lifestyle and, in a short space of time, achieve a level of physical performance that he was previously unable to achieve? Do we have enough knowledge to shorten this time? If our experience has shown that a bacterial composition from runners is more effective in people with chronic illness, is it more helpful if this microbiome comes from a person with extreme performance? Can we help people who want to exercise but are unable to start, and who want to change their lifestyle, by giving them a crutch: helping them to build up the bacterial matrix that extreme athletes have developed in their bodies over years?
I have no answers to a fraction of the questions. We have personal experience in the treatment of chronic diseases, we see how drastic differences can be between extracts from the same donor at different times, but for understandable ethical reasons our knowledge is only slowly expanding.
On my own, however, I can experiment, test what I can do in, say, 300 days. Change my diet, my sleeping habits, fix my knees, exercise 1-2 hours a day at least 5 days a week and…run an ultra marathon. Let’s say at 47, I should double my years, making it 94 km. And I will use all the knowledge I have accumulated over the years: I will manage myself as my own patient, I will have test my microbiome tested after a given time and at a given stage of my training I will try to survive and complete the distance with the help of a microbiome transfer put together by colleagues.