Thanks for the dietary info! Helps make it concrete.

tl;dr They don't know.

I wish scientists would be more open about how little they understand digestion and nutrition, particularly on an individual level. Advice gets presented as an if-then, when it's not.

It is known that the bacteria that produce high amount of butyrate are beneficial, e.g. by decreasing the risk of colon cancer, but this does not seem sufficient to explain the increase in muscle strength that seems to be caused by this species alone.

The study has first found in humans a correlation between muscle strength and the presence of this bacterium. Then they have attempted to determine whether this correlation is due to a causal relationship by killing the gut bacteria in mice, then feeding them with this kind of human gut bacteria. The result was an increased muscle strength, which seems to confirm causality.

How the bacteria increase muscle strength remains unknown. I think that a possible explanation may be that this bacterium produces some substance that mimics a human hormone, e.g. a steroid, in which case it would be a kind of natural doping.

I've always eaten a ton of fiber, to the point where if I stop I get constipated, and I've always put on muscle fairly easily.

You know it would be funny if at least once the finding would be "you should eat more hamburgers" or something.

the fiber will promote all bacteria in your gut, not just this particular strain.

For me personally, as I've gotten older I have continued to eat better and more consistently than I ever did earlier in life. I think the long term study of your own life tends to show you that diet is one of, if not the, primary factor in short and long term health and well being.

That's why they followed up with an actual experiment with mice, where they found that just adding the bacteria made them stronger.

Of course we won't know for sure before doing human experiments, but it'd be an odd coincidence if we saw the correlation in humans and causation in mice, but there was no causation in humans.

Well... assuming this article is just shilling, soon.

Pretty sure Duff was a heavily filtered macro beer.

Not saying engineered beer is necessarily bad- Sapporo and Asahi never disappoint- but I imagine you would want to stick to unfiltered and unpasteurized to retain some of the more… alive compounds.

No beer has nothing to do with Roseburia genus bacteria

>So Homer Simpson was right in the end.

Indeed. Proof that beer builds gut strength: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrrEzyKXUnk>

Maybe we need to flip it and start testing new mouse drugs on Humans?

The reflex “in mice” meme has been annoying for quite some time.

It is not that simple.

They have found first a correlation between the presence of this species of bacteria and muscle strength in humans.

Then they have made an attempt to determine whether this correlation reflects a causal relationship.

So they have fed mice previously treated with antibiotics, to remove their own gut bacteria, with this kind of bacteria extracted from humans.

They have indeed seen an increase in muscular strength at the mice that have received the human bacteria, which seems to confirm causality between the presence of this bacterium and muscle strength.

While they have also determined the biochemical changes in muscles that have caused increased strength, the mechanism of how the bacteria have influenced that remains a mystery. Perhaps this bacterium produces some substance that mimics a human hormone, e.g. a steroid.

Paywalled research article: https://gut.bmj.com/content/early/2026/03/03/gutjnl-2025-336...

As always. But it's a first step.

What do you mean by celcius garbage?

Fun fact: in Germany most toilets have a built in 'inspection plate' so you can look at your shit before you flush it. In other places I often found it hard to judge the quality because you can't even see it well or it gets flushed instantly

It is so wonderful to hear someone else say this. My spouse and friends think In so weird for emphasizing optimizing your diet for things that digest well, macro dense and give you good shits. I am quietly pleased when my own looks completely normal and uninteresting.

Celsius?

"Bro, take a look at my poop"

IIRC there are several of the "Blue Zones" where just bad government records. (People who had incorrect birth dates, or had already died and the government just didn't know about it)

> We are what we eat.

putting together a theory on how bacteria organized multicellular life to exploit our macro-movements and proliferate between damp spots

Some of the blue zones were disproven, due to falsified documentation or lack of it.

Addendum to my above thought,

Roseburia also seems to correlate with longevity;

The Gut Microbiome, Aging, and Longevity: A Systematic Review - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7762384/

Deep insights into the gut microbial community of extreme longevity in south Chinese centenarians by ultra-deep metagenomics and large-scale culturomics - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41522-022-00282-3

No grain no gain

And yet, still no serious fixes for any of it that aren’t just jabronis pitching overpriced and ineffective supplements.