Dear Performance Nutrition Leaders,
This week: Probiotics for athletes, the latest news, and new creatine challenges.
🧠 LATEST RESEARCH
An umbrella review led by Dr. Lei Chen has found probiotic supplementation reduces inflammatory responses to intense exercise and strengthens mucosal immunity — across multiple meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials.
Umbrella reviews generally sit above individual meta-analyses. When evidence points consistently in one direction at that level, practitioners should pay attention.
The finding is directly relevant to one of the most common and least solved problems in performance nutrition. Heavy training blocks suppress immune function. Upper respiratory tract infections spike. Athletes lose sessions they can't get back.
Probiotics appear to address this through two mechanisms — reducing the inflammatory response to intense exercise while reinforcing the mucosal barrier where most of those infections take hold.
For practitioners, that's a usable signal. Probiotic supplementation as an intervention is lower-risk, increasingly accessible, and now supported by evidence for immune protection in athletic populations.
Dr. Chen's team noted that strain-specific efficacy and optimal dosing remain poorly defined.
📈NEWS
Hexis platform adopted by Wolverhampton Wanderers
Miranda Siebert recruiting Football Nutrition Intern at Ole Miss
Lee Stowers recruiting Olympic Sports Dietitian at Auburn Athletics
Danone shifts plant-based strategy toward athletic performance benefits
Amber Yudell recruiting Sports Registered Dietitian at Sun Devil Athletics
MET-Rx launches retro gaming campaign targeting next-generation athletes
Bella Soto appointed MiLB Performance Nutrition Assistant Coordinator at New York Mets
Andrew Jenkinson appointed Performance Nutrition Lead for Manchester City Academy
Rachel Fleck appointed Scottish Rugby National Talent Pathway Performance Dietitian
Francesca Anderson appointed Scottish Rugby National Talent Pathway Nutritionist (East)
FC Barcelona Innovation Hub outlines evidence-based pre-match nutrition strategies in football
University of the Sunshine Coast shares five insights from female sports performance research
Jessica Wharton delivers performance meal-planning workshop at Huddersfield Town Academy
💡PERFORMANCE TECH
New flavours. New formats. Gummies, sachets, chewables, sweet-coloured tubs with comic-book branding.
Creatine has never been easier to want.
Athletes are buying independently — off Instagram, off TikTok, off a recommendation in a group chat.
And a significant portion of what they're buying may contain almost no creatine at all.
Independent testing by Eurofins, commissioned by Neutonic co-founder James Smith, found several gummy products delivering around 100mg per serving against label claims of 3–5g.
James Smith Creatine Video
Meanwhile Ronnie Coleman is selling three-flavour creatine gift sets. Neutonic is shipping Creapure-certified sachets in Pineapple and Strawberry Lime.
The market is innovating fast and the products range from genuinely excellent to functionally useless.
For practitioners, this is a protocol conversation worth having.
Which product is your athlete actually taking. What batch number. Is it Informed Sport certified. Is anyone keeping a record. In anti-doping environments that question isn't pedantic.
The new formats are worth knowing. Some are legitimate. But the same market forces making creatine exciting are making it harder to verify. Your athletes are making purchasing decisions daily.
Check out Informed Sport Creatine→
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Written by Dr. Alfie Gordon