The Probiotic That The Pros Take
Harvard researchers studied marathoner poop. Here's what they found.
David Roche from The Feed <[email protected]>
Share
TheFeed promotes V-Nella, a probiotic allegedly designed to reduce fatigue, which is backed by research on Veillonella atypica. The company behind the probiotic, Fitbiomics, was founded by Harvard researchers who discovered the potential benefits of this strain in marathon runners. V-Nella is used by some pro athletes, although its effectiveness is still being studied.
What the raw message shows
From the headers
- Sent with
-
SendGrid See it in the headers
Across TheFeed.'s email
- Sends
- About 7 a week
- DMARC
-
Not enforced
Failures are monitored but still delivered.
The copy
448 words · about 2 min to read
My favorite origin story is Fitbiomics, the company behind the V-Nella probiotic. Yes, they beat Spiderman. Suck it, Spiderman.
Back in the late 2010s, a group of researchers from Harvard took poop samples of marathon runners before and after the Boston Marathon. Yes, please. And the research (which was eventually published in Nature Medicine) showed that Veillonella atypica was elevated post race in the fastest runners. That could be an incidental finding, right?
The researchers followed up, finding a potential mechanism--enhanced lactate utilization in the gut. After Nature Medicine published their work, the researchers peaced out of academia and started Fitbiomics. Science, meet capitalism.
The world of research on probiotics is quite good (we did a big overview of that early in 2026), but most of that research faces a big problem: the gut microbiome is weird as heck. It changes rapidly, and those changes might be related to everything from performance to sexual function to even mood (the gut-brain connection seems real!). But it’s rarely as simple as saying “this change causes this outcome,” since the confounders distort most of the individual signal.
V-Nella harnesses the research for an allegedly “fatigue-reducing” probiotic. Does it succeed at that mission? We don’t know for sure. Just like at the Boston Marathon that started this whole adventure, gut microbiota changes so rapidly that it’s too complicated to make definitive statements.
But there is promising research. For example, a pre-print study (before peer-review) looked at a 4-week supplementation window for 146 athletes, finding that Veillonella atypica was “associated with reduced day-to-day fatigue interference and increased voluntary physical activity, with convergent evidence of sustained behavioral engagement in mice.”
What about performance? The scientific jury is out, likely behind the courthouse doing burpees or something. Anecdotally, lots of the pro athletes I coach take V-Nella, and they also have been running world-class performances. Are those related? I’ll give you the answer that might always characterize probiotic research until there are breakthroughs in how we understand these chaotic systems: maybe or maybe not, but when you pool together enough people, it seems more likely than not to help some athletes.
Either way, how cool is it that we can isolate microbiota associated with performance and health, and that it may even enhance motivation? Weird stuff! Uncertain stuff! Scientifically sexy stuff!
My guess is that the world of probiotics rapidly advances in the next 20 years. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re all taking individualized daily probiotic pills for health, performance, and longevity while our AI robot gives us pedicures or whatever.
Until then, I love V-Nella. And hey, it may improve my motivation to go out and get that pedicure I’ve been putting off.
The words as text: what a screen reader can follow, and all there is when images don't load.
What the headers say
Read from the message's own headers, as it arrived.
- Came from
-
o16.sg.m.dripemail2.com
· 168.245.51.8
SendGrid's sending servers
- SPF
- Pass for em7142.thefeed.com
- DKIM
-
- Pass signed by thefeed.com
- DMARC
-
Pass for thefeed.com
Policy: none, so failures would still be delivered
- Unsubscribe
-
One-click
Meets the Gmail and Yahoo rule for bulk senders.
- Complaints
- No feedback-loop header
Show all 17 headers Hide the headers
As received, minus the delivery side: the archive's own addresses show as [recipient], its mail servers as [receiver], signatures are left out and unsubscribe links trimmed to their host.
Route
- Received
- from o16.sg.m.dripemail2.com (168.245.51.8) by [receiver] (cloudflare) id NmPvL6zhYXe0 for <[recipient]>; Thu, 10 Sep 2026 16:54:01 +0000
- Received
- by recvd-586f56f74c-5n7tj with SMTP id recvd-586f56f74c-5n7tj-1-6AA2DA25-98 2026-09-10 16:26:13.408328724 +0000 UTC m=+68295.953148681
- Received
- from NDEzNTkwODk (unknown) by geopod-ismtpd-54 (SG) with HTTP id Dd9QZOERQZ2lzhF-NmW8EA Thu, 10 Sep 2026 16:26:13.340 +0000 (UTC)
Authentication
- Received-SPF Authentication result
- pass ([receiver]: domain of [recipient]@em7142.thefeed.com designates 168.245.51.8 as permitted sender) receiver=[receiver]; client-ip=168.245.51.8; envelope-from="[recipient]@em7142.thefeed.com"; helo=o16.sg.m.dripemail2.com;
- Authentication-Results Authentication result
- [receiver]; dkim=pass header.d=thefeed.com header.s=tf header.b=EPWcSPVd; dmarc=pass header.from=thefeed.com policy.dmarc=none; spf=none ([receiver]: no SPF records found for [email protected]) smtp.helo=o16.sg.m.dripemail2.com; spf=pass ([receiver]: domain of [recipient]@em7142.thefeed.com designates 168.245.51.8 as permitted sender) smtp.mailfrom=[recipient]@em7142.thefeed.com; arc=none smtp.remote-ip=168.245.51.8
Platform
- X-Drip-SendingAccount
- 4966748
- X-SG-EID Identifies SendGrid
- u001.a3j2ZtIa+OqEpacYKHiyq+L/YXbpIfdUwYPqYJbe9f4K1MMy7F5T6GLGLAL/LjhuWvYU87txN33bkaMzfBmLWCEJwzrphtz7GvOYaaEs5uGCR6pPVFrioEUOK5Om8tJlyPa8ittV1OlhakwqupWbG+EvxAMv1wgUta3EfwO+ZQqMkYxlM5ogWV+PGpa2PIBMeCVGy3L8WgeHWFOZwBHHMp6H2ogbIbjfywYsRDYp+VNim52dvkmU4jk9DfRTDrhuPCkuHDpr/1IYzu6hsk3fRw==
- X-SG-ID Identifies SendGrid
- u001.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
- X-Entity-ID
- u001.LHYv7WOWO/lD100su9jz4Q==
Unsubscribe and feedback
- List-Unsubscribe
- <mailto:…@unsubscribe.dripemail3.com>, <https://unsubscribe.dripemail3.com/…>
- List-Unsubscribe-Post
- List-Unsubscribe=One-Click
Message
- Content-Type
- multipart/alternative; boundary=50b4f57eeb92dd20f590f7d2e286d4f6fc9d8b7910d8b18b7665982129c7
- Date
- Thu, 10 Sep 2026 16:54:00 +0000 (UTC)
- From
- David Roche from The Feed <[email protected]>
- Mime-Version
- 1.0
- Message-ID
- <Dd9QZOERQZ2lzhF-NmW8EA@geopod-ismtpd-54>
- Subject
- The Probiotic That The Pros Take
More from TheFeed.
All 70 emailsSimilar campaigns from other brands
Different brands running the same play. Compare any of them side by side.
Archived for reference and commentary. TheFeed., its logos and content are the property of their respective owners; Inbox Archive claims no affiliation and has disabled all links. If you own this content and would like it removed, get in touch.