Researchers suggest that looking into the health of elite athletes could help us all live healthier, longer lives.

"You can't understand imperfection without first understanding perfection, and elite athletes represent perfection as far as the body is concerned and how it functions," University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus Biochemist Travis Nemkov said.

It's by studying the metabolic performance in top athletes that Nemkov hopes to create a more personalized way to treat everybody from cancer patients to people trying to lose weight.

"We've now identified and defined these molecular signatures in the blood of elite athletes, which can serve as a benchmark to compare to our disease populations and try to help guide them back towards health," Nemkov said.

By taking blood samples from world-class cyclists during training and during races, they used a technique called Metabolomics to measure thousands of metabolites.

"They can look at how they're processing macronutrients like fats and amino acids and carbohydrates," Nemkov said.

Studies show that cancer patients who exercise respond and recover from chemotherapy better. Nemkov believes what they're learning now could help patients know which type of exercise will help them the most.

"We can use this for personalizing how we train athletes. We can use this for personalizing how we train sedentary people who would like to become athletes. We can personalize diets," Nemkov said.

Along with providing metabolic status, Nemkov believes the data might be able to predict a patient's risk for diseases such as type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, cancer, and Alzheimer's disease.