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Low Blood Sugar Causes Mental Fatigue During Competition
Posted November 23rd, 2007 at 3:45 PM by Martha Jones
Section: Nutrition, Race Prep & Recov, Health & Fitness, Exercise
Athletes can expect to feel fatigued when their blood sugar levels drop. Researchers at Loughborough University, UK showed that athletes who did not take sugar during soccer competition lasting 90 minutes felt more tired, had less competitive desire, and had far lower blood sugar levels than athletes who took a sugared drink every 15 minutes during their game (Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, October 2007).
Your brain gets more than 98 percent of its energy from sugar in the bloodstream. However there is only enough sugar in the bloodstream to last about three minutes. The liver must constantly release sugar into the bloodstream, but there is only enough sugar in the liver to last eight hours during rest and far less than that during exercise. So athletes who do not take a source of sugar during events lasting more than an hour can suffer the psychological effects of low blood sugar levels what include a mental feeling of fatigue and lowered competitive desire.
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Q&A: Will following a low- carbohydrate diet help me run faster?
Posted August 17th, 2007 at 10:30 AM by Martha Jones
Section: Nutrition, Healthy Eating, Race Prep & Recov
There is no evidence that it will. Runners get fuel for their muscles from fat and sugar in muscles, fat and sugar in the bloodstream and, to a lesser degree, from protein. The key to increasing endurance for racing is to store as much sugar in muscles before you race and keep it there as long as possible. Muscle sugar gives you the most energy for the least amount of oxygen.
Restricting carbohydrates does not stimulate muscles to store more sugar (Sports Medicine, April-May 2007). A low carbohydrate diet may impair performance if carried out for extended periods because a runner cannot train on a low- carbohydrate diet.
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Preserve muscle sugar for speed and endurance
Posted August 2nd, 2007 at 1:00 PM by Martha Jones
Section: Nutrition, Healthy Eating, Hydration, Race Prep & Recov, Health & Fitness, Exercise
How fast you can move and how long you can exercise intensely depends on the amount of sugar (glycogen) stored in your muscles. The same rule applies in all sports: when muscles run out of their stored sugar supply, they require more oxygen and you have to slow down.
Fluid is less important than muscle sugar because dehydration will not cause you to slow down until your blood volume is reduced. As you lose fluid from sweating, interstitial fluid stored around cells is released into the blood to maintain blood volume. When you compete is sports at a very high intensity, your muscles run out for stored sugar long before your blood volume is reduced, and you slow down from lack of muscle sugar before you slow down from reduced blood volume (Sports Medicine, April- May 2007).
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Train your muscles to use lactic acid as fuel
Posted January 6th, 2007 at 11:00 AM by Hariz Siddiqui
Section: Running & Training, Training Tips, Health & Fitness, Exercise
You exercise so intensely that your muscles burn and you gasp for breath. Then you slow down for a minute or two, catch your breath, and then go very fast again. This training technique has been used in all endurance sports since the 1920’s. Now George Brooks of the University of California at Berkeley has shown why interval training makes you a better athlete.
Inside each muscle cell are mitochondria, the little furnaces that burn fuel for energy. A major fuel for your muscles during exercise is the sugar, glucose. In a series of chemical reactions, glucose is broken down step by step, with each step releasing energy. When enough oxygen is available, the glucose releases all of its energy until only carbon dioxide and water remain; these are blown off through your lungs.
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Will oxygenated water make me a better athlete?
Posted December 13th, 2006 at 4:00 PM by Martin Kennedy
Section: Nutrition, Hydration, Health & Fitness, Exercise
Have you seen ads for oxygenated water, claiming to cure tiredness, improve memory, help you to exercise longer and make you a better athlete? A study from Austria shows that oxygenated water offers none of these benefits for humans (International Journal of Sports Medicine, Volume 27, 2006).
When you exercise as hard as you can, you gasp for breath because you cannot meet your needs for oxygen, no matter how hard or fast you breathe. Lack of oxygen prevents you from breaking down lactic acid so it accumulates in your muscles and blood, and you develop severe shortness of breath.
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Detection and Use of Performance-Enhancing Drugs
Posted November 19th, 2006 at 7:00 AM by Hariz Siddiqui
Section: News & Results, Drugs In Sports
World records in sports are broken by better athletes, better training methods, better nutrition or new drugs. Drugs appear to be the cause of many recent records in sports requiring strength and speed. Many bicycle racers know that some drugs that make them better riders can’t be detected by testing techniques that are available today.
A recent study shows that laboratories have no definitive test to discover athletes who take erythropoietin (EPO), a drug to boost their red blood cell counts (Haematologica, August, 2006). Athletes have found that taking very low doses of EPO daily will raise red blood cell counts, and will not give test results high enough to show that they are taking extra EPO.
The primary limiting factor to how fast a person can ride a bicycle over long distances is the time it takes to move oxygen from the lungs into the muscles. So anything that increases oxygen transport from the lungs into the bloodstream, or carries more oxygen in the bloodstream, or moves oxygen faster from the blood into muscles will make a person a faster bicycle racer. Since more than 95 percent of the oxygen in the bloodstream is carried by hemoglobin in red blood cells, anything that increases the concentration of red blood cells will help a racer ride faster. Read the rest of this entry »
How does testosterone and/or EPO affect athletes?
Posted November 16th, 2006 at 10:30 AM by Martha Jones
Section: News & Results, Health & Fitness, Drugs In Sports
After Tour de France winner Floyd Landis was alleged to have taken testosterone, several physicians were widely quoted in the media stating that taking testosterone for one day cannot improve performance. They are wrong. After multiple Olympic gold medal winning sprinter Marion Jones tested positive for erythropoietin (EPO), many physicians stated that EPO doesn’t help sprinters. They are also wrong. (She was cleared because her second sample tested negative.)
Such lack of knowledge reminds me of the early 1970s, when the East Germans and Russians won just about every sports event that required strength. Many American physicians were widely quoted as saying that synthetic testosterone does not make athletes stronger. The athletes thought that these physicians were misguided because soon after starting to take synthetic male hormones, they could observe spectacular improvements in their own performances. Athletes train by taking a hard workout that damages muscles, feeling sore on the next day, than going easier until the soreness diminishes, and then going hard again. As soon as an athlete starts to take anabolic steroids, he notices that he recovers much faster than before, so he can do more intense training which makes him a better athlete. Read the rest of this entry »
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