Natural sports cookery: is ‘food’ the missing ergogenic for athletes? – Rachel Jesson
So often within sports nutrition you hear lots of discussion around numbers (for example; grams of carbs, fats and proteins), but not too much mention of the food itself. But surely food forms the basis of nutrition? That is the belief of natural chef and food coach Rachel Jesson – paying attention to how we […]
Nutrition and training insights for skeletal muscle hypertrophy – Simone do Carmo
Skeletal muscle hypertrophy is a fundamental requirement for success in sport. This is particularly true in strength, power and physique sports, but functional hypertrophy, with a focus on the power-to-weight ratio, is relevant to most athletes, and is also important when we start talking about healthy ageing. But how do we address skeletal muscle hypertrophy […]
Cardiovascular nourishment with plant-based polyphenols – Joseph Lillis
The cardiovascular system refers to our heart and all the blood vessels in our body, which carry oxygen and nutrients to and from tissues and organ systems. Deep cardiovascular nourishment is synonymous with energy, essential for an active life, but it supports every bodily function, helping us to recover from, and adapt to, exercise training. […]
Nourishing a female athlete’s active phases of life – Karen Harrison
Any woman will tell you that their health, training, and nutrition needs are different to that of a man, but yet much of the research data in the field of sports nutrition has come from male subjects. So, what if exercise and nutrition practitioners could personalise their advice to the particular needs of female athletes, […]
Understanding sudden death syndrome in performance athletes – Heidi du Preez
It has been estimated that 1 to 3 in 100,000 apparently healthy young athletes die suddenly during exercise; especially in sports like basketball, football, and American football (McKelvie et al., 2022). Cardiac events are considered the most common medical cause of sudden death syndrome in performance athletes: myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle, is considered by the […]
What can we learn from the Blue Zones that can empower longevity in sport, and for life? – Prof Justin Roberts
Since the publication of the Blue Zones book, a National Geographic exploration of areas in the world where many healthy centurions are found, there has been an increasing interest in health and longevity; ‘healthspan’. But, what lessons can we learn from such populations that might be of interest to athletes and active individuals? Professor Justin […]
Protecting an athlete’s joints with nutrition and lifestyle – Dr Ruth Wilde
Medically, an athlete’s joints tend to be viewed simply as mechanical structures, to be replaced when they’re worn out! But thankfully Dr Ruth Wilde thinks and works differently – she sees joints as living, breathing tissues, just like the rest of our physiology, which must be nourished by what we consume. What’s more, an athlete’s […]
Why are athletes experiencing anxiety, and what can they can do about it? – Dr Patricia Worby
Ever since the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympics, held during the times of Covid 19 restrictions, anxiety in sport has become an evident problem for many athletes. The most publicised case at the time was the highly medalled American gymnast Simone Biles, who withdrew from the women’s gymnastics team competition, suffering from anxiety. But what is […]
Using functional laboratory testing to optimise physical excellence – Warren Brown
The integrative systems biology perspective is slowly and progressively seeping into sport and exercise nutrition practice. This way of working considers the health of an athlete’s digestive tract, neuroendocrine, immune, and musculoskeletal systems, along with factors such as mitochondrial energy production from available macronutrients; all of which can be measured by laboratory testing. Dr Brown […]
The Goldilocks Zone: is there a sweet spot for sporting adaptations? – Paul Ehren and Alex Kirchin
In the current sporting arena, we are surrounded by extreme practices: extreme training regimes, extreme dietary manipulations, and extreme lifestyle measures. These are intended to create a hormetic driver to stimulate a physiological response for the betterment of certain health parameters and sporting adaptations. And in many cases that’s exactly what happens. But how much […]
