Introduction
This conference will focus on evolving our thinking to how we can ‘optimise’ nutrition strategies for a sportsperson. Gone are the days of over-relying on calorie calculations and macronutrient balances. Thanks to a growing scientific interest in foods that can offer us an ergogenic or recovery edge (e.g. cherry and beetroot), a food-first approach is now gaining ground.
By adopting a ‘health-feeds-performance’ approach to how we feed our athletes, we can additionally evolve into a much more personalised way of working. Through the lens of integrative body systems, we can support active individuals (elite and recreational) by encouraging gastrointestinal, immune, musculoskeletal, mitochondrial, endocrine, and mental/emotional health. Because good gut health is especially important for all systems of an athlete’s pressured body, we have chosen to highlight it in our choice of topics.
This conference aims to give you a flavour of these approaches from a practitioner’s perspective. All of our speakers are highly experienced nutrition professionals who work with each client as an individual, personalising nutritional strategies that nourish their overall health and, in turn, support their athletic performance.
The four-hour conference has been designed to fit into a busy practitioner’s diary. Each highly focused presentation will last 30 minutes, with an additional 10 minutes for your questions.
Speaker line-up
From Paper to Podium: a contextualised view of the athlete | Professor Graeme Close – Liverpool John Moores University
Scientific findings help to inform practice; there is no doubt about that. However, in order to optimise sporting outcomes, we should not generalise research recommendations across the board. The context of the research subjects and research methods in a particular study need to be closely considered and related to the real world and our athletes’ sporting and nutritional requirements. In this talk, Professor Graeme Close brings his Paper to Podium research critique to life within the context of his sports nutrition work with England rugby players.
Professor Graeme Close PhD is a professor of human physiology at Liverpool John Moores University, where he combines his academic research with nutrition and physiology consultancy to some of the world’s leading sporting organisations. His research focuses on vitamin D, muscle damage and repair, ageing muscle and, most recently, on cannabidiol (CBD) and skeletal muscle.
From an applied perspective, Graeme is currently the expert nutrition consultant to England Rugby, the head of performance nutrition to The European Tour Golf and European Ryder Cup Team, and consults to several Premier League Football clubs and players. Graeme is currently the deputy chair of the Sport and Exercise Nutrition Register (SENr) and is a fellow of both The European College of Sport Science and The British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences. www.ljmu.ac.uk
A functional approach to gut dysfunction in athletes – a clinical perspective | Katherine Caris-Harris – nutritional therapist and long-distance triathlete
20 years ago, it was almost impossible to find any mention of gastrointestinal (GI) function in the sports nutrition literature, but perhaps fuelled by the rise of long-distance endurance competition, and associated ‘tummy troubles’, it is now a prominent area of interest. In her talk, Katherine will demonstrate how the gut interconnects with whole-body health in an athletic setting. She will also discuss the incidence of gut dysfunction in endurance athletes and how a practitioner can manage GI health via nutrition, supplementation, stress management and targeted functional testing.
Katherine Caris-Harris BA(Hon) BSc(Hon) Nutritional Science NLP Cert EFT Practitioner NCFED Trained (Eating Disorders) is an endurance triathlete and runner, representing her age-group in GB European middle-distance and World long-distance championship races. Clinically, she works one-on-one with clients as a functional nutritional therapist, as well as writing and presenting to practitioner audiences. Her specialty areas are complex chronic illness, mental health, gastrointestinal dysfunction in endurance athletes, and functional testing for athletes. www.kchnutrition.co.uk
Three-dimensional nutrition: nourishing our athletes from an integrative perspective | Ian Craig – The Centre for Integrative Sports Nutrition
The overarching focus of sports nutrition on macronutrients can short-change athletes in terms of the performance benefits derived from food. However, if we extend our approach and ask clients to eat in a way that nourishes their body systems in a personalised way, their health and vitality will improve, and performance will follow. An example that Ian will share during his talk is that of mitochondria: while substrates are needed for ATP production, antioxidants, microbiome health, and mental wellbeing are required for mitochondrial vibrancy.
The human body is a higher order complex system that needs to be nourished by real foods and nutritional diversity; this can be achieved only with careful attention to food sourcing, preparation, and personalisation.
Ian Craig BSc MSc DipCNE INLPTA has joint academic backgrounds in exercise physiology and nutritional therapy, and a 20-year career as a British middle-distance athlete. He has been developing the concept of integrative sports nutrition since 2007; a fast-evolving discipline that considers both the health and performance of an athlete from an integrative health perspective. This endeavour culminated in founding the Centre for Integrative Sports Nutrition in 2018, the world’s first educational platform to train sports nutrition practitioners in a functional way of thinking and practising. Ian is also the author of Struik Lifestyle book Wholesome Nutrition and has been the editor of UK magazine Functional Sports Nutrition since 2010. Clinically, Ian works with a large array of sports-specific cases, plus complex health imbalances such as autoimmunity, chronic gastrointestinal issues, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, all of which are rapidly increasing in incidence, especially in the sporting world. www.intsportsnutrition.com; www.thenutritionalinstitute.com; Twitter: @ian_nutrition
The endocannabinoid system: a missing link in integrative care of athletes | Dr Elisabeth Philipps – clinical neuroscientist and functional medicine practitioner
The endocannabinoid system (ECS) was only discovered 30 years ago, yet we now know that this system is located in nearly every cell, tissue, organ and system in the body. This all-pervading network of receptors and mediators maintains homeostasis throughout the body, affecting everything from the biochemical and emotional responses to pain and inflammation, through weight and adipose tissue accumulation, muscle, tissue, bone and nerve function and repair, to the maintenance of healthy sleep cycles and mood.
So how can we support the ECS through integrative sports nutrition? Elisabeth, the UK’s leading expert and educator on the ECS and its plant modulators, including CBD, will review the evidence for nourishing the ECS during sports training, performance and recovery regimes via nutrition and suitable food supplements.
Dr Elisabeth Philipps PhD BSc (Hons) BSc Nutr Med AFMCP is a clinical neuroscientist and functional medicine practitioner, and runs a health consultancy specialising in brain health, the endocannabinoid system and phytocannabininoids, including CBD and medicinal cannabis. She regularly presents at international conferences and events, and provides expert opinion for the national press, specialist healthcare publications and health companies. www.drelisabethphilipps.com; Instagram: @drelisabethphilipps; Twitter: @drphilipps; LinkedIn: Dr Elisabeth Philipps
Fasting: is it an appropriate nutritional tool for a speed-power athlete? | Henrietta Paxton – ex-international pole vaulter and sport-focused nutritional therapist
The benefits of various types of fasting are increasingly clear in the literature when it comes to a ‘normal’, or especially a diseased, population. Benefits apparently range from efficient energy substrate usage and storage, reduced inflammation and oxidative stress, to increased autophagy, healthier mitochondria and ultimately increased longevity. But, how can this literature set translate to an athletic population, and is it even appropriate to use fasting protocols with athletes?
Henrietta presents a case study where time restricted feeding was used to meet specific body composition goals, while monitoring training output and, ultimately, performance. She discusses the different types of fasting, why TRF was used in this case and the impact on the athlete’s physiology, health and performance.
Henrietta Paxton MSc BSc CISNCert is a former international athlete, for both Scotland and Great Britain. Now a highly qualified and experienced nutritional therapist, she holds a BSc in Sport and Exercise Science, a Nutritional Therapy Practice Diploma, an MSc in Personalised Nutrition and a Certificate of Integrative Sports Nutrition. This ensures a robust understanding of both the science and daily demands of sport and the interpretation of evidence-based nutrition for individuals. Henrietta is passionate about the fact that fundamental health feeds performance and wants to share her love of real food, and its incredible power to nourish the astonishing instrument that is the human body. www.thenourishedsoul.co.uk
