Saturday, December 31, 2011

Studies Suggest Adding Protein To Your Endurance Drink May Improve Performance

For as long as I can remember (myself included) athletes have been drinking some type of "sports drink". In not-so-medical terms, a colored sugar water solution with electrolytes; to help enhance performance. Depending on your level of activity and the conditions you're exercising in, these solutions can add to your performance by delaying dehydration, maintaining blood glucose levels and potentially attenuate muscle glycogen depletion and fatigue. If you're an ultra athlete, competing in longer triathlons, marathons and other endurance races, employing this as part of your race strategy is a necessity. You simply need more fuel than your body has the capacity to carry. If you tried doing an Ironman or even an Olympic triathlon without it, not only couldn't you compete with the top athletes, you'd simply never finish. You'd likely be carried away by the paramedics at some point with an IV in your arm en route to the local E.R.

Since my times and distances are starting to get longer as I train, I just incorporated a fuel belt into my run training and am re-fueling during my runs.

Interestingly enough, there is a 2007 report published in the International Journal of Sports Nutrition And Exercise Metabolism that suggests adding protein to your carbohydrate-electrolyte (CHO+) drink may improve your overall performance.

In an article titled: Coingestion of carbohydrate-protein during endurance exercise: influence on performance and recovery. Saunders MJ.

In this article, endurance athletes commonly consume carbohydrate-electrolyte sports beverages during prolonged events. Benefts of this strategy include delaying dehydration, maintain blood sugar levels, and potentially reducing the rate of muscle glycogen depletion and time to fatigue. As such, there is wide spread agreement that CHO+ beverages can improve endurance performance.

However there has been some controversy about the role of protein for endurance athletes and there have been some studies that report carbohydrate-protein ingestion improves endurance performance to a greater extent than carbohydrate alone.

The studies suggest that consuming CHO+Protein may reduce muscle damage and improve post exercise recovery. While most of the studies looked at post exercise nutrition intake, they seem to infer that these benefits may be elicited with CHO+Protein during exercise; suggesting the importance of protein along with CHOs to benefit endurance.

The author also points out that there are a couple of studies that compare CHO and CHO+Protein report no major differences, but further notes there are a number of methodological difference with those studies which may have influenced the outcome including amounts and times ingested. Further, he points out that "although there are plausible mechanisms that could explain the ergogenic effects of carbohydrate-protein beverages, they remain relatively untested"

Relatively untested. But what is out there suggests this may be a favorable strategy. I believe the tendency is going in the right direction and since CHO+Protein is what you re-fuel with post exercise anyway, employing the same strategy during your endurance exercise or event will replenish what your body is expending and therefore improve your ability to continue. I'm typically not the type of person to wait until scientists give me the okay. If something makes sense, I'd rather the scientists be there to tell me later on that I was right - again.

But that's just me.

Reference: Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2007 Aug;17 Suppl:S87-103. Dept of Kinesiology, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, USA.

'Nuff said

Dr. T




Dr. Narson is a 2-term past president of the Florida Chiropractic Association’s Council on Sports Injuries, Physical Fitness &; Rehabilitation and was honored as the recipient of the coveted Chiropractic Sports Physician of the Year Award in 1999-2000. He practices in Miami Beach, Florida at the Miami Beach Family & Sports Chiropractic Center; A Facility for Natural Sports Medicine.

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