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Why you get ill after a race or big event · No Forking Nonsense - The Nutritionist UK

• 0:00
  @paulthenutritionist: Hello and welcome to No Forking Nonsense, the second most listened to nutrition podcast in The United Kingdom. And we've got one goal to answer your nutrition questions with no nonsense. To send your question in email podcastthenutritionistuk dot com. Give me your name, what your problem is, what your question is, a little bit about yourself, and we'll get your questions answered. Let's get stuck in to today's question.
• 0:25
  This one's from Ruth. Any tips for my daughter who's just done her first Olympic triathlon distance? Came second in her age category and thirty six hours later was extremely sick. She's also on immunosuppressants for her ect. Just wondering if nutritionally what could she be doing?
• 0:42
  Right, first things first, second in her age category on her first ever Olympic distance triathlon is seriously impressive, so before we get into anything else, let s just give a kudos for that. Now on the face of it, this is a very specific question, you ve got one triathlete, one race, one parent worried about their daughter, but here is why I ve picked it and why I want every single one of you to keep listening even if you ve never swam, cycled, ran or done anything like that before. Because what happened to her happens to loads of us and it wears just kind of different outfits if you like, you don t have to do a triathlon to know this feeling. You spend months getting fit for your wedding and you spend the honeymoon with a stinking cold, you do the charity walk, big tournament, half marathon, obstacle race, well not even a sport, it's just the kind of brutality of the week at work where you run on fumes just to hit a deadline, so you push hard, you feel unstoppable, you finish on a massive high and then a day or two later, you are absolutely on your arse and you wondering what went wrong.
• 1:45
  So here is the kind of spin to make it relevant to you guys. This is an episode that isn't about the triathlon, it's an episode about why a brilliant effort can leave you feeling like shit afterwards and what to actually do about it. Her question is the door and we are just going to walk through it. Here So is the thing is often not spoken about when you push your body hard, after long demanding effort your immune system takes a temporary dip, usually in the hours and days that follow, and sports scientists have a name for this, they call it the open window. For roughly one to three days after a big event, your defences sit a little bit lower than normal, the drawbridge is down if you like and that's exactly when a bug that you'd normally shrug off can sneak in and get a proper grip.
• 2:32
  Obviously I've spoken before about how I'm training for a half Ironman, my friend does, my best friend does Ironman like they're coming out of his ears and every single time he's finished an Ironman, he's just covered in spots, it's almost like acne and that is an immune response and it isn't new by the way and it isn't a hunch, back in the late 1980s, a researcher in America called David Neiman studied thousands of runners after the Los Angeles marathon and he found that the runners who completed the race were considerably more likely to come down with an illness in the week after the run than those who trained but didn't actually race that day. The ones who had done the highest training mileage beforehand were at an even greater risk, so her getting ill thirty six hours after the finish line is bang in the middle of that open window and the timing tells the whole story. Before anyone uses this as a kind of cast iron excuse to never exercise again, that s not what I m trying to say here. The very same research shows something brilliant, moderate regular exercise makes your immune system stronger.
• 3:36
  People who train sensibly and consistently get fewer colds than those who didn t and scientists described it as a J shaped curve, so you do nothing and your immune system sits on average, you train regularly and moderately, it climbs, it's only right at the far end, really long, really hard, really depleting efforts that it can dip down for a short while. The goal isn't to do less in this example, the goal is to understand that dip and then cover for it. That's where nutrition aids us, because this is the part that most people get badly wrong. The bit that genuinely surprises people, and this is the single biggest thing that widens that open door and holds it open longer, isn't the distant, it isn't the cold weather, it isn't bad luck. It's not eating enough.
• 4:26
  Under fuelling, not taking enough food to cover the training you're actually doing is the most common and the most overlooked reason that people who train hard end up run down and ill. Your body doesn't sort into neat little boxes, a hard training block is a stress, a big race is a stress, being underfed is a stress, your body reads that as just another stress stacked up on all the others. When the total load gets too high, your immune system is one of the first things to get thrown overboard. This is so well recognised that the International Olympic Committee has published formal consensus guidance on it, and they call it relative energy deficiency in sport. Getting ill more often, impaired immunity, is listed right there as a direct consequence of simply not eating.
• 5:14
  Think about who this is most relevant for, usually the keenest, the most dedicated people, the ones training the most, eating like someone who sits at a desk all day, whilst also training like an athlete, so that s the problem and that why people end up getting sick. If you take one thing from today, it s this: eat enough to match what you are doing, especially in your biggest weeks and around events. That is your baseline, nothing else matters until that is in place. The other thing that is super important is that carbohydrates are usually still something that is a little bit overlooked and actually they are your friend here and I don't want to bore on about carbohydrate timing, you can follow my stories about how I whinge about how much carbohydrate I have to consume to get round a 20 mile bike, let alone a 60 mile bike on my Instagram stories but the diet industry has spent obviously twenty years telling you that carb is the enemy but for endurance efforts, you absolutely cannot avoid them. The same research that I told you about Neiman ran follow-up work through the 1990s and 2000s on what happened when athletes took carbohydrate during long exercise and the results were consistent: carbohydrates on board during a long effort blunted the spike in the stress hormones like cortisol and softened the immune dip that came afterwards.
• 6:30
  In plain English, fuel during the session and you won't feel like shit during or afterwards. I am literally testament to that. I've worked out that I need about 75 gs of carbohydrate per hour on a long cycle and a run and if I do that, then I find that my recovery is absolutely sound. For anything over ninety minutes, getting some carbohydrate in as you go, so a drink, jowl, banana, whatever you will actually stomach and your numbers are going be different, it is for everybody, isn't just about not running out of steam, it's going to protect your immune system on the way round but also it will ensure that afterwards you recover a lot better, so that's two jobs with potentially one banana. So a bit that s specific to Ruth, your daughter, now I have to come back to one detail in the question because it genuinely changes the advice and I be doing a disservice if I skated over it.
• 7:24
  She s on immunosuppressant medication for her eczema, two things on that. First, given she got ill, well this ill after the raise, obviously you have to refer back to a GP and dermatologist. A big physical effort combined with medication that affects your immune system is worth proper conversation with people who know what s going on. Secondly, and this is the important one, this is not the moment to go grab in immune boosting supplements off the shelf. Her medication is deliberately carefully calming her immune system to manage her skin.
• 7:57
  The last thing you want to do is get a product, yanking it back the other way, fighting her treatment. On top of that, plenty of those supplements can interact with these kinds of medications. So the rule for her is dead simple, anything she takes, even a basic vitamin, gets cleared with your doctor or your pharmacist first, just to be safe. Honestly, that s solid advice for anyone who s on regular medications, supplements aren t consequence free just because you can buy them without prescription. Always important to check this.
• 8:25
  But let's get practical, this is for her and it's for any one of you who trains hard and is sick of getting wiped out for it. Eat enough, match the food to the training properly, especially in big weeks and around events. This is the whole game. You need to fuel for long sessions, carbohydrate during anything over an hour and a half, two hours even, keeps the stress response down and the immune dip smaller that I've prepared to. Protein at every meal, I think I said this every podcast, spread across the day rather than saved up for dinner, it s going to help recover and it s going to help repair you.
• 9:01
  You want protein clocking on regularly and consistently. Four. Cover the key nutrients with food and if you can, get bloods checked rather than getting iron especially, lower iron is very common in young females who do endurance races and it also batters your energy and your immune system. Vitamin D and zinc are also worth knowing too, so see if your doctor will get a full blood panel, they should be able to do that because she s on immune suppressants. Five.
• 9:29
  Protect the seventy two hours after any big event because that s a danger zone. More sleep, good food, plenty of fluids, a bit of extra care around crowds and travelling, just don't charge straight back into a hard session because you need your body to calm down. Finally, sleep, it beats every supplement on the shelf, it's free and it's where recovery happens and it's a non negotiable. You do those things, you're going to be in a much better place. For Ruth, your daughter didn't get unlucky and she didn't do anything wrong because she ran a brilliant raise, the window opened the way it does for everybody and a few sensible tweets will help close it faster the next time she essentially was just not recovered.
• 10:08
  You just need to clear the specifics with her medical team, as in the doctor giving the medication, ensure that she's properly fuelling during and after her event. And to everyone else who's ever crossed the finish line on top of the world and then spent the next week feeling like you're dying, now you know exactly why. It isn't a punishment for doing well, it's just called the window and now you know how to shut it. Ruth, thank you for your question and if you want your question answered then email podcastthenutritionistuk dot com. Chat to you next week.
• 10:38
  Thanks for listening to this episode of No Forking Nonsense. If you would like to get your question on a future episode, email nutritionistuk dot com. If you would like a free meal maker resource, click the top link in the description. Don't forget to follow me on instagram paulthenutritionist. Chat to you next week.