Many athletes who train regularly are abandoning their low carbohydrate diets… should you?
How many times have we all heard of people doing the “low Carb diet” in order to reduce their body mass… yet we also hear quite a bit that this can be unhealthy! Why should this be the case. Well! Carbohydrate is metabolised by the body for several purposes including tissue creation and regeneration and repair! It turns ut that carbohydrates are actually integral to your training food intake! It may be unwise then to remove carbs from your diet!
Scientific research has been advancing! Here a few of the things it has to say on nutrition and specifically carbohydrate.
As you may be aware their are three types of carbohydrate and carbohydrates are one of three types of nutrient our body can absorb and thereby continue to function. We can consume as part of our diet and succesfully continue to function as organisms by eating fat, protein and carbohydrate. Fibre, starch and sugars form the three carbohydrate we consume and the scientists are saying that yes by all means reduce or repalce the sugar carbs for one of the other carb types and particualrly they recommend fibre. However the reason we need carbs is they are used by the body to make energy for our system to function including our brain not just bodies. In fact the specific sugar the body makes for energy from cards is glucose which the body also keeps in reserve in muscles and in the liver! Eliminating carbs from your diet is according to some research actually negatively affecting this entire process!
The facts according to these researchers are claim that when training say a body part such as the legs of biceps that the body cannot maintain or improve the function of those body parts without the role of carbohydrate. If the body has carbs it can make glucose to power the muscles whilst any proteins in the diet can then be used to repair muscle function after training. Not taking carbs forces the body to use that important muscle buiding compound protein and use it for energy instead!The science is telling us however that replacing sugars for fibre as our carb source is better!
The most recent science is telling us the following!
Many papers are telling us that there are negatives to reducing carbs. The research is arriving of the online web pages thick and fast, and many papers discuss dieting in a performance environment and even the Lancet Public Health revealed results that low carbohydrate diets actually increase the risk of dementia and shorten life spans. So eating more carbs is actually being researched as a means to reduce dementia and increase lifespan! they are talking about taking someone at 50 years old, ensuring they eat a 65% carb diet and thereby extending their life by around 3 years! The data is saying that consuming 25g of carbs per day is the direction to go in which is a lot of fibre as typically high fibre foods have only 2 or 3% fibre!
But what else can we be thinking about to help our training! Well rest is integral and dealing with injuries perhaps including pain relief gels to help rest relax and de-stress the site of injuries. Hydrating all the itme is key too, always drinking water, sips here and there throughout the day is really good for the body. Wrming down after training has been shown to have beneficial effects as well as wrming up. So along with understanding the role of carbs there are other things you can be doing to improve training!
Please do your own thorough incvestigation and act on the data at all times!
Best wishes.
Rugby Rep States Science and fitness Editor.
www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/cutting-carbs-could-lead-to-premature-death-if-you-replace-them-with-the-wrong-things/2018/09/13/17214ba2-b6bb-11e8-a2c5-3187f427e253_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e750b8c3e673
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-46827426
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jan/10/high-fibre-diets-cut-heart-disease-risk-landmark-study-finds
www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/21/low-protein-high-carb-diet-may-help-ward-off-dementia
www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6578291/Millions-risk-early-death-not-eat-fibre-warns-major-study.html
www.schoolnutritionandfitness.com/data/pdf/Why_are_Carbohydrates_Important_for_Athletes.pdf
