Food for sport

Posted on July 7, 2010
Filed Under Fitness, Healthy eating, Healthy living | Comments Off

Sports nutritionist Wendy Martinson shares her tips on how to eat well to get the best results, whatever your favourite activity or sport.

Wendy advises Olympic athletes and England football players on their diet. She is a consultant sports nutritionist to the British Olympic Association, and is a registered dietitian who works with the NHS as a clinical nutrition service manager.

Can I eat more when I’m doing lots of exercise?
If you’re doing lots of exercise, you’ll use more energy each day than if you did little or none. So if you don’t want to lose body fat, you need to eat more food each day.

But still make sure that you have a balanced diet. Aim for larger portions of carbohydrate-rich foods such as wholegrain pasta, rice, sweet potato, porridge and breakfast cereals.

Is it better to eat a diet high in starchy carbohydrates or protein when I’m training? 
Carbohydrates are the fuel that power your exercise regime.

Protein is needed in moderate amounts for muscle growth and repair, but the main form of energy used during exercise is carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates are the most important fuel for muscles, and an essential energy source for the brain and central nervous system. They play a vital role in sports where precision, quick decision-making, dexterity and co-ordination are needed.

Carbohydrates are stored as glycogen in the muscles and liver. These stores are small, so a regular intake of carbohydrate is necessary to keep them topped up. Low glycogen stores will result in poor performance and increase the risk of injury. The proportions of carbohydrate and protein required will vary depending on the sport, so it’s best to seek advice from a qualified professional on your individual requirements.

How should I time my meals and snacks around exercise?
Once you’ve eaten a meal or snack, allow between one and four hours to pass before you start exercising. Your body needs time to digest. The amount of time will depend on the amount of food you’ve eaten.

If it’s an average meal, eating around two hours before you exercise works well. The meal should be high in carbohydrate, low in fat and low to moderate in protein. Too much protein or fat will slow down the movement of foods from the stomach, and will make you feel uncomfortable.

Food and drink also plays a part in recovering effectively from training. Good recovery is crucial to prevent a midweek slump in energy levels, and to aid muscle growth and repair. When you finish training, aim to have a carbohydrate-rich food or drink within 30 minutes.

Do I need to drink when I exercise?
Dehydration is when the water content in your body falls below its normal level. It can have a major effect on exercise performance. It’s important to start any exercise session well hydrated. Do this by drinking water, squash or diluted fruit juice regularly during the course of the day.

For any exercise that lasts longer than 30 minutes, drink fluid while you’re doing it. The more you sweat, the more you’ll need to drink.

Water is usually enough for low-intensity exercise up to 50 minutes. For higher-intensity exercise lasting more than 50 minutes, or lower-intensity exercise lasting hours, a sports drink would be of benefit.

The carbohydrates in a sports drink will help to maintain energy levels, and the salt helps to keep you hydrated.

My friend exercises to lose weight, but I exercise to build muscle. Should our diets be different?
Yes. To lose weight, or more specifically body fat, the amount of energy that you consume has to be less than the amount of energy you burn. You’ll need a diet and exercise regime that makes this happen.

There are key steps you can take to reduce the energy content in your daily diet. Reduce fat, which is the most concentrated source of energy, and reduce alcohol. Eat fewer sugary foods, such as sweets, chocolates, cakes, biscuits and sugary drinks, and eat regular but smaller portions of complex carbohydrate foods, such as wholegrain bread, rice and pasta.

Protein foods such as chicken, fish, lean red meat and low-fat dairy foods should be included in moderate amounts. Eat lots of fruit and vegetables. It’s important to control portion sizes, too.

But to build muscle you need to combine resistance training (also called strength training) with a diet that includes enough energy to enable your body to make muscle.

This energy should come mainly in the form of carbohydrate-rich foods, but you’ll also need a little more protein to provide muscle. Large amounts of protein aren’t required.

A particularly effective approach is to eat small amounts of protein and carbohydrate before and after the resistance training session. A low-fat milkshake can work well.

Should I take extra supplements when I’m playing sport?

There are many different supplements on the market. Some of them are based on solid research, and others aren’t. Athletes need to consider supplements with extreme caution. In the past, some supplements were found to have been contaminated with banned substances.

First, ensure that you have a balanced, healthy diet that suits your sport. Consult a registered dietitian or nutritionist with expertise in sports nutrition. They can assess this and advise you on particular supplements.

Keeping fit

Posted on June 4, 2010
Filed Under Fitness | Comments Off

There are lots of ways to improve your fitness without having to join a gym. Joining a local sports team is a great way to spend your spare time and keep fit. You also get to meet lots of new people.

The benefits of getting fit

By keeping physically active, you’re making sure that your joints and body organs are kept in good working order. Exercise can also help maintain your weight at a healthy level and can protect you against catching coughs and colds on a regular basis.

You’ll also feel an increase in your energy level and brain activity. Knowing that you’re looking and feeling good can also give your self-confidence a real boost.

How much exercise do you need?

If you’re under 18, you should try to do a total of 60 minutes of physical activity every day. You don’t have to do it all in one go, but in chunks of at least 10-15 minutes throughout the day. This includes everything from pumping iron in the gym to walking up stairs instead of taking the lift. The key thing is that the activity should increase your heart rate and make you feel warmer.

If you’re over 18, aim for at least 30 minutes of exercise at least five days a week.

A good idea is to try out a whole range of physical activities to see which ones you enjoy the most. Once you’ve decided the sorts of exercise you enjoy, you can plan what type of exercise you’re going to do and when.

Before you start

If you’ve decided to start an exercise routine, it’s important to go and see your doctor for an examination. Your doctor will be able to let you know how much exercise you should be doing to begin with.

They’ll also let you know if you have any medical conditions like back pain that can limit the type of exercise you do.

Fitness for free

Getting fit isn’t all about gyms. Some forms of exercise won’t cost you a penny and most types can easily be slotted into a busy lifestyle.

Think about:

  • cycling or walking to school, college or work instead of driving or taking the bus
  • running around the block a few times a week can improve your fitness level and you’ll soon find yourself running quicker and further
  • checking out the leisure facilities provided by your local authority; many have basketball hoops, tennis courts and football pitches that you can use free of charge

High blood pressure

Posted on June 4, 2010
Filed Under Health over 50, Healthy living | Comments Off

What is high blood pressure?

It causes the heart to work harder than normal putting both the heart and arteries at greater risk of damage. High blood pressure, or hypertension, increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, damage to the eyes, congestive heart failure and atherosclerosis.

Hypertension exists where the pressure at which blood is pushing against blood vessel walls is consistently above average.

Blood pressure changes throughout the day. In particular, it increases during exercise and decreases during sleep.

Untreated high blood pressure can cause the heart to become abnormally large and less efficient (ventricular hypertrophy) causing heart failure and increased risk of heart attack.

Symptoms

Although high blood pressure can cause headaches, dizziness and problems with vision, the majority of people suffer no symptoms at all. As a result many people with hypertension remain undiagnosed because they have no symptoms to motivate them to see a doctor or get their blood pressure checked.

However, despite the lack of symptoms hypertension can lead to heart attack, stroke, kidney damage, and many other medical problems

Causes and risk factors

In over 90 per cent of cases, the cause is unknown. In the remaining cases, high blood pressure is a symptom of a recognisable underlying problem such as a kidney abnormality, tumour of the adrenal gland or congenital defect of the aorta (in these cases when the root cause is corrected, blood pressure usually returns to norma).

This type of high blood pressure is called secondary hypertension.

If high blood pressure isn’t treated and is combined with obesity, smoking, high blood cholesterol levels or diabetes, the risk of heart attack is several times higher.

Arteries also suffer the effects of high blood pressure, becoming scarred, hardened and less elastic. Though this hardening of the arteries often occurs with age, high blood pressure accelerates the process. The hardened or narrowed arteries are unable to supply the amount of blood the body’s organs need, preventing them working effectively. Another risk is that a blood clot may lodge in an artery narrowed by atherosclerosis, blocking blood supply.

Treatment and recovery

The only way to find out if you have high blood pressure is to have your blood pressure checked. A doctor or other qualified health professional should check a patient’s blood pressure at least once every two years.

It’s measured in millimetres of mercury (mm Hg) and is defined in an adult by the recording of two readings:

  • The first is called the systolic pressure and represents the force of the blood as the heart contracts (beats) to pump it around the body. This is the higher of the two readings and records blood pressure at or above 140mm Hg.
  • The second, called the diastolic, is the pressure while the heart is relaxed and filling with blood again in preparation for the next contraction or heart beat. This value is lower than the systolic pressure and records blood pressure at or above 90mm Hg.

What is considered to be an acceptable blood pressure and what is hypertension (and then what needs treatment) depends on several factors. A single high reading isn’t enough to warrant a diagnosis of hypertension as blood pressure can be raised in all of us now and then – even the sight of a doctor can be enough to put it up. So there must be at least three high readings to cause concern.

When high blood pressure is first diagnosed, tests may be done for an underlying cause (i.e. secondary hypertension) especially if the person is young or has very high blood pressure. If an underlying cause is found it should be treated.

There’s no cure as such for essential hypertension, but following a healthy lifestyle can be enough to bring blood pressure down to a normal level. This is one reason why drug treatment may not be offered for healthy individuals with only mild hypertension (above 140/90 mmHg but below 160/100 mmHg).

Medication is used if lifestyle changes alone fail to lower blood pressure sufficiently. Its generally recommend that drug treatment is offered to:

  • Those with a blood pressure above 160/100 mmHg.
  • Those with isolated systolic hypertension of more than 160 mmHg.
  • Those with a blood pressure of more than 140/90 mmHg (i.e. mild hypertension) but who also have cardiovascular disease or significant risk of developing cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or damage to the heart, kidney or eyes as a result of high blood pressure.

Current UK guidelines also recommend that blood pressure levels need to be even lower for certain people and say treatment should aim to lower blood pressure to below 130/80 if a person has:

  • A complication of diabetes, especially kidney problems.
  • Had a serious cardiovascular event such as a heart attack, TIA or stroke.
  • Has certain chronic kidney diseases.

All medicines can have side effects and sometimes it’s necessary to try different drugs if initial treatments cause problems.

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