Week 10 Flashcards
Supplements definition:
Supplements are added to supply a deficiency but in a sporting context are something used to improve performance.
Things athletes look for when deciding whether to use a supplement?
Athletes look at whether it helps:
- improve health or performance
- helps treat an illness/prevent an illness
- Improve recovery
- Helps compensate for a bad diet.
What may supplements claim to do?
Promote tissue growth, repair, adaptation to training, promote fat loss, enhance energy supply (including muscle buffering) (eg.carbohydratee nutritional buffers)
Promotes immume function and resistance to illness/infection,
CNS stimulant effects eg.caffeine, promotes joint health, promotes general health.
With supplements you need to do a cost-benefit analysis and see if they are worth if
Costs include:
- Financial
- health
- performance
- drug test failure
Benefits include:
Performance, health insurance, policy, free samples.
Many supplements cannot complete full analysis as the big picture is unknown.
What do anti-doping regulations do?
Anti- doping regulations provide liability in sport and help protect athletes health. The offence involves having the banned substance in your system. 1-2 % of athletes who do drugs tests then test positive.
Supplement use risk?
- ) Supplement could be contaminated due too poor quality control and storage
- ) Absence or lower levels than declared of ‘actives’- eg. in caffeine study some products do not even report the amount of caffeine and those which do often show variability in the amount of caffeine in each product.
- ) Presence of undeclared doping agents
- ) Can be harmful to health and performance
Sometimes contamination is not an accident
MHA led to cardiac issue. Often has been marketed as a dietary supplement for geranium- plant derived.
Was not actually oil from geranium that was used but was a synthetic version that was prohibited and some athletes were banned over it.
What is informed sport?
It is an accreditation company used to minimize risk of a supplement you consume containing anything prohibited.
Not every company will use such accreditation services as it costs them money to do so
How to determine the efficacy of a supplement?
You need to ask yourself?
- What is the specific biochemical and physical function that supplements aimed at?
- Does acute and or chronic exercise decrease the availability of the target substrate/ compound to an extent that will impair it’s normal physiological function and therefore exercise performance.
eg. is that pathway affected by exercise and can limit performance, do we really need to supplement if it is not affected by sport.
How to determine the efficacy of a supplement
- ) Does the substrate/ compound reach it’s target destination?
- ) Does the substrate get there in a high enough concentration that is physiologically meaningful?
- ) Does an increased concentration have a measurable and reproducible effect on its biochemical / physiological effect during exercise?
4.) Does an increased concentration have a measurable or reproducible effect on exercise capacity or fatigue development
Maughan’s rules of dietary supplements for athletes
If it works it is probably not allowed
If it is allowed, it probably doesnt work. There are some exceptions.
What is the most commonly used drug?
Caffeine is the most commonly used drug.
How much caffeine is in an instant coffee and how much caffeine in a tea?
Caffeine = 40 -10 mg of caffeine.
Tea= 20-46 mg of caffeine
Caffeine content can vary in dietary supplements.
There is variability in caffeine content in coffee products
Coffee content (all pods) Caffeine content (all pods) ranged between 19 and 147 mg per serving
What is pharmokinetics?
Pharmokinetics = the movement of a drug into , through and out of the body.
Consists of: absorption, bioavailability , distribution, metabolism and excretion.
