Thursday, February 13, 2014

Beet Root Red = Olympic Gold


Since Valentine’s Day is on the way, the color red surely stands out.  What else is red that may just be a sweet treat for athletes: How about some Beet Root Juice?  This highly nutritious food is being researched heavily and has currently been all over the news.  Most recently, I was reading an article in the NYTimes on the Olympic Women’s Hockey team’s nutritionist in Sochi.  Amongst all the information on the highly nutritious, calorie dense meals and snacks strategically portioned out for the athlete’s around their practices and games, there was one small caption in the article that caught my attention.  The hockey team’s nutritionist mentioned that many of the athlete’s were ingesting beet root juice before the game.  This stuff may just be giving the women’s hockey team an extra boost for performance that they need to win Gold.  I decided to look deeper into the physiological changes occurring, and the performance benefits that may be gained as a result of them chugging this red drink with hopes and dreams of Olympic glory!

Just a small amount of beet juice may help you as an athlete or exerciser to gain a natural edge over the competition, according to a recent scientific study in the American Journal of Physiology.  8 healthy male and female volunteers were divided into 2 groups: some taking beet root juice 2.5 hours prior to exercise and the other drinking a placebo, or fake beet root juice.  The exercisers who took the 0.5 L/day of beet root juice significantly reduced their total blood pressure, and improved the efficiency in which they carried oxygen to their muscles during moderate exercise.  This made the exercise easier to do, and they became more fit because of it.

That red juice from the beets made me question just what was it in the little bulbous vegetables that made such a difference?  Luckily I found my answer in yet another article from the University of Exeter, all the way across the pond in the UK.  And it just so happened that my former teacher, Fred Dimenna, was part of the research team!  They believed it to be the nitrate in these vegetables that play the crucial part in improving blood pressure and oxygen utilization to improve sports performance.  To make sure that nitrate was the key player, they gave half of the group 0.5L/day of beet root juice with full nitrate, and the other subjects consumed beet root juice with the nitrate taken out.  As a result, the only athletes that improved their performance, including their time to exhaustion most significantly were the groups who ingested the beet root juice WITH the nitrate.

So how exactly does nitrate do its magic?  Well it turns out that the salivary bacteria in your mouth help turn the nitrate to nitrite (with an “I”) and then eventually to nitric oxide at your muscles and vessels.  The more nitric oxide, the more dilated, or opened up, your vessels will be to allow for more oxygen saturated blood to flow to the muscles to promote healthy, robust muscle contractions.  But, as with anything nutrition, you don’t want to consume too much of the liquid because the time spent tearing it up on the field or track might be spent in the bathroom peeing red.  Yes, I said “peeing red.”  However, do not be alarmed this is a normal side effect. Whew!

Now that we have the science down, how can we apply this in our diet?  Well to start, we can eat beets (and their greens which have MORE nitrate than the beet juice itself!)  500ml of the beet root juice seems to be the perfect amount, 2-3 hours before training, racing or exercising.  However, I am not a huge fan of beets, and I know that many others may not be either.  So to get those performance enhancing nitrates, I recommend as usual to turn to whole, all natural food products as a substitute.  In other words, other vegetable sources!  What are other sources you ask?  Here’s a list of vegetables with high nitrate content, even more so than beets:  

-          Leafy green vegetables like Kale, spinach, arugula, swiss chard, and beet greens.

-          Herbs like cilantro

-          Beans

-          Stem vegetables like rhubarb and asparagus

Just remember to consume nitrates in the vegetables and NOT so much in the processed deli meats. It turns out that the nitrates are harmless in the vegetables because of the high amount of Vitamin C.  So if you do end up eating deli meat, include a good portion of vitamin C packed vegetables as a side dish to counteract the nitrates in the carcinogenic processed meats.  

Also please check out this video to recap!

Anyway, it looks like the women’s USA Hockey team and their nutritionist are on to something with this beet root juice supplementation, and maybe they will be able to turn the red juice into GOLD!
-Anthony

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Vitamin D Talk


Vitamin D is touted as one of the essential micronutrients for good health.  It has implication in bone health, immunity and inflammation and even sports performance.  Many people however are not sufficient in this important Vitamin, which makes them more at risk for poor health outcomes.
 
Sources:

The main source of Vitamin D is definitely the good old sunshine.  Our skin contains a molecule called 7 dehydrocholesterol which is actually the precursor of the active form of Vitamin D, called D3.  When the UVA rays hit this molecule, they are absorbed and D3 is formed.  This is later metabolized in the liver and then the kidney to its eventual active form of Vitamin D that works to promote good health in the body.  Oral sources of Vitamin D are fatty fish like Salmon, egg yolks, cod liver, fortified milk and dairy products, and finally the classic supplement.  However, when purchasing a supplement utmost absorption can only be had through intake of Vitamin D3.  This the more natural kind that is found in our skin and in the food that we eat, whereas the D2 supplement is manufactured from plant/fungus sources in a lab, making it less compatible to our own bodies and harder to use, deeming it less effective for the health benefits that it has.  Vegetarians not to worry; rely on the sun, and take the D2 supplements (better than nothing) to ensure enough in your diet.  Also, look for enriched mushroom sources at your grocery store, or enrich them yourself!

Bone Health:

Have you recently had a bone scan done to check for density?  This Vitamin can play a large part in how well your results turn out.  Vitamin D along with Calcium is essential for greater bone density because of Vitamin D role in helping the calcium to become absorbed into the intestinal walls.  Vitamin D actually plays a large role in creating a protein that shuttles calcium through the intestinal wall and into the body tissues.  So without Vitamin D, there would be smaller amounts of the calcium transporter and less calcium brought through to the bones and muscles (1).  Additionally, its role as a secosteroid allows it to work with hormones called PTH and calcitonin in a cycle that function to maintain normal levels of calcium in the blood and normal bone calcium deposition. 

Inflammation:

This time of the year, it can be very easy to catch a cold or get sick.  But those who have more Vitamin D in the diet can help reduce their chances of catching a cold and setting themselves back in their daily life. There are many different sorts of inflammatory factors or cytokines in our blood that play a role in increasing how much our body is under stress, and we all know any kind of stress just doesn’t feel good. Vitamin D actually coordinates with special receptors on cells to release these pro and anti inflammatory cytokines.  One such bad cytokine is TNF- α which cause more of the white blood cells to be produced leading to increased infection and stress.  Many people who have lower counts of Vitamin D in their blood tend to get sick more often with common illnesses including upper respiratory tract infections because of this increase of inflammation and stress in their bodies.  For people who are getting proper amounts of Vitamin D, there is a great chance that it is helping to keep them healthy and more comfortable throughout the colder, sick months.

 Athletic Performance:

Finally, since I am a competitive athlete, I always like to find ways for improving performance.  That being said, there are many theories out there that question the importance Vitamin D provides for making the athlete, or exerciser bigger, faster, and stronger.  For one, increased Vitamin D can lead to improved VO2 max levels.  This is a measurement of how easy it is for your lungs and blood vessels to take in oxygen into the cells, and is a very important marker for performance.  The higher the level of your VO2 max , the easier it is to exercise and lose weight or get lean!  Second, since the active individual is more prone to infection because of the intense workouts that they put their body through, Vitamin D can help defend the body by decreasing the total systemic inflammation, kind of like an antioxidant!  The vitamin D level and upper respiratory tract infection have recently been studied extensively and there was found to be a positive correlation between increased Vitamin D status and increased anti-microbial peptides known as cathelicidines and an inverse relationship between the amount of Vitamin D and prevalence of URTI in the athletes.  The addition of adequate amounts of Vitamin D in the blood can help to reduce the time spent inflamed by enhancing anti inflammatory factors thus improving the healing process and preventing injury as a result of constant breakdown.  According to a recent review article, total mortality is 26% higher in those with lowest Vitamin D levels compared to the highest.  And third, the more Vitamin D and Calcium you get in your diet, the less chance of stress fracture occurrence you will have, and boy do I know how much those hurt.  If you are indoors, or take part in sports such as dancing or running, that emphasize leanness and are many times performed indoors, you are at greater risk and in greater need of Vitamin D.   

With all the important, scientifically backed health benefits for Vitamin D, it may be very helpful to give in and try to monitor your intake in order to get enough of it.  Also, it may be interesting to get a blood test to see if your levels are up to par with the recommendations.  I know I did after this cold snowy winter we have been having in New York!  And be sure to check out my friend's informational and entertaining bunch of "Fit Bits" as well.  She provides even more information to get you on your way to better health and wellness, including her own post about Vitamin D!