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1) 2018 review by Hector & Phillips:
I'm currently working from California, and as the days are warming up and summer is inching closer here in the US, I’m getting more and more messages from athletes regarding weight loss without muscle loss.
Standard recommendations for protein intake sit at 0.8g/kg but there seems to be plenty of literature recommending increasing this range during weight loss periods to 1.6 – 2.4g/kg body weight for athletes.
Some studies insist that it is protein quality over quantity that matters. Others suggest that timing and supplementation is the key.
I found this 2018 review to be a very helpful resource for answering most of these questions.
2) 2021 systematic review by Reid et al.:
Do you have patients or kids that do impact sport? It seems concussions are becoming more frequent, especially in younger athletes.
Researchers looked at 12 trials and found sub-threshold aerobic exercise lowered symptom scores in concussed individuals but didn’t actually speed up their recovery time.
The only way to speed up recovery currently seems to be a combination of cervical, vestibular and oculo-motor therapy.
3) 2014 paper by Rushworth & Megson:
When working with athletes, recovery is obviously a major component. The faster they can recover, the more training they can fit in.
For mitochondrial recovery, we usually look to anti-oxidants to get energy levels back to 100%.
Now here comes the contentious part.
I’ve seen so many practitioners refer to N-acetylcysteine (NAC) as an anti-oxidant. Here is why this might be a potentially harmful misconception.
This paper looked at the physiological mechanisms behind NAC and the researchers concluded that its main and pretty much only anti-oxidant effect comes from being a substrate for the production of glutathione.
But here’s the catch: it only seems to work in glutathione-deficient cells. Once the glutathione concentrations have been restored to healthy levels, there is no further accumulation.
According to this paper, this means giving NAC to a patient that already has sufficient levels of glutathione is redundant and ineffectual.
References
Hector AJ, Phillips SM. Protein Recommendations for Weight Loss in Elite Athletes: A Focus on Body Composition and Performance. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2018 Mar 1;28(2):170-177. doi: 10.1123/ijsnem.2017-0273. Epub 2018 Feb 19. PMID: 29182451.
Reid SA, Farbenblum J, McLeod S. Do physical interventions improve outcomes following concussion: a systematic review and meta-analysis? Br J Sports Med. 2022 Mar;56(5):292-298. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2020-103470. Epub 2021 Sep 30. PMID: 34593371.
Rushworth GF, Megson IL. Existing and potential therapeutic uses for N-acetylcysteine: the need for conversion to intracellular glutathione for antioxidant benefits. Pharmacol Ther. 2014 Feb;141(2):150-9. doi: 10.1016/j.pharmthera.2013.09.006. Epub 2013 Sep 28. PMID: 24080471.
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Written by Kyle van Heerden
Online Educator at Research Raconteur
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