Starve.Org White Noise Usenet Archive: "Re: Ultra Athletes and Antioxidents"

The research on the dangers of free radicals is equivocal. The use of
anti-oxidants to combat free radicals is also equivocal.

However, taking recommended doses of C and E does not seem to have any
inherent risk.

"Michael" <nakni-nospam@corecomm.net> wrote in message

news:3b49e373$0$12821$272ea4a1@news.execpc.com...

> Has anyone heard anything else about the danger of generating
> unstable free radicals from oxygen? Should I be drinking orange
> juice all the time?

> Thanks,

> MIchael

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> salon.com > Health & Body July 26, 1999
> URL: http://www.salon.com/health/feature/1999/07/26/ultrathletics

> Using up too much too soon

> Pushing the body to athletic extremes may be harmful to your health.

> - - - - - - - - - - - -
> By Andrew Taber

> Every year at Thanksgiving, John Nickles travels with his family to the
Big
> Island of Hawaii. And every year, as the beaches fill with languid
tourists
> and umbrellaed drinks, Nickles jumps in the ocean and swims. In 1996, he
> found himself more than half a mile off the island's coast. Arms wheeling,
> body undulating with the current, he suddenly looked up with consternation
> and started to dry-heave. Later, he shrugged it off. "I got seasick," he
> said.

> When he recovered, Nickles churned through the last 2.5 miles of his
> 6.2-mile swim, emerging in first place with a new course record of two
> hours, 19 minutes, 57 seconds. He then ran up on the beach, climbed on to
> his bike and raced 90 miles. The next day he rode 174.1 miles, and the day
> after that he ran back-to-back marathons (52.4 miles).

> Nickles isn't crazy. He's an ultraman: a new breed of athlete that is
> stretching the bounds of human endurance to its snapping point. The Hawaii
> Ultraman, now recognized as the sport's world championship (other events
> include Ultraman Canada, to be held in British Columbia on July 31-Aug.
2),
> is perhaps the world's most grueling professional endurance race. It is
not,
> however, the only one. Dozens of Herculean contests span the globe, and a
> daunting percentage of them are in the United States. The Badwater
> ultra-marathon in California's Death Valley pushes runners through 135
miles
> and 8,600 vertical feet of torturous terrain; and the RAAM (Race Across
> America) bicycle race challenges participants to traverse the country
coast
> to coast as quickly as possible. The record, set by Rob Kish in 1992, is a
> mind-boggling eight days, three hours and 11 minutes, and racers have been
> known to rig up bungee-cord contraptions that keep their heads upright
once
> their neck muscles have given out.

> American athletes tend to be an obsessed bunch, but the trend toward
> endurance extremes has sounded alarms in the medical community. In the
short
> term, common consequences of prolonged, strenuous exercise include
> tendonitis, stress fractures and chronic fatigue syndrome. But research is
> beginning to show that by racing ever farther and longer, athletes may
also
> be putting themselves at risk for a host of chronic diseases, even cancer.

> There's some irony in the suggestion that exercise should come with a
health
> warning, but according to Liz Applegate, Ph.D., a nutrition professor at
UC
> Davis and the author of "Eat Your Way to a Healthy Heart: Chocolate and 99
> Other Foods to Help Your Heart" (Prentice Hall Press), the news that
extreme
> athletes may be compromising their health shouldn't be too surprising.
> "People can do it," Applegate says, acknowledging the feats of athletes
like
> Mark Allen -- a greyhound of a triathlete who has captured the Hawaii
> Ironman six times -- "but the body wasn't meant to do it."

> The physical demands professional ultra-athletes put on their systems are
> tremendous. Their lifestyles are built fastidiously around repetitive,
> exhaustive exercise and they sequester themselves into regimented cycles
of
> training, eating and sleeping. "Realistically, a professional
ultra-distance
> athlete doesn't have a job," says Applegate. She estimates that
> ultra-athletes can burn as many as 5,000 to 6,000 calories a day (the
> average person burns 1,600 to 2,200 calories). Ultra-athletes might be
> capable of approximating their physical ideals, but maintaining superhuman
> athletic prowess is a biological impossibility.

> "There are a bazillion stories of athletes who have developed chronic
> fatigue syndrome," says Applegate, singling out overtraining as the most
> common ailment among the ultra-athlete set. Like a car pegged at 8,000
rpm,
> the human body can run at maximum for only so long. And when it cracks, it
> spirals into a state of fatigue and viral vulnerability. "Some athletes
have
> a cold for four weeks," Applegate says. "They think, 'I'm in good shape.
> I'll shake it off.' Well, they're not in good shape. They don't realize
that
> this amount of exercise is a huge stress on the body and could compromise
> their ability to fight off something as simple as a cold."

> For now, events like the Hawaii Ultraman are overwhelmingly dominated by
men
> ("Women may have more sense," quips Applegate); the 35-strong starting
list
> for last year's Ultraman contained just three female participants. But
women
> may be more susceptible to the ravages of prolonged ultra-athletics than
> men. Prentice Steffen, the physician of the Mercury professional cycling
> team, estimates that more than 75 percent of female endurance athletes
> experience irregular menstruation. "It's almost an automatic thing when
> women exercise too much," he says, adding that because of this, female
> endurance athletes run a higher risk of contracting bone-mineral diseases
> like osteoporosis later in life.

> Neither gender, however, is immune to two of the most significant
> consequences of a lifetime of ultra-endurance. One, foot-strike hemolysis,
> affects distance-obsessed runners. With each stride, a runner is literally
> rupturing red blood cells, which over time could lead to a strain of
anemia.

> The other, termed oxidative stress -- an insidious process that attacks
the
> body at a molecular level -- has piqued considerable alarm among sports
> doctors. Oxygen is the human body's life force, but it also generates
> unstable molecules called free radicals. According to Applegate, free
> radicals corrupt healthy cells, mangling them by stealing electrons and
> potentially turning them cancerous. Natural antioxidants like vitamins C
and
> E (which are prevalent in fruits and vegetables) combat oxidative damage,
> and are abundant in most healthy eating habits. Exercise, however,
increases
> the body's oxygen intake. Under moderate strain, the body's biology can
> easily adapt, activating its stores of antioxidants and extinguishing
> "oxygen fires," as Applegate calls them.

> Ultra-endurance athletes, though, have bounded into extreme physical
> terrain, and the distance and intensity they demand of their systems has
> crossed dangerous biological lines. At maxed-out exertion levels, an
athlete
> is gulping monstrous levels of oxygen and is turbulently circulating it
with
> a heart rate approaching 200 beats per minute. According to Applegate,
when
> an athlete repeatedly pushes him or herself through prolonged exhaustive
> training sessions, the body can no longer keep up. "Now you've got a
> three-alarm fire going on," she says. "And your body can't put it out."

> It is currently impossible to establish a definitive link between extreme
> athletics and cancer. The ultra-marathon trend is too recent for a study,
> and, unlike a pack-a-day smoker who develops lung cancer, it is impossible
> to positively identify an athlete's cancer as exercise-induced. Molecular
> tests, however, have proven the damaging effects of oxidative damage, and
> Steffen doesn't dismiss the theoretical possibility that cancers in athlet
es
> like Lance Armstrong -- an American cyclist who developed testicular
cancer
> in October, 1996, but has since recovered and returned to competition (he
> won the 1999 Tour de France bicycle race on July 25) -- could have had
their
> genesis in over-exercise.

> To squelch an oxidative inferno, it would seem that ultra-athletes need
only
> scale back the scope and intensity of their training. The problem,
however,
> is that ultra-endurance is not just a sport. It can also be an addiction.
> When Nickles describes his experience at the Hawaii Ultraman, his
sentences
> are punctuated with words like "honor" and "respect." He speaks adamantly
> about the "spirit" and "camaraderie" of the race, and he admits that his
> very existence centers on the pursuit of peak ultra-endurance fitness. His
> athletic goal, he says, is four-fold: "Win Ultraman, do RAAM, a 100-mile
> running race and swim the English Channel."

> "These are not laid-back people," Applegate says. A high percentage of
> ultra-endurance athletes are obsessive compulsive, according to Applegate,
> who contends that they use the challenge of mega-distance as an avenue
where
> they can pursue and control their worlds.

> Doctors also stress that athletes don't have to be ultra-marathoners to
> suffer the effects of overtraining. Carlton, a cyclist and runner who
> declined to use his last name, spent years defining his self worth through
> exercise. More than a day or two of rest could produce depression and the
> illusion of acute muscular atrophy. At 19, he had reached what he took to
be
> an athletic pinnacle. He was training relentlessly during the week and
> racing on the weekends. After a few weeks of mediocre workouts and general
> fatigue, he went to the doctor for a check up. At 6 feet tall, he weighed
> just under 140 pounds, and was told that he "needed to eat more red meat."

> "I was anemic and chronically fatigued," he says.

> Carlton, however, has a fairly common athletic profile; his workout habits
> are on a par with many exercise-conscious Americans. Ultra-endurance
> athletes undertake training regimens that are exponentially more demanding
> than Carlton's toughest week. So if his system could be ravaged by
> overtraining, how could an ultra-athlete's lifestyle ever be classified as
> healthy?

> "It's not healthy," Steffen says. The human body, however, has amazing
> regenerative powers, and Steffen maintains that even if athletes compete
at
> ultra-endurance levels for 10 years, they still have the bulk of their
lives
> left for repair. "It's as if you smoked for 10 years in your 20s or 30s
and
> then stop," he says. "By the time you reach your 40s and 50s, it's as if
you
> never smoked. It's the same for extreme athletics."

> Ultra-athletes, unfortunately, don't always stop. Of the 35 participants
at
> last year's Hawaii Ultraman, 29 were over 30, and 16 were over 40.
According
> to Nickles, who is 35, ultra events have become the domain of the older
> athlete. When triathletes and other endurance athletes are no longer
> competitive in traditionally-distanced events, they often up the ante by
> going ultra. Nickles likens his own ultra obsession to an athletic
> biological clock. "I can hear it ticking," he says. "I know I only have so
> many years left to be in this kind of shape."

> Growing evidence, however, suggests that an athlete in the throes of an
> ultra-distance addiction is accelerating the aging process, and Steffen
> contends that ultra-athletes need to become proponents of moderation.
> "Anything in the extreme is not good," he says, lumping exercise with
> traditional vices like smoking and drinking. "The body and its joints only
> have a certain lifetime," he continues. "They're using up too much too
> soon."
> salon.com | July 26, 1999

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