Are You Bulking Up and Staying Heathly?

Sunday, February 15, 2009

The Ohio State University, notes the NCAA’s website DoubleAZone.com, recently released a study suggesting that approximately half of the linemen that play football at the college level will eventually develop early signs of heart disease and diabetes.

The study shows, writes the article, “Nearly half of a sample of collegiate offensive and defensive linemen who underwent a battery of tests . . . had metabolic syndrome,” an illness which increases the risk factors for heart disease and diabetes three times the normal rate of those without such risk factors.

OSU researchers attribute the onset of metabolic syndrome to the fact that football players who place a heavy emphasis on the need to gain and sustain weight in order to remain competitive, usually do so without giving much thought to how they go about achieving a desired result. That, those associated with the research claim, oftentimes leads to adopting bad eating habits and putting on extra unnecessary weight which players do not work to shed once their days of playing football have come to an end.

Jackie Buell, director of sports nutrition at Ohio State, successfully summarizes the problem in USA Today on February 2nd, stating athletes “say ‘I want to gain weight and I don’t care if it’s fat or not, I just want to be bigger.’” Yet the fact of the matter remains, as Buell continues, “Getting bigger by getting fat is not good.”

Those at the heart of the Ohio State University study state that the disturbing trend unveiled in the process of their exploration can be reversed, but that coaches will need to play an integral role in educating players of the potential dangers associated with increasing mass and bulk through unrestrained consumption of various types of food. Emphasis too, researchers claim, need be placed on the fact that decisions made about diet and exercise in the early stages of life for an athlete can and do have a serious impact on that individual’s health and well-being later on in life.

Buell tells DoubleAZone.com that the process of educating athletes on the proper ways of using nutrition as a means to gain weight and bulk need not be a difficult one. One suggestion she highlights is encouraging coaching staffs around the country to realize that “the Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes Guidelines proposed by the National Cholesterol Education Program could function as a guide for athletes with numerous risk factors.” Some of those guidelines Buell makes reference to? The recommendation that “saturated fats constitute no more than 7 percent of total calories, fats should constitute 25 percent to 35 percent of daily calories, and cholesterol consumption should not total more than 200 milligrams per day.”

Megha Satyanarayana of GreenLifeGrocery.com states that similar inroads could be made by reinforcing the fact that athletes need “to go beyond crude measurements such as body-mass index” and instead participate in a system willing to “include blood tests for metabolic syndrome [targeting] . . . risks factors such as abdominal fat, high blood pressure and insulin resistance that lead to hear disease and diabetes.”

Regardless of the means incorporated by coaches and athletic departments to address the issue outlined by the researchers at Ohio State, the glaring reality of the situation is that something must be done and done relatively quickly to help better prepare athletes for the physical challenges they’ll face as a student participating in sports at the college level. Dr. Randy Pearson of Michigan State University states that “the message to get to the kids is to develop a pattern of eating healthy for life” – a pattern which discourages irresponsible eating as a means of quickly building body mass. Offensive line coach for Washington State University, Terry Heffernan, notes that that message must start at the high school level, as too many of his players are arriving on campus needing to drop “bad” weight in favor of lean and strong muscle. As such, the impetus to correct the problem reaches further back than those at the university level; coaching staffs and physicians involved in prep sports too have a responsibility to teach their players the right and wrong way to become a more physical player via the use of nutrition and do so in a way that properly prepares players to meet the trials encountered as both a college and professional athlete.