Don't Forget to Bring the Cooler !

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Summer (with its heat and humidity) is almost over, but it's always a good time to think about ways to improve your performance.

For those of you living (and playing ball) in hot, humid climates, here's an interesting study from the United Kingdom that appears in the September 2008 issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.

Researchers wanted to examine the effects of drinking a cold liquid (instead of one at room temperature) on an athletes body temperature, heart rate, and endurance in the heat.

They took 8 young men (average age =22) and had them pedal on a bicycle to exhaustion in a hot and humid environment, once while drinking a warm (98.6 degrees fahrenheit) liquid and once while drinking the same amount of liquid at a cooler temperature (~39 degrees) .

They found that compared with the warmer liquid, drinking a cold drink before and during exercise in the heat reduced physiological strain (kept the body cooler) and increased the athletes' endurance capacity by more than 20%.

So what does that mean for you? The next time your team is scheduled to play a tournament outside or in a hot gym environment, it might be worth the cost and effort to store your drinks

(water, sports drinks) in a cooler. Don't like to be the one to carry the cooler(s)? Then you can ride the Cooler Train (above). It might help you get where you want to go.

When Muscles Break Down Too Much

from http://www.technion.ac.%20il/

After a talk I gave to a group of basketball players on their way to an international tournament, a young lady came up to me and asked me if I knew about rhabdomyolysis. She had been diagnosed and treated for it in a hospital and was worried that it might happen again. I told her that, while I was familiar with it, I needed to do a little research first before getting back to her.

Here's what I found:

Exertional rhabdomyolysis is a rare illness that happens when a person has an intense physical activity that breaks down their muscles. While there is always a little muscle breakdown that occurs with heavy exercise, this is much more severe. The muscles cells break apart and the injured muscles release myoglobin, creatine kinase and other muscle cell contents into the blood stream.

Mild and moderate cases can cause high levels of sodium, potassium, phosphorous and calcium in the blood. This can lead to pain and swelling of the muscles, stomachache, nausea and back pain. In more severe cases (very rare), the myoglobin gets into the urine, causing it to become a dark tea or brown color. When the myoglobin is this concentrated, it can injure the kidneys. In fact, if left untreated really severe cases can lead to clots in the blood, kidney failure and even death.

Now this doesn't happen very often. Most players can push themselves during workouts and games without having to worry about it. But there are some things to avoid if you want to decrease the chance of this happening to you.

Things that INCREASE a person’s risk for exertional rhabdomyolysis/make it MORE likely to happen include:

* high temperatures and humidity levels,
* poor physical conditioning
* not drinking enough fluid
* taking certain medicines like aspirin
* cocaine or alcohol abuse and/or
* recent viral illness (cold, flu).
* Having Sickle cell trait

Things that REDUCE the risk of exertional rhabdomyolysis/ make it LESS likely to happen include:

* Limiting exercise that pushes you to the brink of your ability
* Limiting exercise in higher than average temperatures
* Making sure that you consume enough carbohydrates and that you have sufficient rest periods to enhance the body’s ability to convert the carbohydrate to glycogen
* Keeping well hydrated at all times

If you're a basketball player with a history of kidney disease, heat exhaustion and/or previous case of rhabdomyolysis, you should see a doctor (and get blood and urine testing) if you experience brown discoloration of your urine, have back or stomach pain, or pain and swelling in your legs or arms that comes after a period of high intensity exercise. You might need intravenous (IV) fluids and be admitted to the hospital to make sure you recover well and future exercise might need to be adjusted to keep it from happening again.

Again, I don't want to keep anyone from playing the game. Just use the recommendations above to reduce your risk, use your common sense and, if you think you might be suffering from this condition, get help from your doctor.

You Are What You Eat

A recent article by Nancy Clark got me to thinking about some of my favorite basketball nutrition articles and resources.

Here's a short list that I've also added to my link section (lower right hand corner of this blog) .

While these links provide good general information, none of it takes the place of having a sports dietitian work with you to optimize your nutrition.

http://www.theacc.com/genrel/020706aae.html

Fueling the Fastbreak- Article by Jen Ketterly, MS, RD

http://www.ais.org.au/nutrition/documents/FuelBasket.pdf

Basketball Nutrition Handout - from the Australian Institute of Sport

http://www.gssiweb.com/Article_Detail.aspx?articleid=754
Better Nutrition Equals Better Hoops - from the Gatorade Sports Science Institute

http://kidnetic.com/

A healthy eating and active living Web site for kids ages 9-12 and their families, from the International Food Information Council.

http://www.scandpg.org/

Website for Sports, Cardiovascular and Wellness Nutritionists section of the American Dietetic Association. If you want to work with a Registered Dietitian in your area that specializes in sports nutrition go to http://www.scandpg.org/mapsearch.php .

Bon Apetit.

DRINK !!

Kris Osterberg MS, RD, gave an interesting poster presentation at the recent 2007 Annual Meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine.

A former college basketball player, her research focused on how well hydrated NBA basketball players were before and after Summer League games in Salt Lake City, Utah and Las Vegas, Nevada.

It wasn't pretty.

Over half of the players showed up under-hydrated before the games and didn’t make up for this during the game even though they could have as much water or sports drink as they wanted…. Now that’s just sad.

Why is that sad? Well, research has shown that dehydration (as little as 2%) can decrease an athlete’s endurance and performance. This has been shown to be the case in many different sports, including basketball. So here are these NBA Summer League players, trying to get noticed by scouts or make the team, and they’re already putting themselves at a disadvantage because they didn’t drink enough liquids before the game.

While you might want to model your crossover dribble or post-game after some of these players, don’t follow their poor pre-game hydration habits!! Maybe they didn't know any better, but you should.

What can you do? Prehydrate.

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Step One
About 2-3 hours before your game or practice, drink 12-16 ounces of fluid (water, or a sports drink but NOT an energy drink-more on this in a future post).

Step Two
About 20 minutes before your game/practice drink another 8-12 ounces of fluid.
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Remember, these are general guidelines and you should talk to your doctor or sports nutritionist about what amounts are right for you. But if you follow recommendations along these lines, you’ll improve your (and your team’s) performance when you step onto the court.