Athletes can now perform sweat analysis, check skin temperature, and monitor insulin in the field. But should they? We review the latest in nutrition technologies. We also talk about the potential adverse impacts of carbohydrates and caffeine on our health.
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Chris Case: Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Fast Chats. I’m here with Trevor Connor.
[00:00:10] Trevor Connor: That’s your name, right? Trevor Connor. Yeah. But even remember the name of the episode, which I never remember because I still call it the Thinking episode.
[00:00:16] Chris Case: Well, internally, externally, we’ve got different things going on.
This is your source for the science of endurance performance. See how I slipped that in there?
[00:00:24] Trevor Connor: Nice.
[00:00:27] Chris Case: You love technology. I think you love good technology. Have you looked at my bike lately? Well, that’s a good point. There’s some things that you love that have had technological advances in evolutions over the years.
Your bike is not one of them, but other things, you wear things on your person. On your body that have technology infused in them. Do I like looking like a Borg? Yes. Yes, I do. There. There we go. Then we get right down to it. You Trevor Connor, like to look like a Borg Cyborg. Today we’re gonna start with a really interesting study.
With some big names involved that looked at a whole bunch of technologies as pertains to nutrition and also sort of energy expenditure, and I find it to be a great review because they actually just say, you know what? Some of this stuff is kind of not worth your time. Yeah.
[00:01:29] Trevor Connor: It’s a pretty good review of a lot of the really popular devices right now that people are jumping on board and trying to get ahead with.
And they don’t pull any punches. No, they do not. So I think it’s worth kind of diving into what
[00:01:44] Chris Case: they found. Yeah. And it’s the season of buying gadgets for other people. Maybe this is also an anti gift guide. Don’t buy these things for people.
There we
go.
[00:01:55] Trevor Connor: Don’t get any of these.
[00:01:56] Chris Case: Don’t get any of these things.
[00:01:59] Trevor Connor: Did a 2014 bike like Trevor, oh boy. My bike’s getting really old. Yes it is. You know what I’m actually looking forward to is we have a couple studies after that that we’re gonna talk about that are getting into something that I think is really important. We have for a while been looking at nutrition purely from that performance perspective, what helps performance, and there hasn’t been a ton of research on what’s the impact on health.
You’re now starting to see that come out in the research, at least I’m starting to see more and more studies on that. So we have two that are looking at two of the things that we commonly do to aid performance and saying, what is their impact on our immune system? What’s their impact on our gut? Mm-hmm.
And I think, you know, certainly they don’t have definitive conclusions. I, I think it’s a starting point, but it’s an interesting starting point.
[00:02:50] Chris Case: Yeah. Well,
[00:02:50] Trevor Connor: let’s
[00:02:51] Chris Case: not hide the fact that we’re talking about two of the biggest Yes. Carbohydrates. And caffeine. And caffeine. Caffeine. Caffeine. Like you can’t get more ubiquitous than those two things in.
Yep. Endurance sports, honestly. So. So they’re worth the look. Yeah. So where shall we start? I’m gonna read the title ’cause we’ve been bad about doing that. The title of the first study reviewing the technology. Would you like me to do that? No, no. You’re going to read it. That’s your domain. I just wanted to see what you’d say if I said
[00:03:20] Trevor Connor: no.
[00:03:20] Chris Case: Okay. Nutritionally relevant technological advancements in professional cycling. This is coming from the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. This is not even in print, is it? No, it just came out. It just
[00:03:37] Trevor Connor: came out. Yeah. It’s pretty recent. So I think the important thing to point out here, there’s a lot of names involved, but if you look at the last two authors, it’s Dr.
Asker Chen Droop, and Dr. Louise Burke, who two are the biggest names in sports and nutrition.
[00:03:51] Chris Case: Yes.
[00:03:52] Trevor Connor: So they were very interested and if you look at the very end, they were actually doing this review for the UCI.
[00:03:59] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:04:00] Trevor Connor: They wanted to dig in and say, as nutritionists as people trying to help athletes maximize fuel consumption, energy expenditure, all that, what are the useful devices?
Yeah. And.
[00:04:12] Chris Case: Professional cycling is in the title of the paper. Their subjects were professional cyclists by and large, or that’s the context within what they’re looking at. But I think all of this naturally applies to all types, all levels of athletes.
[00:04:27] Trevor Connor: You know, it’s a review, so they’re looking at studies of all different levels.
They looked at power meters, continuous glucose monitors, sweat analysis, lactate sensors, muscle fiber, typology, glycogen and fat quantification. They looked at devices that measure skin temperature and try to estimate core temperature. It’s a big list. Yes. Try to give it. Yes. I look like this is gonna take me 30 seconds.
And then devices for looking at substrate metabolism. So how much carbohydrate are you burning? How much fat are you burning? And just kind of dived into each and said, what’s the value? But I think what’s really important here, and this is what you and I were talking about offline, right? When we said what’s interesting about this study is there are in lab, more invasive methods of measuring all of these things.
That are pretty accurate and pretty reliable. Mm-hmm. And some of it, so a really long history, right? So it’s not like with any of these we’re saying we still haven’t figured out how to measure this. We know how to measure this. What we’re looking at here is the efforts to take all this out into the field to create something that you put on your skin somewhere.
And now we have an approximate of what you see in the lab, right?
[00:05:42] Chris Case: Yeah. We are in an age, honestly, where people are attempting. To bring the lab into the field with mixed levels of success. Right.
[00:05:53] Trevor Connor: But it’s an important thing to do because it’s hard to get athletes into that lab. And I’m, right now I’m talking about pro athletes.
When you’re talking about recreational athletes, most of ’em are never going to go into the lab. Mm-hmm. We know a lot of this data is useful, though. That’s gonna be something that we’re gonna address with a couple of these as we go through. Sure. But getting this out in the field, I mean, they say this even though they pull no punches in this paper, they say trying to get this data out into the field is a very noble quest.
It’s something that if we could ever get there, is gonna be really valuable. But I think the overall conclusion of this review is we just ain’t there
[00:06:30] Chris Case: yet. Proceed with caution on a lot of these things. I mean, that came out in our 400th episode, in fact, with, yeah. Louise Burke on there. Yes. As well as Seiler, and they were saying.
Interestingly enough as scientists who work in labs, that we need to move the lab out into the field. Yes. So this coincides with what they’re saying as scientists. Yeah.
[00:06:54] Trevor Connor: So it took me forever just to give that list. So I’m not sure we wanna dive into full detail of everyone, but maybe pull out some of the highlights.
Yeah. What are the
[00:07:02] Chris Case: highlights for you and maybe what are some of the lowlights like maybe you should consider using this because the data is reliable and it’s also. Useful. There’s a difference between those two things.
[00:07:13] Trevor Connor: Yeah. Well, let’s go into some of the ones I think people are more interested in and heard of, so, sure.
You know, one that had huge popularity a couple years ago is the continuous glucose monitor. Yeah. And I think they just gave a good summary of where we have landed with this, which is it gives limited data, limited value if you are in a steady state. Yeah. I can tell you something. But if your blood glucose levels change.
It takes 10, 15 minutes for the monitor to pick up on it. Mm-hmm. And also things that you start seeing out in the field, it just isn’t ready to handle it. Like when you deplete your glycogen, it just doesn’t really pick up on these sorts of things.
[00:07:52] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:07:52] Trevor Connor: And another thing that they pointed out is it’s now banned.
Right. And there have actually been athletes that have had trophies stripped from them because they were wearing a continuous glucose monitor. Right? Yep. So I would say. This one for athletes has probably seen its time. Mm. Great device for diabetics. Mm-hmm. It can be lifesaving for them, but as a tool out in the field for athletes.
For
[00:08:16] Chris Case: now, let’s see how it evolves. Maybe there’s ways it can be improved so that the delay. Is not so long. We’ll see. Yep.
[00:08:27] Trevor Connor: You know, the next one I found interesting is the infield electrolyte analysis. Mm-hmm. So this is, it measures your sweat. Mm-hmm. Looks at how much sodium, how much potassium, you know, the main electrolytes, you know how much you’re losing.
Right. And what I was surprised is he said. It actually does a decent job of measuring, not perfect, but a decent job, but then kind of went, there’s no evidence that this data helps you with performance. That’s right. Yeah. It’s like great data. What do you do with it? Ooh, nice numbers. What? What? Okay. Yeah.
Which I think with some of these is really important that they say with some, yeah. You get some data from ’em. What do you do with that data? And that’s
[00:09:04] Chris Case: what I was getting at with, there’s reliability. And accuracy, I guess you could say, but also, okay. Just ’cause you can measure a number. It doesn’t mean you need to measure that number if you can’t do anything actionable and beneficial with that number.
Now, that’s not to say that we can’t figure out how to use them, and we might get into this. There are scientists working with professional cyclists and teams that may have figured out how to do some of this stuff and never published it. Therefore, they keep that in their little black box of secret tools for their benefit only, and they haven’t released that to the world, and so they may have figured something out.
Yeah,
[00:09:48] Trevor Connor: I think that’s a really important thing to point out. And I have seen this, so let’s jump there.
[00:09:53] Chris Case: Sure.
[00:09:54] Trevor Connor: They talked for a while about devices like Core. Mm-hmm. Which measure skin temperature and then tried to calculate core temperature. Right. And this was really interesting for a couple reasons, and one of them, as you were pointing out, read an article about how Todd’s team is paying for these devices.
They’re not even giving them because they find them so valuable. But what they said in this study is. It actually does give you some interesting data that might be somewhat accurate or reliable, but what do you do with that data? And so that’s the question. Are the scientists on that team doing their own research and just finding, yeah, there is ways that we can actually use this data and they’re not publishing it.
Mm-hmm. I know Dr. Sam Milan works with the team. Yep. And I’ve seen him do research that he’s never published because it was funded by his team and yeah, they don’t want it out there for everybody. Right. Here was another really interesting thing. When they tested it in the lab, in a very controlled setting.
It was relatively accurate. It was relatively reliable, but as soon as you take it out into the field, there are so many other factors. Mm-hmm. Like environmental temperature, humidity, what’s happening to you in an event. Right. They went through this huge list of all these things that are now factors that aren’t really a factor in a controlled setting in a lab.
Yeah. And as soon as you bring in all those factors, all of a sudden the reliability just
[00:11:17] Chris Case: mm-hmm.
[00:11:18] Trevor Connor: Plummets. Yes. You know, even there, they said, what about clothing? Do you have clothing over the device? Do you not have clothing over the device? Things like that.
[00:11:25] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:25] Trevor Connor: But you can still get some skin temperature data.
You might not be able to translate that well into core temperature, but you might still be able to use direct skin data as a useful marker. Like they did say. There appears to be some research saying if you keep temperature within a certain range, you seem to perform optimally.
[00:11:44] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:45] Trevor Connor: Or at least adapt from training optimally.
Sure.
[00:11:47] Chris Case: One of the things that comes to mind as you’re saying all of this, is you’re taking technology that was developed in a very controlled setting in the lab. You’re then moving it outdoors into the field. Mm-hmm. Introducing many more variables. But then you’re also asking a user who isn’t a scientist, who isn’t a technician, who isn’t necessarily familiar with any sort of protocol and asking them to maybe.
Make measurements, do things that are hard to do in a way. Yeah. And that could introduce flaws in the data as well. So that’s a kind of a general statement. Some of these are, you slap it on and there’s not much more to do. Others, there’s a process involved in using it. It’s just a word of caution I guess, that like with anything, the better the data.
Yeah. The. Better the analysis can be, but if you’re getting data with all sorts of flaws, then there’s no way you’re gonna get actionable. Good data out of it.
[00:12:48] Trevor Connor: Yeah. Well this is a challenge. It’s that challenge of getting it out into the field and still getting good data. And I think this is what motivated us to have this conversation and the timing.
All this is interesting. So, you know, something to share here. I had a couple MIT students.
[00:13:04] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:05] Trevor Connor: A recent graduates who reached out to me because they’re trying to create a wearable EMG, which is a device that measures electrical activity in your muscles, and were pretty confident in their ability to do this.
Coincidentally, you and I had a call a day or two later with time wear.
[00:13:23] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:23] Trevor Connor: And I told them about this conversation with the MIT students. And they just went, oh yeah, no. We looked into that a while ago and just rattled off this list of this issue, this issue, this issue, this issue, this issue. And they’re like, right, this would be great.
But, but giant, but that’s right. And ended up connecting time wear with these MIT students to hopefully help them out or save them a whole lot of frustration. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But you just see, you know, here was a very, somebody who’s very experienced in this field with creating wearables, just going here are all the factors you don’t even think about until you try.
Absolutely. And time wear itself is a device that’s measuring stretch around your chest. And they had to go through how many iterations? Many to deal with all the issues. Many, yeah. Of something that sounds really simple. Right, right. And this is just what you’re dealing with with these wearables.
[00:14:16] Chris Case: Yeah.
You’re asking a lot of the technology when you put it onto a body that’s moving around and sweating. There’s all sorts of things. Yeah. All sorts of variables. Every athlete has hit that point. You’re training hard, eating, clean, and doing everything right, but your performance just kind of plateaus. It’s not your effort, it’s your metabolism.
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[00:15:30] Trevor Connor: today. So here’s what was really surprising to me in this review. There were a few that I wouldn’t have guessed at, is one, there seems to be a new device that measures lactate through sweat.
Mm-hmm. And then can calculate an approximate of your blood lactates. Yeah. And very new device. So basically their conclusion was, so far the results are promising. Mm-hmm. Which I thought they would’ve gone, no, this is ridiculous. Yeah. But still so early that we just don’t know yet. Right. Likewise, they have, this isn’t something you’d wear out in the field, but a device that allows us to measure your muscle fiber composition, slow twitch versus fast twitch.
Mm-hmm. Without cutting out a piece of your muscle. Right. And it’s proven to be very promising.
[00:16:15] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:15] Trevor Connor: And again, it’s what do you use that for? Right. Besides just, here’s your typology.
[00:16:20] Chris Case: Yeah. I suppose in recruitment you could potentially use it to say, oh, you’ve got an amazing quantity of fast twitch muscle fibers.
You probably shouldn’t be an ultra runner. Or, you know, something like that.
[00:16:33] Trevor Connor: Yeah. And then I’d say the one that they really slammed, yes, you, you, you brought this up. You want to cover this.
[00:16:39] Chris Case: Yeah, I mean, I am familiar with this product Muscle Sound, so it’s looking at glycogen levels in muscle and other things.
But this is something that was used and may still be used at the University of Colorado Sports Medicine and Performance Center. Several alumni of Fast Talk used to work there. Ryan Kohler, Jared Berg, and Diego used to run the place. And they found that the results that came out maybe in 2014, which showed promise for this product, have failed to be replicated in any meaningful way.
Yeah. And they based more recent
[00:17:16] Trevor Connor: research is not so good. No, exactly. So interesting. Surprise me because as you said, you know, I’d heard positive things from him, from people that we know. That’s right. And it’s just not holding up unfortunately. And then kinda the last one before we move on, they looked at devices that measure your substrate usage.
So basically when you are out in the field training, or whenever you’re working, you’re using a mix of carbohydrates and fats, and it’s important to know when you’re using more carbs and when you’re using more fat, there are devices that show some promise, but they kind of finish it with a so what?
[00:17:53] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:54] Trevor Connor: How do you use that out in the field?
[00:17:55] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:56] Trevor Connor: Like you look down at device and go, oh, I’m mostly using carbohydrates now. But you can’t change that,
[00:18:00] Chris Case: right? Yeah. Well, this is kind of the. Equivalent of a metabolic test, which is great to have that data in a lab. If you can’t get to a lab, perhaps this just allows you to replicate that out in the field and get that data for later use, but in real time.
Hard to take action on that.
[00:18:21] Trevor Connor: So it was an interesting review. And generally what they said is there’s just a lack of evidence for the validity of these devices. And again, you know the, I’ll give them full credit. They said this is a noble quest. Mm-hmm. To create these wearables. You gotta start somewhere.
Right? Exactly. But there’s just. Every single one. When you get into the details, it gets really complex and it’s just hard to get good data.
[00:18:46] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:18:47] Trevor Connor: To put you on
[00:18:48] Chris Case: the spot a little bit, as a wannabe Borg, we didn’t mention power meters. They also looked at power meters. It just wasn’t that interesting. Yeah.
But do you use any of these other devices? Have you used any of these other devices?
[00:19:01] Trevor Connor: I am one of those, I am skeptical until it’s really been tested. Mm-hmm. And we did an episode a while ago, and I forget which episode is, we’ll put it in the show notes where we basically talked about the fact that these devices are being driven by the marketing department now.
[00:19:16] Chris Case: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[00:19:17] Trevor Connor: And they’re getting them out to market really fast. Mm-hmm. And we’re becoming as the athletes, the Guinea pigs. That’s right. Yes. And as we said, Todd’s team. Yep. Is using the core. My guess is they have done some of their own research and found value in it. Some of these devices, even with these issues, might actually have some value, but that research still needs to be done.
And so I’m often trying to be ahead of the curve with this sort of stuff. I don’t like to use it myself until I see there’s some value. So personally, I use power heart rate, and I’ve really actually been liking the time war strap and look at mm-hmm. The breath rate. Right. So let’s
[00:19:54] Chris Case: move on to these two other studies, Trevor, you have recently spoken about and you’ve been thinking about this.
Hence, we’re on the show. Thinking about this out loud, about the other side of the coin, a lot of things aid performance. It doesn’t mean they’re good for you, it doesn’t mean they’re healthy, and that maybe has been ignored a lot. Or people willfully ignore that fact because they’re so obsessed with getting better performance gains, et cetera.
But some of these things have significant consequences, and these two papers look at two of the biggest things in endurance sports, carbohydrates
[00:20:34] Trevor Connor: and caffeine. Yeah. I mean, the whole purpose of this new episode that we’re doing these fast chats is talk about the things that we are thinking a lot about.
Yes. And this is something that I think a lot about because I do think a mistake we’ve made, and I’m gonna put one foot on my soap box, if I get fully on the soap box, push me off. It’s kinda like King of the mountain. All right, cool. You can win this one. But I have seen people in the field equate performance and health.
Mm-hmm. This helps performance, therefore it’s healthy for us and there needs to be that separation. There are definitely things that help performance that aren’t necessarily the healthiest things for us. Yeah. And I think it’s important to know. What is healthy? What is not healthy? What helps performance, what doesn’t help performance?
And then make your own choices. You know, I’ve said this a bunch of times on the show. If a team came to me and said, Trevor, we want you to come and race the Tour de France with us. I ain’t gonna be doing every performance thing imaginable, knowing I’m taking years off my life and I don’t care because I’m racing the Tour de France.
[00:21:41] Chris Case: Sure.
[00:21:42] Trevor Connor: But if I’m going on the local Saturday group ride. I might not be making all those choices.
[00:21:48] Chris Case: Yeah.
[00:21:48] Trevor Connor: And it’s one that I think a lot about because I did spend 15 years of my life doing everything for performance.
[00:21:55] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:56] Trevor Connor: And now have some health issues and I’m 90% of the way there that some of that’s a price I am paying for being so performance focused, what I was doing.
Mm-hmm. Interesting. Yeah. So these are two interesting studies that I don’t think give definitive conclusions. I think it’s more. Now we’re starting to say, Hey, let’s look at these things and look at how they do have an impact on our immune system, how they have an impact on our gut, and start to have those questions.
But I think it’s gonna be a long time before we have all the answers. Right. So the first one I love, and basically what they said is, we know that exercise impacts the immune system.
[00:22:35] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:22:36] Trevor Connor: And generally the belief is high intensity exercise will. Cause inflammation. We need that. Remember that the immune system does the repair work on our muscles.
You need inflammation for the immune system to activate and do that repair work. Though generally what happens is your body shuts down a systemic immune response.
[00:22:56] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:22:57] Trevor Connor: And the inflammation is localized to the muscles or wherever you did the damage. Right. But high intensity can really increase that inflammation.
Generally moderate exercise will kind of calm down the immune system.
[00:23:11] Chris Case: Hmm.
[00:23:11] Trevor Connor: And so you definitely see an impact of intensity, but as we see in this study. That’s not what they found.
[00:23:16] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:17] Trevor Connor: And we are gonna have a bit of an alphabet soup here, but I’m gonna give some basic explanations. They’re looking at the impact of consuming carbohydrates, doing a carbohydrate supplement during exercise, whether that increases the inflammation that you see from exercise or whether it counters the inflammation.
And the way they did it is to look at a, a few of what are called cytokines.
[00:23:42] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:42] Trevor Connor: I don’t want to go too deep into this, but think of cytokines as we have a bunch of immune system cells like your T cells, your B cells, your macrophages, all that. They release these little molecules, signaling molecules that then tell your immune system what to do.
So some of these molecules say. There’s an issue here. Spark an inflammatory response, come in and do what you need to do. Right. Others actually are anti-inflammatory. Mm-hmm. Like one of them we’ll talk a little bit about is IL 10, which it’s released when basically we’re saying nothing to look at here.
Don’t worry. No inflammation needed. Yeah. And the ones that they looked at were tumor necrosis factor alpha, TNF alpha. Mm-hmm. IL one B, so interleukin one BIL 10 IL one ra, which is basically actually a molecule that blocks the receptor for the IL one. Interleukins receptor antagonist. Ra, tell me if I’m getting too deep into that.
No, I mean not yet. So it basically blocks their effects. Sure. And then IL six, which is an interesting one because IL six can be both inflammatory and anti-inflammatory. Mm-hmm. And the gist of it, I don’t know how much you wanna dive into each of these. Probably not too much. Probably not too much.
[00:25:00] Chris Case: No.
[00:25:01] Trevor Connor: But what they found was the carbohydrate supplement increased the inflammatory cytokines.
And decreased the anti-inflammatory cytokines. Mm-hmm. So it promoted inflammation. Right. But what shocked me was it was mostly during moderate exercise. Mm-hmm. Not during high intensity exercise.
[00:25:20] Chris Case: Mm-hmm. Maybe a silly question, but. During high intensity exercise, the body needs fuel and it’s seeking that carbohydrate to combust and use during moderate exercise, maybe the body is not relying on carbohydrates as a primary fuel source, and so the carbohydrates, quote unquote, sitting there.
Stimulating these inflammatory responses. Is that a too simplistic and silly way of looking at this?
[00:25:47] Trevor Connor: No, I mean they did raise that and I think the broader answer to your question, they don’t in this study say this is a good or a bad thing,
[00:25:54] Chris Case: Uhhuh.
[00:25:55] Trevor Connor: They just bring this up and the fact of the matter is the immune system is so incredibly complex.
[00:26:00] Chris Case: Sure.
[00:26:01] Trevor Connor: I think you could look at this and say some of this is good, some of this is bad. Going to the high intensity, high intensity can start to deplete glycogen. That certainly has an impact on the immune system.
[00:26:11] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:11] Trevor Connor: The other thing is, well, this is a review, so different studies are gonna have different protocols.
I think they’re mostly looking at systemic inflammatory response, and as I said, when you do a lot of damage, your body tries to shut down this systemic inflammatory response and just have a localized response. So there is some reasoning here of why you’re just not seeing the response during high intensity.
It might have nothing to do with the carbohydrates. Yeah. It might just be that it’s shutting it down. This is, you know, we always tell athletes, don’t do go to a coffee shop after a hard workout because your immune system’s not functioning well. Mm-hmm. And we also know that going out and just doing an easy kind of moderate ride when you’re sick.
It can help your body fight.
[00:26:55] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:56] Trevor Connor: Right. The illness. So, you know, remember chronic inflammation is bad for us. Short-term inflammation can be a good thing. Mm-hmm. And this might be shown some of the indicators of that. Right. So what should people take from this? You know, the one thing to be aware of is that when you are taking a carbohydrate supplement, when you are exercising, we know that exercise can cause an inflammatory response.
That carbohydrate can increase the inflammatory response. And like I said, there are scenarios where that could be a good thing.
[00:27:28] Chris Case: Yeah.
[00:27:28] Trevor Connor: There are scenarios where that could be a bad thing if you have chronic inflammation and you are now increasing that inflammation.
[00:27:36] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:37] Trevor Connor: It’s not a good thing. Right?
[00:27:39] Chris Case: And maybe this isn’t appropriate really, but if you are in the habit of no matter the length or duration of your exercise, you are constantly consuming gels and sports drinks.
You might be overdoing it and adding unnecessary inflammatory agents to your diet. Yeah.
[00:27:58] Trevor Connor: I would think that’s one of the ways to look at it. It would certainly back some of my approach, which is when I’m in a race or doing really high intensity, I will sometimes take a carbohydrate supplement with me.
When I’m just going out and doing my long volume, no, I don’t take gels. I don’t take a ton of simple carbohydrates. Right. Same. And this is some evidence that you might be getting some inflammation you don’t want on those long, slow rides if you’re over consuming that sort of stuff. That’s right. And they did talk a little bit about the different types of sugars, and certainly it was the glucose fructose that you saw the biggest mm-hmm.
Impacts with. Mm-hmm. Fast Talk listeners. During a recent listener survey, you told us you wanna be able to listen to Fast Talk at work on workouts, and during housework and YouTube, you talked. We listened. The Fast Talk podcast is now available on YouTube. We’ve added more than 100 of our best episodes of more releasing every day.
And soon we’ll offer video summaries and other featured content that you won’t be able to hear on the audio only. Podcast. Search for Fast Talk labs on YouTube and be sure to subscribe. But let’s shift over. The other one that was very interesting was this study on caffeine.
[00:29:12] Chris Case: We have to say this right up front though, Trevor, we’re totally biased.
Not against caffeine, but against coffee as two non coffee drinkers. Picking on caffeine as a subject
[00:29:24] Trevor Connor: isn’t really a fair fight. Just wanna put that out there. Disclaimer, I still remember. So this company started as just you and me, and then we hired a new employee, Jana? Yes. And I still remember the point where Jana came up to us and she’s like.
Are we ever gonna get a coffee maker? You or I? Were both like, what’s that? Oh, didn’t even think about that. That’s right. Yes. Yeah. No, we are not coffee drinkers. Nope. I had never had caffeine until I was in college. I’m
[00:29:53] Chris Case: sure I had a Coke or something as a kid. Try to Coke and I hate it. Yeah. I mean, we’re not talking about coffee here, we’re talking about caffeine, but we all know that people use coffee.
As their delivery vehicle for caffeine, for caffeine, for their endurance sport of choice.
[00:30:11] Trevor Connor: So, and there there are also supplemental caffeine that endurance athletes used to love. That’s right. But this is a short study and had some interesting points, which is we know that exercise, particularly endurance exercise, is damaging to the lining of our gut.
[00:30:26] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:28] Trevor Connor: It can cause what’s basically called leaky gut, which is a breakdown of that intestinal lining, a separation of the tight junctions of the cells in the gut. And that allows things that are in your gut to get into your system and you don’t want that. And so the term for that is. Mild endotoxemia.
[00:30:46] Chris Case: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:46] Trevor Connor: So it’s something you want to be careful about and we know that some people, when they consume caffeine, the symptoms that they feel in their gut get worse. So this was a study to say, Hey, does it exacerbate these issues? And sure enough, that’s what they found is caffeine can increase the damage to the intestinal lining.
Now interesting. We are just beating up on carbohydrate supplements. In this study, they mentioned the fact that there’s research showing that carbohydrate supplement during exercise can actually protect the gut a little bit. So that’s a way that it can be protective. Yes. But yeah, here caffeine can exacerbate the issues, but they did look at people with certain genetic variants that seem to make them more susceptible.
Mm-hmm. To the effects of caffeine. Yeah. So in the study they had 18 participants, and it’s important to point out. Only four of them got to levels. That would be considered risk for endotoxemia. Again, just important to point out, this is not in everybody. This is if you are at risk and they actually did look at the genetic factors that are more at risk, but I’m assuming most people here listening here don’t know their particular genetic alleles.
So if you are susceptible, if you consume caffeine and go, yeah, I tend to feel bloated and have all these issues later on, you’re probably somebody who shouldn’t be taking caffeine during exercise. Interesting. So, like I said, you know, this pretty simple study. I don’t think there’s too much more to take from it.
It’s one of those studies that I think is gonna lead to further research. You know? Chris, anything else that you wanted to bring up here?
[00:32:18] Chris Case: Honestly, no, not specifically from the caffeine study or the carbohydrate study. It’s just generally, I think that the message is you have to make choices given the objective, like you said.
For 15 years, you were performance focused. Yeah. And that’s in a sense what you needed to be at the level you were at. Maybe you overdid it because there was just a different philosophy back then, but if you are not. Focused on performance. You don’t necessarily need to have all these ergogenic performance enhancing things, nutrition wise in your body.
They’re just not necessary. And health should be on your mind more often than not, because there has to be balance, right? If you’re always performance minded. I think innately you are non-health minded in a way. In a way, right? So to have some more balance in your life is a good thing. And honestly, having a health mindset off the bike or when you’re not exercising is probably performance enhancing in a way because it makes you a healthier human.
[00:33:40] Trevor Connor: Well, it’s gonna aid recovery. As you said, it’s gonna make you a healthier person. So I think ultimately I agree with you, it’s gonna help performance. So it’s finding that balance. But to me, you know, part of the take home here is this is just the start of the research.
[00:33:55] Chris Case: Yeah.
[00:33:56] Trevor Connor: I don’t remember 10, 15 years ago when I was studying all the sports nutrition, ever reading anything going, let’s look at the health impacts of this.
It was, how does this impact performance? Yeah. Right. So I think it’s a welcome thing to start seeing more and more of this research of saying. Let’s look at how this impacts your health. Yeah. And I hope where it’s gonna end up is that here’s where you should be more performance focused. Here’s where you might wanna rethink it and focus more on the health side.
And here’s where we can actually balance the two. Yeah. I mean,
[00:34:25] Chris Case: you see this so often with things is the pendulum sort of swings in one direction or the other, and for a long time, the pendulum has been permanently positioned in the whatever it takes to perform better. I’ll do. But it eventually needs to come back to a middle ground.
Yeah, and I think that’s where we’re getting at in the research is people are like, oh yeah, maybe we shouldn’t just cram as many carbohydrates into our face at all times.
[00:34:52] Trevor Connor: Right. But there are times to do it. And there are times to say. Yeah,
[00:34:56] Chris Case: exactly.
[00:34:57] Trevor Connor: And I just think back to when I started my cycling career.
I remember sitting at a table doing my homework, drinking a Gatorade, because I had learned how great Gatorade was, that of course this is healthy for you. Yeah, yeah. Um, when you’re sitting at a table, it’s just sugar water.
[00:35:11] Chris Case: Yeah, exactly. Oof. I know the things we’ve done.
[00:35:14] Trevor Connor: Yeah. Did I get too
[00:35:16] Chris Case: high in my soapbox?
Did you need to push me off? Uh, no. ’cause I’m kind of right there with you and I think, not to be preachy about it, but I think a lot of people are probably coming to the same conclusion as well. Yeah. Drinking Gatorade, Trevor. What the hell were you thinking? I did like the taste not gonna lie to you. What?
What was the flavor? Fruit punch. Lemon lime. Icy blast or something.
[00:35:40] Trevor Connor: It was this blue one that was like glacier something. Glacier water, glacier freeze. Yeah. Okay. It was good. It was good stuff. It was good. It tasted good with your Cheeto. No, I didn’t eat Cheetos. Oh, okay.
[00:35:55] Chris Case: That was another episode of Fast Chats.
The thoughts and opinions expressed on Fast Talk are those of the individuals. Subscribe to Fast Talk wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcast. And hey, don’t forget, we’re now on YouTube. As always, be sure to leave us a rating and a review. To learn more about this episode from show notes references, visit us@fasttalklabs.com.
To join the conversation on our forum, go to forums.fast talk labs.com. For Trevor Connor, I’m Christopher just in case. Thanks for listening.
[00:36:24] Trevor Connor: Had to do the whole name didn’t. You don’t even know my middle name, do you Brian? Oh, wow. I’m impressed For Trevor Brian Connor.
[00:36:31] Chris Case: I’m Christopher Justin Case. Thanks for listening.
