Master Endurance Athletes and Cardiovascular Controversies

Master Athletes Are Extending the Limits of Human Endurance

The increased participation of master athletes (i.e., >40 years old) in endurance and ultra-endurance events (>6 h duration) over the past few decades has been accompanied by an improvement in their performances at a much faster rate than their younger counterparts. Aging does however result in a decrease in overall endurance performance. Such age-related declines in performance depend upon the...

Common problems in endurance athletes.

Endurance athletes alternate periods of intensive physical training with periods of rest and recovery to improve performance. An imbalance caused by overly intensive training and inadequate recovery leads to a breakdown in tissue reparative mechanisms and eventually to overuse injuries. Tendon overuse injury is degenerative rather than inflammatory. Tendinopathy is often slow to resolve and res...

Fluid Requirements of Endurance Athletes

Protein requirements for endurance athletes.

Acute endurance exercise results in the oxidation of several amino acids. The total amount of amino acid oxidation during endurance exercise amounts to only 1-6% of the total energy cost of exercise. The branched chain amino acid, leucine, has been most often studied in relation to endurance exercise. Leucine is oxidized by the enzyme, branched-chain oxo-acid dehydrogenase (BCOAD). BCOAD is rel...

Endurance athletes: exploring the limits and beyond.

Humans have always tried to push back the limits imposed by their physical characteristics. Competitive sports are in themselves a continuous struggle to surpass these established limits. As physicians, we are frequently asked not only to identify and treat diseases, but to define what is and what is not healthy behaviour. The paper by Heidbüchel and co-workers poses a fundamental question to m...