FTP #35: Kelly McNulty & Kirsty Elliott-Sale - The Female cyclist series: Menstrual cycle and endurance exercise performance

The provision or restriction of select nutrients in an athlete’s diet can elicit a variety of changes in fuel utilization, training adaptation, and performance outcomes. On this episode we discuss the impact of both acute and chronic carbohydrate restriction on iron metabolism, comparing models of periodized carbohydrate availability and ketogenic low carbohydrate high fat diets. We also touch base on the link between low energy availability , poor iron status and altered hepcidin activity in endurante athletes.

Iron deficiency (ID) is a prevailing nutritional concern amongst the athletic population due to the increased iron demands of this group. Athletes’ ability to replenish taxed iron stores is challenging due to the low bioavailability of dietary sources, and the interaction between exercise and hepcidin, the primary iron-regulatory hormone. This will be the main focus of this episode.

On this episode we are talking with Peter Hespel and Chiel Poffé from the University of Leuven / Bakala Academy to provide an update to the topic of exogenous ketones in cycling thanks to their research on this topic. Do ketones improve performance after all? Is there any particular context in which their use is justified? Find out here. 

Today we are bringing back Dr. Dana Lis to have her talk us through some recent research on collagen supplementation in the specific context of explosive exercise performance and we’ll discuss if this may have implications for sprinting performance in cyclists.

A recent food technology innovation created new CHO drinks and gels with added sodium alginate and pectin in solutions of multiple transportable CHO, with the intention of encapsulating those CHO molecules in the stomach forming a gel which allegedly enables a smooth transportation of the drink through the stomach to the intestine. But are the claims of improved gastric emptying, increased CHO oxidation and reduce GI symptoms supported by science? 

On this second episode of this series dedicated exclusively to the female cyclist and endurance female athletes, we are talking again with Kirsty Elliott-Sale and Eimear Dolan about the role of oral contraceptive pills (OCPs) and exercise performance. This episode was based on a recent Meta-Analysis published by the guests themselves on Sports Medicine and they'll tell us what they found. Do OCP users have a lower performance when compared with naturally menstruating women? Is performance superior in OCP taking days vs. OCP withdrawal days? Tune in to find out.

This is a multi-episode series dedicated exclusively to the female cyclist and other endurance female athletes. On this episode we'll go through a recent Meta-Analysis published by Kelly and Kirsty on Sports Medicine and they'll tell us what they found regarding the influence of the different menstrual cycle phases on exercise performance and how can we produce more high-quality research in the future.

On this part 2 on the applicability of low carb, high fat ketogenic diets in endurance athletes, we will resume our talk and put the spotlight on the exercise activities that could benefit from a ketogenic diet approach, as well as some novel areas such as the impact of ketogenic diets in the oral microbiome (nitrate reducing bacteria), it's effects on bone health and the use of exogenous ketones in cycling.

On today's episode with Prof. Louise Burke from the Australian Catholic University, we discuss the current knowledge on the use of low carb, high fat ketogenic diets in endurance athletes, in particulate the research performed by her group with elite racewalkers. Is this diet approach the future of elite endurance sports? Do they have a place in cycling?

Dietary nitrate supplementation produces an ergogenic effect due to the improvement of mitochondrial oxygen efficiency through a reduction in the oxygen cost of exercise that increases vasodilation and blood flow to the skeletal muscle in recreationally active subjects. Today we are talking with Dr. Andrew Jones from the University of Exeter to find out the application of nitrates in cycling.