Football Players Get Ill Too!

This time of the year is the time of the common cold and flu like illnesses. I can be pretty certain a family member or colleague of yours is currently struggling. Even the great Cristiano Ronaldo is set to miss Portugal's World Cup opener through illness and a athlete like myself is not 100% currently.

When the ordinary person gets the common cold, it is accepted and put down to the time of year, but when football players and other athletes miss competition due to illness, they are greeted with comments such as "how can you be ill on £££ per week, with the best nutrition and being super fit".

If we look more closely into the lifestyle of elite footballers, we can see the vast amounts of stressors on the immune system they are exposed to, and the nutritional strategies adopt to maintain immunity to allow high participation in training.

Within elite football leagues, players are often exposed to fixture congestion with 2-3 matches within a week not being uncommon (Anderson et al., 2016). Fixture congestion provide psychological and environmental stressors as well as travel implications and sleep disturbances. Exposure to these factors can disrupt immunity and lead to immunodepression (Bermon et al., 2017). Preventing or limiting risk of illness or illness spreading throughout a squad of players is a priority of team's health management. Keeping training participation numbers high is vital for match day availability and performance.

During periods of high fixture congestion ensuring sufficient carbohydrate intake is a priority to aid sufficient energy to meet training and recovery demands but also ensuring maintaining blood sugar levels so that cortisol (stress hormone which also stresses the immune system) levels are not enhanced (Neiman and Bishop, 2006). Repeatedly training with on low carbohydrate not only negatively impacts training performance but also increases the risk of illness (Gleeson et al., 2004).

Insufficient fuelling and energy intake is a risk factor for compromised immune function and increases the susceptibility to infection (Montero et al., 2002). A well-balanced diet rich in the macronutrients needed to maintain a robust immune system and supply sufficient energy to tolerate demands of training and competition is required (Neiman, 2008).

It comes back to mastering the basics of a balanced varied diet rich in protein, fruits and vegetables and supplementing for health with batch tested vitamin D, C and zinc.