Most athletes believe they're food sensitive, but only 1 in 100 reacts in allergy testing. Learn why IgG tests don't work and what you should be doing if you experience symptoms.

Home tests for food sensitivities, intolerances and allergies are often promoted but do they give the right answer?

Prevalence estimates for supplement use in athletes commonly range from about 40% to 70%, depending on the sport, the competitive level, the age and sex of the group. It also depends on methodology; how the survey was done. Most athletes and coaches ask the question: does it work? That is a reasonable question, and for a small number of supplements we can answer it well, although it is hardly ever a "yes" or "no", it is usually a answer that is more like “maybe but it depends

Few ideas in sports nutrition have had the staying power of the “anabolic window”. Finish training, and you have a brief window of opportunity to consume protein. Miss that window and the recovery response is blunted, adaptation is compromised, and the session somehow counts for less. It is one of the most repeated ideas in applied sports nutrition. This blog highlights that the anabolic window is also one of the most misunderstood concepts in sports nutrition. The importance

The question of "Which types of protein are best for athletes?" is no longer limited to which protein source produces the largest acute stimulation of muscle protein synthesis. In contemporary sports nutrition there is also a second question: "can protein choices that support recovery and adaptation also be more sustainable?" This matters because diet is a major contributor to environmental impact. Estimates often place diet at roughly 20 to 30 percent of annual greenhouse ga

Is more protein better for muscle building? Is there a window of opportunity? What are the protein recommendations for athletes

For decades lactate was one of the most misunderstood molecules in exercise physiology. It became the villain of high-intensity exercise. Coaches blamed it for fatigue. Athletes blamed it for the burning sensation in their legs. Textbooks described it as a waste product that accumulated when oxygen delivery could no longer meet demand. That narrative was outdated 30 years ago but it still persists in places and is still passionately pursued by some coaches today. Now we hear

Few ideas in sports nutrition have been as influential, or perhaps as widely misunderstood, as the so-called "window of opportunity". During the 1990s the message appeared simple and compelling: consume carbohydrate immediately after exercise, ingest protein within 30 minutes, and avoid missing the critical recovery window. Over time these ideas became embedded in sports practice. Athletes built routines around them and many still worry that delaying a recovery drink by an ho

If you have spent any time in elite sport, you will have met the athlete whose decline does not fit a neat narrative. Training looks appropriate on paper, their fuelling is “good enough”, and yet something unravels: performance stagnates, sleep becomes fragmented, mood darkens, minor infections become frequent, and the body starts to feel older than it should. In those moments, the language of sport tends to become diagnostic and disciplinary: overtraining, burnout, relative

Most people in sport agree on the basics: athletes improve by training, and “training load” matters. Increase load (sensibly) and you adapt. Increase it too fast, too far, or for too long, and fatigue rises, illness risk creeps in, and performance stalls or drops. Entire monitoring systems, dashboards, and coaching conversations are built around that logic. But there’s a problem hiding in plain sight: we often talk about “load” as if it means training and only training. In re

The recently published UCI Sports Nutrition Project paper on road cycling provides one of the most comprehensive overviews to date of race nutrition in professional road cycling (1)(CLICK HERE). It was a privilege to bring together a group of scientists and practitioners working directly with WorldTour teams, to write a scientific paper and describe evolution or revolution of nutrition in this sport that is leading the way in applied sports nutrition. This paper aimed not to

A new BMJ Open paper highlights an important problem: fluent answers are not always accurate answers. People are turning to chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini to get health advice, athletes and practitioners use it to get nutrition advice or updates… or performance advice. But how reliable are these chatbots when the topic is health, nutrition or performance? I was fortunate to be part of a group of established researchers that aimed to address exactly that question. In a stud

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) in sport has not only transformed workflows; it has triggered an emotional response. Excitement, curiosity, scepticism and fear coexist in equal measure. Among nutritionists, coaches, sport scientists and performance staff, one question has come to dominate the discussion: " Will AI replace sports practitioners?". The question is understandable. When software can automatically generate fuelling plans, detect performance trends o

Over the past decade, sports nutrition has quietly become one of the most technologically driven areas of performance support. Sports nutritionists, sports dietitians and athletes now interact with artificial intelligence (AI) every day, often without realising it: readiness scores pushed to their phones upon waking, automated messages interpreting training data after a ride or run, and wearable-generated summaries telling athletes whether they recovered “well” or “poorly.”

Artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly become one of the most frequently referenced concepts in high-performance sport. It is discussed in recruitment, in training planning, in tactical decision-making, and increasingly in sports nutrition. Yet although the term is used widely, the understanding of what AI is, how it works and what the underlying mechanisms are, is often limited. To practitioners sitting in the applied performance space (coaches, sport scientists, nutrition

Vitamin D remains a recurring topic in sport because low vitamin D status is common in athletic populations, particularly during winter at higher latitudes, and because vitamin D has well-established roles in calcium–phosphate homeostasis and skeletal health. Interest has expanded beyond bone, driven by mechanistic evidence that vitamin D receptors are expressed in multiple tissues (including skeletal muscle and immune cells) and by observational reports linking low vitamin D

Supplements are a multi-billion-dollar industry, with the majority of athletes using supplements to support training performance and recovery. However, it is also clear that many supplements are based on wishful thinking rather than evidence, and some supplements on the market have quality issues. Supplements may not contain what you expect, they may also contain ingredients you don’t expect. The label doesn’t always describe accurately what a supplement contains (or the cont

Inflammation has long been portrayed as something inherently bad; a process that needs to be fought or suppressed. In popular media, it’s associated with pain, chronic disease, and poor health. Yet, within the body, inflammation is also an essential initial component of the immune response. Inflammation is a tightly regulated system that evolved to protect us from infection and promote healing. The problem is not inflammation itself, but when this finely tuned biological mech

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs, can reduce pain sensations. In a previous blog , we discussed the mechanisms of NSAIDs action. This blog discusses the use, as well as contraindications to the use of NSAIDs in an athletic arena. When used in a sport setting, such as during endurance running, NSAIDs can compromise gut integrity, kidney function and cardiovascular health. Despite these risks, many athletes still use them. Below we outline the risks and describe

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs, are a class of drug that is commonly used (worldwide) to reduce inflammation and pain. As we will see in the next blog by Dr Nick Tiller, NSAIDs are also used in sport for performance reasons. To understand what NSAIDs are and how they work, we need to have a basic understanding of the inflammatory response. This blog outlines what NSAIDs are, how they work, and provides the basis of their use in sport. Prostaglandin formatio