Get ready to stretch your horizons! We've got an enlightening conversation with Evan Lynch, a noteworthy nutritionist and educator, who gives us a compelling look at the lesser-known topic of relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S) in men. Drawing from his unique journey from being an Irish race walker to a respected voice in nutritional science, Evan provides a refreshing perspective on this crucial topic. This episode is layered with practical insights and academic expertise, all aimed at providing a comprehensive understanding of the psychological aspects that underlie optimal nutrition.
Our journey begins with a fascinating exploration of the world of race walking, an Olympic sport that pushes the boundaries of physiology and requires the technical prowess of a hurdler. Evan gives us an unparalleled insider look at the significance of body composition for success in race walking and the biomechanics of the sport, making this a must-listen for any sports enthusiast. Our conversation then takes a turn into the world of RED-S, a form of malnutrition that's not often talked about, but can have serious implications on the hormonal balance, performance, and long-term health of athletes. Evan generously shares his personal experience with RED-S and offers strategies for athletes to increase their caloric intake and safeguard against this condition.
As we round off our discussion, we explore the exciting intersection of technology and sports nutrition, including the use of Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGM) and AI in enhancing athletic performance. While we acknowledge the potential benefits of these technologies, we also delve into the potential pitfalls and anxiety that can arise from over-dependence on them. From understanding the context of glucose levels, to exploring the utility of apps like Nutritics, this episode is a comprehensive study on the evolving world of sports nutrition. Listen on as we challenge common misconceptions and provide practical advice to optimize athletic performance. You won't want to miss this deep dive into the world of sports nutrition.
evanlynchfitnut.com
LinkedIn: @evan-lynch-77b88b227
Instagram: @elynchfitnut
This episode was sponsored by The Trusted Team and 4th Discipline
Get ready to stretch your horizons! We've got an enlightening conversation with Evan Lynch, a noteworthy nutritionist and educator, who gives us a compelling look at the lesser-known topic of relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S) in men. Drawing from his unique journey from being an Irish race walker to a respected voice in nutritional science, Evan provides a refreshing perspective on this crucial topic. This episode is layered with practical insights and academic expertise, all aimed at providing a comprehensive understanding of the psychological aspects that underlie optimal nutrition.
Our journey begins with a fascinating exploration of the world of race walking, an Olympic sport that pushes the boundaries of physiology and requires the technical prowess of a hurdler. Evan gives us an unparalleled insider look at the significance of body composition for success in race walking and the biomechanics of the sport, making this a must-listen for any sports enthusiast. Our conversation then takes a turn into the world of RED-S, a form of malnutrition that's not often talked about, but can have serious implications on the hormonal balance, performance, and long-term health of athletes. Evan generously shares his personal experience with RED-S and offers strategies for athletes to increase their caloric intake and safeguard against this condition.
As we round off our discussion, we explore the exciting intersection of technology and sports nutrition, including the use of Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGM) and AI in enhancing athletic performance. While we acknowledge the potential benefits of these technologies, we also delve into the potential pitfalls and anxiety that can arise from over-dependence on them. From understanding the context of glucose levels, to exploring the utility of apps like Nutritics, this episode is a comprehensive study on the evolving world of sports nutrition. Listen on as we challenge common misconceptions and provide practical advice to optimize athletic performance. You won't want to miss this deep dive into the world of sports nutrition.
evanlynchfitnut.com
LinkedIn: @evan-lynch-77b88b227
Instagram: @elynchfitnut
This episode was sponsored by The Trusted Team and 4th Discipline
I'm Charlie Venigan and I'm Claire Fudge and this is the Tribe Athlon podcast.
Speaker 3:I was very, very lean, which I thought was grace, because I looked grace and again, that's kind of a bias. They have to help a lot of athletes with. You know they can place aesthetic image with health and performance or even virility.
Speaker 1:That was Evan Lynch, and this episode is Reds in Men. Welcome to another enlightening conversation on the Tribe Athlon podcast, this time with Evan Lynch, a dedicated nutritionist and educator, as we dive, deep dive into the realm of relative energy deficiency in sport, otherwise known as Reds in men. In particular, we hear a lot about it in women, but not so much about it in men. So Evan's journey in the field of nutrition is testament to his commitment to helping individuals achieve their best selves through the power of proper diet and nutrition. With a profound passion for assisting others in navigating the complexities of personalized nutrition, evan has established himself as a guiding light for those seeking to improve their relationship with food, optimize athletic performance or embark on a journey of weight loss. Drawing upon his impressive academic background, evan's expertise is further enriched by practical experience, having engaged in international track and field himself. This unique blend of academic knowledge and personal insight equips Evan with a deep understanding of the psychological nuances that underlie optimal nutrition. So in this episode, claire and I got to got a chance to unravel the intriguing topic of Reds in men, a syndrome that Evan has personally encountered as an athlete and now seeing becoming more prevalent and more kind of more widely understood in both athletes and active individuals. So, from his background in track and field to his extensive experience in the nutritional science world, evan can shed light on the intricacies of Reds, exploring its impact on performance, hormonal balance and our overall long term health. So I know you're going to really enjoy this interview with Evan Lynch.
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Speaker 1:Right, evan, welcome to the tribe Athlon podcast. Really looking forward to this conversation, particularly as I feel like I can sit this one out almost. I'm going to sit back and watch the conversation evolve For those of just for the listeners benefit. I'm actually dialing in from the St Agnes hotel. I've just had my lovely Cornish breakfast, which I enjoyed very much and, given the conversation that you guys are about to have, I'm glad I've had it before rather than after the conversation, because I'm sure I will have enjoyed it more. But I like kicking these podcasts off by asking a bit about the story. So can you kick things off before I sort of ask Claire to kind of talk, talk. You guys can talk nutrition amongst yourselves and I'll just act like the idiot in the room, just a picture and if you get too too detailed at any point. But yeah, let's kick things off by understanding a little bit about your background. So how did you get into what you do now professionally? But also you want to tell us the story around your sporting background as well.
Speaker 3:So, first of all, thanks for having me on. I always love getting chances to do podcasts or interviews, things like that. I think, more so than ever, it's very important that there are more evidence based nutrition resources out there. As for what I do like, I have a reasonably large social media profile. I've seen all the misinformation with my day-to-day work. I hear this misinformation trickle back to me all the time, so I love getting a chance to do stuff like this.
Speaker 3:How did I end up here? Accidentally. Actually, I wanted to be a physiotherapist initially, so I'll rewind a little bit. I did professional track and field. I was a race walker. For those who don't know what that is, that's extremely fast walk and you can google it if you want. I made it as far as june or 123, competing for Ireland, got to a couple of world championships a few year being championships, and I have I think I still have one or two national records from underage and junior level. I don't know, I may or may not be looking at making a comeback to the senior track and field scene. We'll see. I have two little kids, so they may not allow me to do that.
Speaker 3:Just yes, but from from my time as an athlete, you know you're always trying to optimize what you're doing. I was always naturally curious, so I gravitated towards nutrition, towards the ancillary things you can do outside of your training to promote performance. And when it came time to go to college, I actually didn't get enough points to do physiotherapy in the University of Limerick, so I put down food science and health to back up, did this, ended up really liking it and taught. I wonder if there is such a job as someone who tells athletes how to eat, because I would really like that and there wasn't a whole lot of opportunities at that time that that I could see.
Speaker 3:So I took the clinical road. I went and studied dietetics in the University of Malta which is random or interesting and then I went and did my master's degree in the University of Ulster through the pandemic, while I was working as a private practice dietitian. To my knowledge, I'm Ireland's youngest private practice dietitian or private practice owner, I suppose, and I've just gone on hyper specialism, endurance athletes. So the sports background, the clinical background, it's given me the chance to work with a fair chunk of Ireland's national governing bodies, a good chunk of our international track and field athletes, and I have been able to have clients and patients in the last two Olympic games. So it's it's been a pretty interesting eight to ten years. Definitely never saw it going this way.
Speaker 2:So can you tell us a little bit for people that date, nay. So my background is as a dietitian and high performance nutritionist as well, but often people ask well, what's the difference between a nutritionist and a dietitian? And you touched on there, doing dietetics in Malta. Could you tell us a little bit about the difference between the two?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So as far as I can tell, the key difference is the dietitian. You know, we're specifically trained to have someone with a medical condition, whether that be an eating disorder, whether it be heart disease, whether it be diabetes, ibs, gastro. That's supposed to be the delineation. However, I'm sure you see it too on social media people very frequently blur that line into the medical field, where maybe it's a little bit inappropriate to do so. But that's that's supposed to be the key difference. It's a regulated profession as well. I'm sure you come across lots of people who say they're nutritionists but have no, shouldn't say that. I suppose I'll be politically correct. But the key difference is the area we can work in, the type of people we can work with, and that regulation, that kind of, is that approval that there's a certain threshold of knowledge and competence that you have and you're very much held to that standard. And you're held to that standard of continuously developing Like.
Speaker 3:I'm absolutely sick of the Coru CPD log. That's our kind of national governing body. Those party credits are. They're weighing heavily on me at the moment. I have to sneak a few in before October, but it keeps you on your toes. I don't know if you feel the same.
Speaker 2:No, absolutely, and I think you know. One of those things that you touched on there is that as dietitians, we're regulated and, of course, there's some really good nutritionists out there who have a degree and master's degrees. But one thing that I always say to people is make sure that you check so for any of these things. You know actually, charlie, your background as a financial planner. We should all be checking someone's qualifications and that they say what they do is actually they're qualified in that area. So I think it's really important that you know, over when people are looking for professional advice, that they are looking in the right places. Where can people look for? If they wanted to check out someone's credentials, if they were looking for, like, a performance nutritionist or a dietitian, like, how would somebody know that they were qualified? Where could they check?
Speaker 3:In Ireland. Anyway. You can go on to INDI, find a dietitian and you'll find all the private practice dietitians there. You'll see me on it. Weird fact, I'm actually the only lad on that register there. There's not a lot of meduitists in Ireland, I don't know why, but in Ireland you would check that for private practice dietitians. Otherwise you'd only come across them in clinical settings and I mean clearly they have their credentials squared off of during a hospital setting or the context of sports performance. You can check the Senor register. That's the kind of best standard or the seal of approval for sports nutrition. Someone is on a master's degree or they're a dietitian who specialises in sports or their research or working in that area. That would be where I would advise someone to look. And in fact that's I'm Senor accredited. All of my team are Senor accredited or dietitians about to be Senor accredited for that very reason.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, excellent, it's good to know where to find it. Dietitians, and actually in the UK you can look on the British Dietetic Association website and the HCPC, so that's kind of aligned medical professionals as well. So, yeah, it's good to know where to find people. Tell us a little bit about just kind of rolling back, a little bit about race walking. So we've had some amazing athletes on and it's not just triathlon that we touch on and we've had ultra runners We've had actually last week we were talking about obstacle racing. So tell us a little bit about race walking, because I don't really know anything about it. So tell us a little bit about what your body composition needs to be like to race walk, because I'm thinking maybe you need to be like a marathon runner. Maybe I'm very wrong, but tell us a little bit about the distances and because that's now Olympic sport how that works.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so not many people do it. It's a bit of infringement on the athletic scene. Basically, in terms of the body composition you want, you have to have the physiology of really high level marathon runner, but you have to have the technical coordination of a hurdler. It's a very technical sport. It's the only sport that you can be disqualified from or nonviolent, I suppose. In track and field, basically, the rules are very, very simple. You have to have two feet on the ground at all time, or the appearance of two feet on the ground at all time. Your front leg has to lock, so it has to be 180 degrees or hyperextended. It happens anyway.
Speaker 3:If you're ever trying to get into it, lads, and you're curious, would I be a great race walker? Just think of keeping your arms at 90 degrees and really drive them and walking on your heels. You'll kind of do it. If you think of that. I got into it because my dad did it. I have no idea how he got into it. I just saw a newspaper clipping of him with a national medal when I was 10 and I thought, okay, well, that's obviously what I have to go and do now.
Speaker 3:In terms of distances for underage, you're looking at anywhere from 2K to 10K. It's the longest event in the world during your championships and the world youth championships, for example. When you go up to 123, senior level, then you're doing 20K. There was a 50K event it was the longest event in the Olympic Games but they cut it down to 35. To be honest, I'm not really sure why I'm not in that inner circle anymore.
Speaker 3:It's been a while since I competed professionally, but a lot of people underestimate the sport. Often it's kind of poked fun at because the technique is. If you're not in the sport you could think those guys look a bit funny. Some people suggest that we waddle or you sway a little bit when you're walking, and it's true. But the mechanics of it and their reality of it if you ever want to see, would I hack the pace at the front pack of a 20K in the Olympic final. Go on to a treadmill and turn the dial up to 16, 17km an hour. That's the speed that you're trucking away at. In terms of the biomechanics of it, the high level race walkers have the same cadence as the 400m hurdler. The whole event Step speed is insane, bringing it back to what is a race walker a marathon runner with insane levels of fast twitch fibers and very, very good technical skills.
Speaker 2:I can imagine how many people are now going to go out there and try it because I'm just thinking I'm not sure that I could. I'm sure we've all had a go at pretending to race walk. It's really interesting that you talk about being like a hurdler as well, because I was thinking marathon runner, but I didn't think about the hurdler aspect of it when you were competing under 23s. I'm always interested to find out in the world of nutrition. It's not new, but actually I think more different sports and coaches now are on board with actually making sure that athletes have the correct nutrition. There is a lot of old school thoughts on nutrition and certainly there's a lot of old school coaching thoughts that are still out there. What was it like competing at under 23s? Did you get any nutritional advice? What was it like at that time?
Speaker 3:It's a bit of a bugbear for me because my career ended prematurely due to what I now see in hindsight was relative energy deficiency. I had no nutritional oversight, no education on that front of things. My career flamed out when I was in my second year of college, halfway to a bachelor's degree not specialized in sports. I really didn't know what I was doing. I tried a low carb diet because a colleague or someone I looked up to said Manu should try this. I thought, well, he's better than me at this and he was in the Olympics. Clearly he's a fountain of knowledge.
Speaker 3:I did that and I ended up getting very bad injury that I couldn't shake in my lower left limb. I had all of the hallmarks of reds. I had immunosuppression. I had libido problems. It affected my mental health. It ruined my life actually for about two years and it was hard to watch because my plan all along was to be in Rio and I watched it from my couch, which hurt my nutritional practices, looked something like get up, do fast training because I thought that was good. Avoid carbs because I'd read I don't know, maybe the Joe Rogan podcast or something like that, and felt maybe I shouldn't be cracking into these carbs here because they're bad. I did the opposite of what I would advise someone do now. I kind of think that's why I got into the role I'm in now. I advocate heavily for reds and misinformation because I suffered from it. I am one of the statistics. I should have been an Olympic athlete but I'm not. Can.
Speaker 1:I just ask. I know we've talked about it once on the podcast before, but can you just explain what reds is? You've mentioned it a couple of times, so I think it'd be good for an explanation.
Speaker 3:Sure, basically, relative energy deficiency in sport, if you want to think of, in layman's terms, malnutrition for athletes, if you think of an athlete, they're absolute calorie output and sometimes be absolutely insane. It's not uncommon for one of my clients or patients to need 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 calories a day. The logistics of eating that are hard and the most common problem a new client or patient will have is when we actually look at well, here's where you need to be and here's where you are. That shortfall is huge and we can stratify someone's risk factors. You use energy availability and I'm not going to get too technical into it. But for men and women there are different, or there's thought to be different, cutoff points. So ladies are a little bit more sensitive to lower energy deprivation than lads, the key difference being the energy cost of a reproductive system, and that's why apparently, or superficially anyway, more females suffer from reds or under eating, because the symptoms become apparent quicker.
Speaker 3:Think losing your menstrual cycle. That's your key red flag. I'm starting to make social media content on this and I raised a podcast recently on this about reds in men. For obvious reasons, lads don't talk about these things. Definitely in Ireland there's a degree of probably ego and embarrassment. But the male version of losing your menstrual cycle is a rectile dysfunction or a loss in libido. And I have seen and do work with lads who are under the age of 30. Aesthetically look, they look the picture. I assume girls think they're brilliant. It would be a pretty tough thing for them to say well, actually I'm having this problem because it totally emasculates them. What's thought at the moment is more male athletes do suffer from reds than we're aware of, because they're simply too embarrassed to speak about.
Speaker 3:But to go back and answer your question, what is reds? It's a multi-systemic issue. If you're not eating enough, basically it crushes more or less every aspect of your health and your physiology. Key symptoms would be a loss in performance. Your sleep might suffer because you're going to have elevated baseline stress hormones. Did I freeze?
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I think we can hear you.
Speaker 3:Oh Grace, I'm just in one position, but that's okay.
Speaker 3:Okay, I'll be talking then Basically the symptom constellation. It's very varied. You can go from immunosuppression to stress fractures, to infertility, to changes in your mental health or an odd one. A lot of athletes get this as changes to gut health and bowel patterns. That's another common symptom as well. It's an interesting one that we're still learning about.
Speaker 3:But if you're an athlete and you think maybe I don't eat enough, there's a 100 percent chance you don't eat enough and you should maybe talk to someone about what your calorie requirements are and how you can bump those levels up a little bit to avoid these problems. Because one of the interesting things is you can be in an energy deficit for a while before any issues become apparent and you can think, well, I'm fine. Then you get that threshold and it's like being hit by a car. You can't do your training one day or you don't recover when you get it. Then it takes a while to shake it off. The analogy I use at a runner because there's such a low level of inertia to do a running or cycling versus, say, a weight lifter, where they have to be able to be 100 percent all the time. Endurance actually can run, jog or cycle through into their own grave if they're not careful.
Speaker 2:Evan, I think it's really important that you raise not only personal experiences, but that it is absolutely present in males. I think many years ago, when we were looking at the female athlete triad, which was the original thinking around this problems with bone health, lack of menstrual cycles that's now been encompassed into that relative energy deficiency. I think it's really important that men are educated on it. And you're absolutely right, it's easier if women have a natural menstrual cycle to be able to see it, but of course then there's women on contraceptives and then you don't see the menstrual cycle losses either. It's an emerging area, isn't it? I think there's still some discrepancies, or big discrepancies, about how do we actually measure energy that people are eating. That's such a problem, isn't it? Because it's so many estimations there. In terms of your, you touched on kind of coming out with coming out from the sport you were doing because of red, is that correct? So was there an injury and that sort of brought you out of sport?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so this was never a diagnosis. This is totally self-diagnosis. In retrospect, I went to many doctors with low neutrophil counts, iron deficiency, low vitamin D. The recurring injuries, inability to tolerate high intensity work, couldn't get my heart rate up. I couldn't sleep and, to be fair, this was 2014.
Speaker 3:The consensus on reds itself and the incorporation of male physiology I don't think it happened at that time. It was a couple of months to a year after that. So in a sense, as far as a doctor was concerned, my problem didn't exist. So nobody knew what to say to me. But I was textbook. I had low glycogen availability at the, low carb intake, long periods of time without food, high energy outputs. I was very, very lean, which I thought was great because I looked great and again, that's kind of a bias they have to help a lot of athletes with. They can place aesthetic image with health and performance or even virility. They're very much not the same thing. But yeah, I'm very sure that I was a reds case. It's just unfortunate that I was born in 1995 and hit that when I was that age. In that time. If it happened now, I'd like to imagine that there would be someone else like me who I could reach out to who might have shed light on. Well, if this is what's going on, someone can help you know.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And what do you think as a clinical dietitian, I guess this is where some of our skills sit as well is? There's a lot of media attention now on reds, which is great. It's really raised the profile of education and also some cases that we've seen in, certainly in British sports, where cases of reds and eating disorders have now come to light with the way that some people are coaching. What are your thoughts on? Where does reds stop in? An eating disorder begin? Because there are these very blurred lines. There's this continuum isn't there, and I think some people would feel happier to say I've got reds and I've got an eating disorder. Could you just tell our listeners like a little bit about if they were thinking actually I sat here now. Oh God, that sounds a little bit like me. What's the main difference between those two diagnosis?
Speaker 3:So it's definitely. For me anyway, it's probably a bit of a judgment call or a feeling, based on how I typically judge it is the intent. What was your intent with this diet? Is it that? Were you trying to achieve extreme levels of leanness? Do you have this high kind of drive or preoccupation of being thin? If so, why do you feel like that?
Speaker 3:And if someone clearly displays that they're very obsessed with their body image, it makes up a big part of their headspace and they engage purposely in disordered methods like skipping meals, fasted training if they have good food, bad food mentality, or rigid pinking or bumping savory mechanisms at times Like I do come across came across hard to case not that long ago, a marathon runner whose coach said you must be X kilos or you're not racing. So she resorted to diuretics and ended up in hospital with hyponatremia and obviously the whole build up to that there's this whole fractured body image of food relationship, total warped view as to what is normal, and I think some athletes don't see their kind of disordered cognition as a problem, as some of their coaches or their peers think like that. But just to contrast, then I have had a lot of athletes who under fuel and have had reds and it's completely not intentional. They're just actually shocked when I go through the maths. Like what do you need to be eating the equivalent of 30 spots today? Like you're not doing that. And they're there scratching their head thinking, oh my god, I didn't notice.
Speaker 3:Generally it's very clear if it's disordered or not. But you kind of have to delve a little bit deeper and I'm fortunate here as a private practice dietician you can be a little bit on your own and there can be that pressure or expectation that you're a GP, psychologist and a dietician wrapped into one. But I have a counselor who works with me and I have sports medicine physicians who I directly refer to. So there's a hint of anything disordered whatsoever. It's just a straight referred and we asked them to do their bloods link in with sports med physician and we do the nutrition support on our end. So I've never missed one, to my knowledge, of eating disorder. Because it becomes clear as you talk, I suppose. But for a listener I think maybe the easiest way to stratify your risk of having an eating disorder is is the intent of your dietary restriction to achieve low body mass levels? Do you think about that a lot or were you just unaware you had to eat lots.
Speaker 2:No, absolutely, Thank you. I think that hopefully gives listeners a bit of an idea about some of those signs and symptoms of reds as well. Just thinking along these lines of restriction, race walking, endurance sports we've talked to lots of different people and obviously heavily in the media is about low carbohydrate diets and we have lots of opinions of people that we interview, which is really, really interesting. Just thinking about your background in endurance sport and race walking when you were doing that, or what are the nutritional strategies for race walking, I appreciate if there's shorter distance now I've learned and there's longer distance, I was thinking it was just longer distance. What would the nutritional strategy be like for that? And is there a part of it where you do do some glycogen depletion or lower training in a fasted state or a lower carbohydrate state?
Speaker 3:So for the 20K, 10k, definitely not. Those guys crack away just under their anaerobic threshold for most of it. So that's totally glycolytic. For the 50K, you could argue to a degree that getting good at burning fat is an important aspect of this because you only have a finite amount of glycogen. But maybe it's my personal bias and fear of underfueling people. Insofar as I've read, if you're already a well-trained endurance athlete, your capacity to oxidize fat is already pretty good. And if you can imply carb loading tactics appropriately, whether it be 20K, where you're looking for maybe eight to 10 grams per kg body weight to the day before, or at a 50, you're looking for 12. And if you have good pre-tactics and you're able to take on adequate stuff during it.
Speaker 3:Personally I veer away from doing fasted work because that load likeage and availability it does have knock-on effects. With racewalkers in particular this is one very niche point. With that heel striking you get a lot of foot strike hemolysis. So these guys really struggle to keep their fat and count up. So if we look at it from that perspective, we know that fasted work amplifies the hips in response to exercising. You can make it far harder to maintain, I suppose, balanced iron levels and from what I've seen and again my understanding, there's no clear benefit to having an athlete be fat adapted or optimized.
Speaker 3:And in fact the supernova study that Louise Burke-Elle did in Australia was done in racewalkers. The outcome was interesting. I'm a nerd so I obviously thought it was very interesting. I thought it was brilliant. I read it a few times. The athletes they did it in a randomised crossover method. They put them on high-periodised and low-carbohydrate approaches. Interestingly, the low carburs had a higher view to max but were on average of 10% to 15% slower. And the outcome from that study was you can be fat adapted and you'll appear to be fitter, but it's just less efficient. So everything I've read today suggests that you probably don't need to do fat adaptation or glycogen depletion. Maybe if I worked in the Tour de France my mind would change. But even with any Ironman athlete I work with and again, it might be my bias towards fear of underfuelling or eliciting iron deficiency or stress fractures, but we do know fasted stuff- no, thank you.
Speaker 2:For those of you who are listening, the supernova trials I think Louise Burke is now. She's a researcher and a dietician, actually in Australia, isn't she? I think she's now on number four. I think she's just done the ketones and low-carbohydrates high-fat, isn't she as well? So for anybody that wants to read those journals, there's also snippets out there. It's really interesting about trials in using fat as a fuel source versus using carbohydrate and endurance sports and the background was in racewalkers. So really interesting to have a read as well. So, just thinking about technology we've been talking a lot about technology and Charlie's probably going to dip in in a little second because he loves his tech. I also like technology, but we have different thoughts on it. So I'd love to know your thoughts on technology in the nutrition space what you think maybe is useful, not useful, and whether there's anything that if you were going to make a product like an AI product or a tech product, is there anything you think the nutrition world of sports nutrition needs?
Speaker 3:Personally and this may not be popular opinion I think there is possibly slightly too much tech and I think what it's done is it'd be like giving an MRI machine to someone with no background in radiography or medicine. Cgm is a great example. If you do sports nutrition appropriately and you have your high GI carbs before trading, your blood sugar will do that. If you are in a CGM and you see that rising sugar, you think you don't have, I suppose, a clinical nuance to see that that should happen. You can think, oh no, I clearly have type 2 diabetes now. Or you can Google my blood sugar is 8 millimoles. What does that mean? And it'll tell you all sorts of horrible things. I'll stick on a CGM for a second. I think when healthy non-diabetics use CGMs, it pathologizes daily normal fluctuations in blood sugar and it makes them possibly carapphobic or overly fixated on something that is really not that important for a normal, healthy person. So that's popular opinion number one.
Speaker 2:Can I just ask? Sorry, Evan, just to explain what a CGM means for those people listening.
Speaker 3:Those glucose monitor made initially for people with type 1 diabetes, who do need to be able to calculate what their blood sugar is all the time and thus what insulin requirements they have. In the sports sphere, people are data crazy, so they felt wouldn't it be brilliant and definitely useful if we can know what our blood sugar is all the time? And I think in research settings, yes, but free living people, I just I think it's a bit OTT.
Speaker 2:Can I?
Speaker 1:just ask, sorry, just because having just read a book called the glucose goddess, I'm just intrigued by the concept of that. The more glucose or blood sugar spikes will get, the worse the impact is on our long term health. Could you just talk around that, because that's one of the reasons why having a glucose monitor would be useful or considered useful.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I suppose it's important to look at this in context. If we're talking about athletic cohorts here, generally, we're talking about very well insulin sensitized people who probably are reasonably healthy anyway. So I think glucose spike is probably a dramatization as to what might happen, like it doesn't, probably doesn't jump to 11, 12, really months. If it does, then you may have, you definitely might have a bit of a problem if it's doing that perhaps. Or let's say the I suppose the sports nutrition tactics we would talk about pre and post exercise, they're not healthy eating guidelines. They don't look like healthy eating guidelines at all. So I think it's very important to contextualize that. If you're looking at 24-hour day, you're training there you do sports nutrition guidelines is in low fiber, high GI carbs around that. That is notably not optimal for blood sugar control. The rest of your day would be. So the the slight bump in blood sugar before training where you might get to six, seven, I would say at most eight million moles is not necessarily pathological.
Speaker 3:I go to an algae, kind of a Tom and Chico, and I would use LucasAid. Sport is called LucasAid sports. It's not designed. We drank while you're sitting on the couch watching television.
Speaker 3:If you applied sports nutrition guidelines for your whole day, you would 100% be type two diabetic or have fatty liver disease. I would say within a month, two months, like very easily. Could you imagine eating 30 slices of white bread a day to meet your needs throughout the whole day? That would be a disaster. So I think, looking at the timing, the context, the cohort, the actual magnitude of that glucose variability and the actual real impact of that, I think it's important not to over, over pathologize that I think my clients who have had CGMs they'll come, they'll sit in on a session and they'll say, oh, my blood sugar was seven million moles. That's above the threshold, you see, for fasting glucose in a blood test and it gives them really bad anxiety. And you explain well, actually, that's okay, you don't need to worry about us. Your HPA1C, or your average blood sugar over the last three months, was well within the healthy range, you're okay.
Speaker 2:I think it's useful, isn't it? You talked about things like the CGM in terms of you need to know how to interpret those results. You refer to an MRI and actually short uses for education can be quite useful and I think, charlie, one of the things that you raised there, actually, when you use it in different populations, again, the education behind it, the profile is likely to look very different to an athlete. So they're very different things that we're talking about, I guess, in using a CGM, and I think it can be quite useful actually in people who are not moving very much, not doing very much exercise and are possibly overeating or living a lifestyle where they're drinking lots of alcohol and eating out a lot. Because, actually, that educational piece on where it is right now and if we make changes, so, yeah, absolutely, I think, if you've got technology, know what you're going to do with the information. Is there anything else that you use in terms of tech in with nutrition or anything that you'd like to see invented that would help us?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I use Nutritix a lot with people in Libro. That's kind of how I track people remotely and that works pretty well. I'll often transpose that onto someone's training peaks day there or I'll get their power meter. That will help me to accurately, or kind of accurately or as accurate as possible interpret input versus output and what has been the case for some athletes you know. If you can use again Nutritix, you can get a really detailed breakdown as someone's daily intake. And sometimes that'll happen, as an athlete will say, I felt short that day and you might see that. Well, you know, the night before you had basically an omelette. There was no carbs in that. You didn't have the funds to pay for your session that morning or your calories were slightly down for the two or three days prior to that. So you can have troubleshoot there by looking at the notes.
Speaker 3:In terms of what I like to see tech being developed, what is being developed at the moment, what I'm very curious about is hexes. They kind of carry periodization for you. That's very, very useful because it's a question I get asked by clients. I'm sure you're the same all the time. So I think for sports nutrition anyway, I see that as the coolest or most interesting thing that's being developed at the moment. To be honest, I rarely get to spend time delving into the world of tech outside of that. I barely have time to scratch my head these days. So the hexes, nutritix Libro, those are my tools that I would use, I suppose.
Speaker 2:I think there's going to be just more and more integration, isn't there? So some of these nutrition apps that are using AI to be able to pick up data from training platforms like TrainingPeaks or Final Surgery or whatever it might be, to be able to say this is what training you did. Therefore, this is what carbohydrate you need. So, yeah, I think it's really interesting how all of these pieces of technology are now all able to talk to each other. Where do you see we talked a lot about AI and then what happens to the, what happens to professions and how do we work with it? How do you see, with all of these pieces of AI and these technologies, where do you see now, like a performance nutritionist or dietitian sitting like where? How can we work with all of these technologies? Because people are going to want to take them on and will obviously take them on.
Speaker 3:I think AI is a fair bit away from having the clinical acuity of a practitioner. Thank you. I think it's great for giving you general guidance. I don't think it can be clinical or interpret things. I definitely don't think it can interpret things. Yet. It also isn't necessarily empathic. It's not personable.
Speaker 3:I would like to take much like a consultant with a fancy suite of MRI machines, blood work. It'll just kind of add to what we do. I think some people are afraid it'll replace as kind of like a Terminator doomsday scenario. I don't really see that. I think there's a lot of considerations to make. Like you know, if a client has a bad day of training, it's not automatically down to poor nutrition. I'm sure you're the same. But when you talk to someone you can see other things going on. Like you know, someone might mention that they're having a tough time or they're not sleeping great. You've got that line of inquiry. I don't think AI can expand or elaborate for whatever purpose it's designed. Let's say, like the car periodization. It's not going to ask you how your day was and like delve into what are the non-nutrition reasons for this poor performance. And I definitely think from personal experience that happens a lot. That's a lot of the conversations we would have. Where the nutrition appears to be okay, you have to find another answer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's definitely. Isn't it Like working alongside all of those pieces of information and actually that helps us sometimes to do our job and those questions questioning as well? What we always like to ask is about books that people have been reading, so it might be a book, or maybe it's a podcast. Is there anything that you've been reading recently that you'd like to recommend?
Speaker 3:Unless people really like to read research papers. To be honest, how I stay on top of things is I have a Twitter account under a pseudonym, so people don't message me on it. I just see what researchers are cranking out. I try and stay on top of that. There are a few key researchers I follow Astro Eupendrub, louise Burke, james Martin, Sammy Wilympie if they really something, I read it. Otherwise, segment Nutrition Podcast is a very good kind of educated one for me. To be honest, I learn an awful lot from that because, again, as a dietician, you can get anything sitting in front of you. Case in point, I have a client at the moment who is an ultra runner with gastroparesis and cyclical vomiting syndrome. There is no textbook for that. It's an amalgamation of different sets of clinical guidelines Alongside the ad hoc reading.
Speaker 3:a lot of my reading is more or less based on what clients I have. I'm reading lots into gastroparesis, maybe medium change right lyseroids to see if we can get around that. It'll differ from week to week. I've had people who've had severe IBS. You have to elicit FODMAP diets but try and get them very high-carb. That clinical variety is what keeps me on my toes. Again, there's not necessarily a book. If you're trying to combine clinical dietics with sports nutrition which is more so where I live as opposed to absolute elite performance, so it can be pretty erratic I can.
Speaker 1:Clearly there's a lot of noise in this space of what we should eat and what we shouldn't eat, and there's a lot of books on it. Are there any books that you do find yourself recommending to your clients that you think is a good sort of base learning level that they can go to?
Speaker 3:Honestly, not popular, not really. If you really want to learn about sports nutrition all of the aforementioned people I think, baris, sami, olimpia written textbooks on it if you really want to get into it, you can 100% do that. Otherwise, I mean you can point people towards educational videos. There are some things on YouTube that are educational and evidence-based, or you can try your best to educate in sessions. So I would find that as a sports dietitian, you're almost half a teacher and that's where a lot of the education would work with for my clients personally.
Speaker 3:And if anyone does come on board with us, one of the first things we'll say to them is we wanted that. In three to six months' tops, you never need to talk to me again or anyone like me, because you know what to do. So in that sense, I don't really feel the need to recommend books. And again, unpopular opinion, maybe number four or five today A lot of books in the nutrition sphere are kind of self-help books that appear to be nutrition books. I don't think they're actually very helpful, to be honest. Or I think they give generic guidelines because they have to and for nutrition it's all context, and you simply can point someone to a book to say, well, this is your context, All of this is for you and no one else.
Speaker 2:That's a very valid point, isn't it? Is that you can't have or eat the same thing every single day, the same as somebody else, because our days are so different. We always have a question from the last person that we've had on the podcast. So we have been speaking to an Olympic, an American Olympic triathlete, Katie Zephyrus, and she has a question for you. So here goes what is your most impactful year and why?
Speaker 3:My most impactful year? I would have to say it's this year, 2023. Thus far, I put a big effort into social media sharing content and I've found that through that maybe or not, maybe it has connected with quite a lot of people. Let's say I release content on things people struggle with in private, what are to embarrass to talk about, like peak emergency touring exercise or male athletes with libido, or if you're not able to sleep at night as an athlete, maybe that's an underfueling thing, perhaps it could be if you check box A, b and C. So how would I kind of summarize this? Advocating for evidence-based sports nutrition in a public way has enabled me to connect with and thus help people, either on a one-to-one basis, or they've read the message and said you know, I need to get this looked at and I do get messages all the time for the podcast, even when we pick kind of niche topics and people say it does help them. So yeah, it would have to be this year. I'm not a kind of natural curve anyway, like I'm lucky to be in a position that my own business and practice is growing. I've taken on four people this year, so larger we are, the bigger of an impact we can have. The thing I'm most proud of is I should figure out the phrase as well I find that male athletes are not well advocated for and it's kind of it's the opposite in every other setting from what I can see. You know, generally speaking, there's always a fight for equality between men and women in sports nutrition with respect to reds.
Speaker 3:As a male dietitian who had us coming from a professional sports background specializing in this area, that is the thing that I've been able to help people the most with. And you see, you see it like. I mean, when these guys call me or you're sitting with them first, they're trying to work up the courage to say things downstairs don't work and no one knows why. You talk to them and they go through all the things they're doing, all that jazz and that's been a big thing in 2023. And maybe people don't know. Maybe people laugh at ED because historically it's choked about. But low testosterone levels and lads is not a benign thing. That can cause low bone mineral density, infertility. Imagine if you're trying to have kids and your sperm count is too low and you're not aware that's because you do too much fast at training or you skip carbs. That might never get picked up in a GEP surgery. That has been my most impactful thing deciding to advocate for that one thing specifically.
Speaker 2:So like impact on you and your own business, but also impact on other people as well. Fantastic, and just ready to sort of wind things up today from this fantastic conversation with you, We've also got one last question and we ask our listeners to send a question in and they don't know who we're going to interview, so it could be anything. So we've got a question here from one of our listeners, Carrie, and she said what belief do you hold that most people disagree with you on?
Speaker 3:No one. No one can. Maybe I should rephrase this Everything is up to you. That's there, are. There are tools there to help you. People will wish you well, and this.
Speaker 3:This came about after my athletics career fell apart and the athletics world moved on very quickly without me. There were very few helping hands and it was a very lonely realization that if I ever want anything, it's totally up to me can reach out for help, but it's up to me. A lot of people maybe have a narrative that they've spawned that when my circumstances difficult or I have many excuses and generally I find excuses are valid, but it was still a very lonely place, but my head on a pillow, thinking, well, none of this worked out. Even though I had lots of valid excuses, you're still. You still end up in the same place. So that that mentality it makes me very hard working and fairly unrelenting, and some people maybe think it's a bit of an over simplistic look at things that you know things don't work out or things are out of your control, but I choose not to let them be, I suppose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely that sounds, sounds like actually a very sensible piece of sensible piece of advice as well. Well, evan, has been amazing to speak to you and thank you for sharing all of your information about you and your sport and also your, your career to date and all the insights and all the technical and more nerdy bits. So hopefully our listeners have had a lot, a lot to think about and, you never know, they might be going out there and reading some some journal papers rather than a book this week. So thanks very much, evan.
Speaker 3:It's my pleasure Grace.
Speaker 1:Thank you, evan. It was really fascinating and, yeah, there's a lot of background noise going on here, so absolutely brilliant, and but I was very glad to sit and listen to the expert speak about this subject. So thank you very much, cheers. If you want to find out more about Evan, then you can find him on Instagram and he is e Lynch and that's L Y N C H fit nut. So e Lynch fit nut on Instagram. He's also on LinkedIn and he's. His website is Evan Lynch fit nutcom will put all of those links in the show notes, as always.
Speaker 1:If you know what we do at the triathlon podcast, you've got a register for tribe talk. It's an email that comes out every two weeks packed full of everything to do with swim, bike and run, but also nutritional help, business coaching and a whole lot more, whether that's books, videos, ted talks, apps or technologies. It's packed full of ideas that can help improve your sport, your life and your business. So register for it at tribeathloncom and you'll be sure that every two weeks, your inbox is full of some amazing ideas and resources to improve your life. So what did you make of the interview with Evan?
Speaker 2:It was yeah, it was really interesting. Obviously it was right up my street in terms of nutrition, so I would I would say it was interesting, but I really like his. I mean, everyone's talking about relative energy deficiency in sport now, which is a really good thing, but I guess it's become a bit more generic in nature. But it was really good to hear him talking from more on like the kind of male perspective side of things which I think it's not always talked about. So I really love the fact that he's been really kind of getting that message out there and talking about it. What did you think actually from a male perspective? You know, I know we've talked about it, haven't we on the podcast before?
Speaker 1:but I don't know it was a group of like men outside which you don't know whether you'd ever discuss anything like that or talk about anything in terms of energy or Well, interestingly so normally, no, I would not be talking about that and I thought it was really interesting because we obviously we kind of touched on it briefly with Dr Nikki Kay, but we obviously still spend a lot of time talking about reds in females as opposed to males, and so I thought it was really interesting how previously, when you've done podcasts and things like that, that guys had suddenly kind of come out of the woodwork to say actually I am having this sort of issue.
Speaker 1:Anyway, so while I was away at a conference last week and I was chatting to a fellow endurance athlete and we started talking about something and I mean, admittedly we both had a few beers, so it was kind of probably an easier conversation to have but as soon as I mentioned, kind of we started talking about relative energy deficiency and we weren't talking about any issues either as we're having. But as soon as I mentioned the symptom, he was suddenly like, hmm, what I need to know more about that.
Speaker 3:And so I just direct.
Speaker 1:you know I said share with him the podcast once it's live, but I think there is a lot more of that.
Speaker 1:That particular person was doing a lot of fasting as well as a lot of training, and I was like you know, actually, I suspect there is something going on there that he didn't want to say in as many words, but I think there's a much bigger problem than perhaps we realise, and whether it's when it's that or whether it's kind of leaning on to osteoporosis, I thought it was a really interesting conversation. I think it's really good to be getting that message out there and trying to yeah, trying to bring awareness to it, because if that's the first sign of a much bigger problem later on, then we need to, you need to know about it and deal with it, don't you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it is. It is that awareness and talking about it and, like you say, there's, there's, you know, been so much focus from a female perspective, because generally, but not always, it's easier to to spot in women and actually a lot of the research in terms of energy deficiency, right from the female athlete triad that was the kind of old model really obviously was always talking about women. So the fact that within the new model which is now being re-looked at anyway, but within the new model, you know, there are so many factors that you know that it is, it is men involved as well, it's just not so obvious. But if we talk about it more, maybe men will actually think yeah, actually this is obvious to me Now. Now I know all the symptoms. So, no, it was really good to have that conversation and I love speaking about race walking as well, something I have never had a go at with my long legs. And yeah, just that was interesting to hear his background, wasn't it the time?
Speaker 2:is coming from race walking.
Speaker 1:It was, and not only that, the speed of which they're actually race walking. I mean that. That was, I mean I think he was saying about 10 minute miles, wasn't he For, I think? Which I think he's amazing, you know, there's there's a lot of people that be very happy running a marathon at 10 minute miles.
Speaker 1:So probably these guys are walking at that pace. Is is quite phenomenal. So, yeah, no, I thought I was really interesting and I think, yeah, maybe we need to explore more about race walking, particularly when you, you know, one of the things that we talk to ultra runners about is the fact that there's a lot of walking in an ultra marathon. So if you could walk at 10 minute miles, then that makes you an ultra running, you know, makes you a significantly better ultra runner and perhaps something we could chat to an ultra runner about in future. But yeah, no, I thought it was. I thought it was really interesting. So let's wind this episode up, but another great episode where, hopefully, you took some really interesting learning points from what I did. And, yeah, good luck with your training, claire. Thank you very much.
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