83: Training the Gut with Asker Jeukendrup

Welcome to Fast Talk, the Vella News Podcast and everything you need to know to write like a pro. Hello and welcome to Fast Talk. I'm your host Trevor Conner, along with my co-host, the Italian Stallion, Vella News Managing Editor Chris Case. This is an episode that Chris has been excited to put together for a long time. But since he's leading a tour in Italy right now, you stuck with me doing the intro. Just as any tour writer who's frequently burning 5,000 calories and more per day about in-race nutrition, and they'll tell you that it's both critical and tricky to get right. You can spend months getting your legs ready for your target event. You can be putting out the best numbers of your life, and that can all be wiped away by a poorly timed bonk or intestinal cramping during the race. You have to consume enough carbohydrates to keep the legs ticking over when the race gets hard, but at the same time you need to make sure that they are well tolerated and you're able to absorb them. It's a tricky balance and is highly individual. Simply buying the newest, coolest force nutrition product isn't going to get you there. You have to find what works for you, but just as importantly, you have to remember that in-race nutrition, just like almost all things, is trainable. And while you're out there doing your big weekend ride or hard hill repeats, you need to dedicate some time to training the gut. So today, we'll dive into nutritional training and talk about applying a scientific approach to figuring out your carbohydrate needs and whether you're a fat burner or a carbohydrate burner. Second, GI distress. Some thoughts on what causes it and why intestinal permeability may be a factor. Next, we'll discuss race nutrition and why changing up what you eat on race day may not be your best strategy. Fourth, why most people can only absorb 60 grams of carbohydrates per hour, but we're still recommending trying to get 90 grams. That sounds like a lot, but it's actually only 360 calories, which is still less than what you're going to burn in an hour during a big race. Fifth, the best mix of carbohydrates to improve absorption. Why you need to dedicate time every week to training your gut, no different from the time and energy invested in training your legs. Finally, we'll talk about any potential health concerns with focused race nutrition, briefly touch on both the microbiome and elglutamine. Our primary guess today is none other than Dr. Asker Euchendrup. Dr. Euchendrup is one of the most renowned sports nutrition researchers in the world, who is editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Sports Science. He ran the Gatorade Sports Science Institute back when it was the center coaches and team managers who were looking to for the leading hydration research. Dr. Euchendrup now has his own company, MySports Science, and works with Team Lotto and El Jumbo. Along with Dr. Euchendrup, we talked with Katie Compton, the winner of 15 consecutive national titles and a four-time silver medalist at Crossroads. She's familiar with GI problems during races and shared with Chris some of her thoughts. Next, we checked in with Colby Pierce. At this point, our unofficial third regular and fast talk. He has some warnings about getting two caught up in traditional sports nutrition products and emphasizing the importance of also considering health. Finally, we touched based with Ryan Kohler, the head coach at the University of Colorado Sports Medicine and Performance Center. Ryan frequently works with athletes and training their guts for the target events and shared some of his strategies. All right, pull out your Swedish fish, throw them in the trash and get some real sports nutrition. Let's make it fast. This episode of Fast Talk is sponsored by Woop. The thing I found really interesting with is 90% of the time the Woop strap gets you right. And certainly with me, I average four to five hours of sleep a night. So just every morning would say you're an idiot. But there's that 10% of the time where it tells you something different from what you're feeling. So my initial reaction is I really know myself. So the Woop strap is wrong. But I actually was surprised how many times I then went through the day and went actually. It's right. It might have been right there. Woop is the performance tool that has changed the way people optimize their training and recovery. Woop provides a wrist war and heart rate monitor that features detailed app-based analytics and insights on recovery, strain, and sleep. Woop tracks sleep quality and heart rate variability 100 times per second, 24 hours per day to help you know when your body is recovered or when it needs rest. You could also use the strap to track workouts and get strain scores so that you know how strenuous the training was on your body. Woop helps you optimize your sleep based on how fatiguing your day was and track sleep performance with insights into sleep quality, stages of sleep, and consistency. To make things better, Woop just released a new Woop strap 3.0, which includes a suite of new hardware and app features. The Woop strap 3.0 now has five day battery life and improved strap and live heart rate monitor. A handful of new in-app features, including the new strain coach, improve the way you track and plan your training and recovery. Woop is provided and offer fast talk listeners to get 15% off their purchase with the code fasttalk. That's F-A-S-T-T-A-L-K, so two T's, no space. Just go to woop.com that's WH-O-O-P.com and use the code fasttalk at check out to say 15% off and optimize the way you train. So Chris I can tell you, I've had a bunch of listeners contact us with questions and I keep hearing the love listening to your show while I'm out on a ride. Yep. Which actually admittedly had me a little bit concerned and so I actually reached out to aftershocks because of this because I feel I need to promote safe riding. Yeah, and you've been using for years. I've had them for four years and I love them because they actually sit outside of your ears so you can listen to music, you can listen to fast talk. You can listen to what Mariah Carey is your favorite, right? Celine Dion. What? Thank you. We have so many good Canadian vaheads. Why do you always go there? Dave Coulier. I don't really know who that is. Cut it out. Nickelback. Nickelback. The point being you can make your Canadian music playlist which there is some good stuff out there. And you can listen on your ride and still hear your surroundings. These headphones just don't go in your ears so you could hear the cars. You could hear what's going on around you which per safety reasons is something we really want to promote here at Fast Talk. And there's the little buttons on there so you can mute and pause and fast forward and rewind very quickly. That's right. You don't have to stop and pull over and grab it out of your phone out of your pocket. Mm-hmm. All Bluetooth. This episode was sponsored by Aftershocks. The award-winning headphone brand best known for its open ear listening experience. Powered by patented Best in Class Bone Conduction Technology Aftershocks headphones sit outside your ear so you can hear your music and your surroundings. Aftershocks is a must-have headphone for cyclists providing the ultimate level of safety and comfort without compromising sound quality. To learn more and save 50 bucks on Aftershocks bundles visit Aftershocks.com. That's A-F-T-E-R-S-H-O-K-Z dot com and use code Fast Talk. So our guest today, Dr. Oscar Yukonjup, is world renowned for his sports nutrition science, his website that has a lot of great content on it, but he's also a professor. He's consulting with a lot of professional teams around the world. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. We've been hoping to get you on for quite a while now and so I'm happy to have you finally on the show with us. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Yukonjup. Oh, thanks very much for having me. I'm glad to finally work. It's an honor to have you on the show. Could you give us just a little bit of a taste of your background and both your education and some of the work that you've done to get you where you are today? Sure, yeah. I started this many, many years ago as a young kid who is interested in cycling, also a little bit in running, but mostly cycling. That was my favorite sport and I wanted to do something with it. I was a decent cyclist, but not the best cyclist, but at one point I had to decide whether to go and then try to become a professional cyclist or do something else with my career. I ended up at university studying movement sciences exercise physiology, really, and this was based on something that I've seen on TV. I'd seen a professional speed skater, a big sport in Holland where I'm from. This world champion speed skating was also a professor in exercise physiology at the atmospheric university. When I saw that, I knew that's what I wanted to do. I went to that university. I ended up working with that professor, Harm Copus, his name, and initially I worked on projects around all the training. Then I stayed at that university, did a PhD in the department that had a very strong nutrition background with some big names in the field of sports nutrition. So I learned from some of these big names, spent quite a bit of time and quite a few studies. We did at Maastricht University, and then I spent a year at University of Texas in Austin. That's where I worked my graduate degree in journalism, not in science, but I was down there for a while. Maybe at the same time. Possibly. I think this is 97. I was just a little bit after that, yeah, 2003. Yeah, so after that I went to Birmingham, and Birmingham is a really good university. They didn't have a huge sports science department, but I joined that department to set up something in sports nutrition. And we started really small. We didn't really have a lot of lab space, or not any lab space when I started, and over the years this lab grew, and I had more and more people in my team, and we started to pursue some really good questions that a lot to do with carbohydrate delivery during exercise, GI problems, and there's some of the core topics that we worked on. So then I became a full professor at University of Birmingham, was in charge of the human performance lab there for many years. And then I tried something else after that career. We published many, many studies, and I just wanted to try something different. So I worked as the head of the Gate Rates Sports Science Institute for a little while, so based in Barrington, Illinois, and we had labs in different places, also labs in Europe, labs in Mexico, but also labs, of course, in the US at various places. What years were you running the Gate Rates Sports Science Center? 2011-2014. Great researchers come out of there. Yeah, and one of the things I think that they do really well is try to communicate the science, and so work together with the scientists, and then in the form of their sports science exchange articles make the information accessible for most people, quite readable, shorter articles, with good scientific and neutral information. Now after that, I started my own company, my sports science, and that's consulting, mostly with teams, athletes, organizations, companies, sometimes, and it's advising them mostly, mostly on performance, and many of the questions I get are around nutrition. Yombo-Visma included in that now? Yes, yeah, they're doing fairly well, so yes, they're definitely, they're definitely part of this. On the nutrition front, we've done a lot of really, really cool work, I think. I think part of the team's success is because they've been able to incorporate science at a really high level, they've found a way to really like translate it and get the whole team behind it, and this is why in a lot of sport, it doesn't quite work, even though the ideas are great, the execution is usually very problematic because you have to deal with a lot of people who actually make this thing happen. So in cycling, it's the swine years and everyone around the team and the chefs or whoever liaises with the hotels. If they are not behind the ideas or if they don't really understand it, then you can have all the ideas in the world, but it never happens. With Yombo-Visma, we really started a couple of years ago, and we tried to kind of approach nutrition from scratch, just starting to build from science rather than from what people were used to do, and we just evaluated what really de-import the key things that we need to address, and how can we make it easier and how can we help the writers to do this? And so we had a whole bunch of ideas and started to develop something in one of the major stage races, and we tried to feed them according to a plan, according to what they would actually need. So in theory, we calculated what they would burn during a stage in terms of calories, but also in terms of carbohydrate, and then we had a nutrition plan that aimed to replenish that carbohydrate, make sure that they were an energy balance and not gaining weight or losing weight, and we planned nutrition for these stage races, maybe a couple of months in advance. We started to work with a company that prepared the food, the company in Holland, and the food was shipped to the races, and of course every writer then is an individual. Everyone has a different energy expenditure, everyone uses a different amount of carbohydrate, and you really only know how much someone has burned once they've crossed the finish line and pressed the button on their computer. So at that time, when they pressed the button, I would receive a message on my computer that they'd finished. I could see the power files, and I could do a calculation manually initially on how much carbohydrate they had used. Then I would call back to the team and let them know how the estimation that we did, like months before, how it needed to be adjusted, because maybe the stage was a little bit harder or maybe a little bit easier. Then they made the final adjustments in the evening meal. That was sort of the start, and the first time it really wasn't perfect, there was also a lot of work, a lot of people involved. Then we started to do this in a little bit more detail with two writers in the Giro, and quite successfully, and the writers really liked it. They never felt hungry, they always felt strong, so for them, this really, this approach really worked, and they started to trust the system. The other writers soon followed, so in some of the next races, we tried it with a larger group, but now we just do it with the whole team. We've also, we also work with a supermarket in Holland, which is actually a sponsor of the team, Jimbo, and they're developing some software that's called Food Coach, so all the work that I was doing manually is now part of that software, and the software does all the calculations. So as soon as the writers sort of press the press button, there's still a little manual step that will fix as well, but as soon as we know the data from the from the day, we can then adjust the nutrition plans of the software, then calculate exactly how much the writers need to eat. So you can often find the writers with their mobile phones in their hands, with the app open, and the app just tells them how much they are supposed to eat of everything. It really seems to work, and the writers really believe in it, and also the results are there, I think. So I've got to ask a question, I'm sure all the listeners are wondering about, is this the sort of app that's going to be available to everybody, or is this really just the pro teams of writers? Well, my question would be, is this something that everyone would need? And I don't think it is, to be honest, I think this is something, if you're riding the Tour de France, it's worth going into that much detail, counting the calories, but to be honest, for the vast majority, even even really good writers, I am not a huge fan of them counting calories, or maybe do it for short periods of time, so you get a good understanding of how much you're eating, or not eating, but I'm definitely not a fan normally of calorie counting. In big stage races, it's a little bit different, because there is so much exhaustion that hunger feelings are completely suppressed, and at the same time you've got to eat an average 6,000 calories a day, and that's a really difficult task, and if your hunger feelings cannot guide you anymore, then you need some other help, and this is where the app can actually really make a difference. Are these meals prepared, and then like, are they frozen, and then shipped, or what are we talking about? So the app is now developed to this extent that it works for meals in races, where chefs travel with the team, and they will actually prepare the food. So the food is shipped to the races, so we take our own food from the supermarket to these races, and then we have the chefs that actually prepare it according to the app. It also works in the home situation, and then it just tells the writers what to cook, they can choose their recipes, whatever they want to be on the menu, they can select from a number of meals that fit in with what they need that day, and then yeah, they can select this and pick up the groceries at the supermarket, or even have a delivery. Yeah, I can imagine not long from now, there will be a drone flying to all the team member houses with the meal, all the ingredients they need to cook their meal, just landing right at their front door. We're not quite that far yet, but that would be a next step. But when you think about these things, you have to think bacon, you have to think a little bit outside the box, and not think too much about the restrains and all the things that make it really difficult to do, because if you get a good group of people together, you can actually make things work, and that's one of the things that this definitely happened here. So with your individualism, I'm assuming with all these athletes, you've got them in the lab before the race, and you've done the test on them to see what their fat and carbohydrate ratios are at increasing intensities, if you're using that analyze their violation. Yeah, that's sort of the logical way to do this, although even if you do a lap test of say one hour, that sort of data is very difficult to extrapolate to a five-hour page in the Tour de France, of course. So all the tests would give you is a pretty rough estimate, and probably a very good starting point. And what you end up doing is probably a little bit trial and error, and this is certainly something that we've learned. We've got a right first time for a number of riders, but a number of riders also were very hungry when we used the same equations for them. So these equations are what they need, really need to be adjusted to the to the person, and some of that you can maybe base on signs or try to base on signs, but some of it is just simply trial and error. And once you've sort of nailed the algorithm, it'll just always work for that person, I think. I've never seen a study on this, but I have to believe that an event like the tour over the course of the event, these athletes are just going to become fat-dirty animals, because it's just so hard to keep the glycogen stocked up. Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen that study either, so I can't really base this on any scientific evidence, but I would actually expect that whether someone is a fat burner or not is largely genetic. Now, for my experience, I've seen that people are either good fat burners or they're either really good carbohydrate burners, and there are also some people who sit somewhere in between, but usually they fit into one of these two categories. And clearly, they're all riding together in the pro peloton, so it's not directly affecting performance, but it may affect what they actually need to fuel with. And I think, and this is also, again, it's not based on a lot of signs, but it's more experiences. It appears that if you measure the fat burning guys, then those are the ones that don't really know what a hunger knock is, but the ones that are really good at burning carbohydrates, they know that feeling really well. And exactly what that is, I don't know, it may relate partly to fiber type, although I wouldn't expect a large difference in fiber type in a group of professional cyclists. So there's still a lot of questions that I also have about why is it that the metabolism is so different, and also why is it that even though it is that different, they're all riding together, and their performance is very similar. The immediate reaction I had is what we talk about the differences within humans. At the end of the day, we're all aerobic animals. None of us are compared to what you see in the wild, true strength, pure anaerobic beast. So I guess it's all relative. Yeah, and then we are talking about professional cyclists, and they are really all at one end or the extreme end of that spectrum. So even if you have this group of aerobic animals, right, like the professional cyclists will all sit at the very far end of that of the spectrum. Yeah, which is kind of what I was getting at. You can talk about the difference between a tour sprinter and a tour time trial list, but you compare them to a 100 meter sprinter on the track, and those two cycles really just aren't that different. Yeah, correct. Let's dive into that big topic of GI distress. Can you give us a starting point of the causes of GI distress? Yes, although that's actually a very difficult question, because I don't think we actually know a lot about the causes. We know a lot of factors that increase the risk of getting GI distress. And some of those factors are nutritional, but actually most of those factors are non-nutritional. We know, for example, that runners suffer more than cyclists. So we think that that has something to do with the up and down movement, which means that also the GI system will move up and down, and maybe somehow that causes some GI distress. We know that women have more GI problems than men. For reasons we don't really understand. We know that the food intake the days before races seems to have an effect on whether people develop GI problems or not. So there's a number of factors that we know relate to GI problems, but in terms of the actual causes, that's why do we get GI problems when we start to exercise? And why don't we get it in training? Because a lot of people have no problems in training, but then they go to races and suddenly they have all of these problems. There are also people who have this every long training. Why is that? So the only like real theory that has developed is around blood supply to the GI system. There is of course a redistribution of blood flow as soon as you start exercising where skin and muscle will get more blood and there will be less blood there for available for the GI system. And maybe that causes suboptimal performance of the GI system. That is one theory, but to be honest there is not a huge amount of evidence that that actually happens. There are maybe two or three studies that I'm aware of that have measured something in that direction, but it's also really difficult to measure. Like everyone seems to have their own pattern of problems and that pattern is fairly reproducible, but it's really different from one person to the next. Why? I'm not sure. So it's yeah, and it's a real problem because I mean maybe encycling a little bit less so than in running and in triathlon is extremely prevalent. If we look at the studies, then we can find anything between 30 and 93% of prevalence. So there are races where 93% of the people report some sort of problem. Well, this is partly because of the way these studies are set up and the questions are asked, right? Because not all of these in I think if it's 93%, then the question was probably did you have any GI problems or did you have any of the following issues? Some of those issues are really non-severe, but they could be classed as GI issues. What we're really interested in are those issues, of course, that affect performance and have a negative effect on performance or even health. So you brought up that 93%, and so that's actually from your 2000 study, and it touched on something that I personally found really interesting, which was there does seem to be some sort of correlation with endotoxemia. Yeah, basically the symptoms that these athletes are seeing are somewhat similar to sepsis. So, Chris, endotoxemia is when you see some of the contents of the gut, so in particular something called like a polysaccharid LPS, which is on the bad bacteria and your gut gets into circulation. That cause-a-day reaction, that causes a lot of these symptoms that you see. If it gets really bad, that leads to sepsis. And when you look at the symptoms of sepsis and you look at the symptoms of these athletes who are reporting, they're very, very similar. And I noticed in your study, you showed that 79% of the people who were reporting GI problems also had elevated LPS in their bloodstream, but you didn't see that they- even though there was a correlation, the symptoms didn't come on with the elevated LPS, is that right? Yeah, that's right. So, I mean, I maybe should go one little step back is that we- this is so measured during an Ironman distance triathlon. So, a very long distance event where the- the finishers were between 11 hours, I think, and 16, never remember correctly, or 15 hours. So, it's a very long distance event in really extreme conditions. So, this is in the, there's a huge amount of altitude difference in this race, and the conditions are extremely hot. We picked that on purpose because we wanted to measure in the most extreme situation. And in that most extreme situation, the theory was exactly what you described, right? So, the gut stops to function normally. It normally has a very important barrier function. If that barrier function does not work appropriately, it means that bacteria could enter the body with all sorts of negative consequences. And we didn't- well, we did see some elevations, but nothing that anyone in a clinic would actually be alarmed from. So, I think the main conclusion of the study was that maybe even in that really extreme situation, it probably is not bacterial translocation that causes all these problems that people have. But it's still one of the theories that's out there. We were triggered by another study where they showed like very large amounts of bacterial translocation in runners. So, we, like the first and maybe the most important conclusion was that we couldn't confirm those results from that study. And what we think is that actually the experts that we worked with on bacterial translocation, they believe in that study there because it's a field study, it's very difficult to not contaminate your samples. And the slightest contamination can give the results that they had. And we were really careful not to contaminate the samples and therefore didn't see like the same magnitude of response that they had. So, personally, I don't think that- I think it can happen. I think it will happen in really extreme situations, but I don't think that this is the reason why people have GI problems. Also, because a lot of the GI problems happen well before any bacterial translocation would occur. Well, it's interesting, because like you said, it's something that people are still researching. I don't know if you saw there was this- just as January a study in the PLOS that again looked at triathletes. And it was actually looking more intestinal permeability. So, they were measuring a marker permeability called Zonulent. And Chris was giving me that look. I love it. NERBOMBS. I can't drop them. I get excited when I start to run these terms out. So, they did find a correlation between intestinal permeability or the Zonulent levels and they found that correlated with muscle damage. So, you know, there wasn't a home-run study of here's the cause of all the GI stress. You know, they saw some of the same things as you. They certain markers that they expected to elevate didn't elevate. But they certainly did see that correlation with intestinal permeability. I mean, it is, of course, important to realize that correlation doesn't mean causation, right? So, sometimes you find correlations, but the two things have very little to do with each other, other than in this case, maybe like hard exercise caused both. But the two don't necessarily need to be correlated. If you were asked to speculate, I'm going to ask you to speculate. Without the absence of concrete evidence, what do you think is the mechanism here that causes this? Say the host of things. Yeah, I think it's a host of things and this is the reason why there's such a wide variety of symptoms. But I think the main cause must have to do something with the innovation of the GI system. So, in terms of neural inner innovation, it's one of the most dense tissues. There's a lot of neural neurons in the GI area. And this is probably why in stressful situations, races, for example, we see some of these problems that are much more profound, or that in training situations, you don't see them at all. So, I think the fact that there are so many neurons and that that has something to do with it, it also makes it really difficult to address it, because training stress or race stress, sorry, is race stress. Not easy to reduce. So, I think that is one of the main reasons, especially if people have these problems with races, but not in training. In other cases, I think it is related to nutrition. And sometimes just poor nutrition choices, sometimes it is just not knowing. Not knowing that for you, maybe fiber intake the days before can have an effect on GI problems. And this is a very common factor. Another one, and this one is also not well described in the literature, is lactose intolerance. Some people are lactose intolerant, they usually know it, and they avoid dairy products. But other people don't never see the symptoms of a very mild lactose intolerance, and maybe that lactose intolerant actually becomes a little bit more severe during exercise. So, those are the people that would benefit from reducing or removing dairy products the days before the race. This is not very well described in the literature, but it's certainly my experience that if you just, for some people, reduce dairy products the days before, it can completely solve their GI problems. And the same is true for fiber. So, some people, if they just remove fibers from the diet two days before race, sometimes that completely solves their GI problems. Katie Compton is arguably one of America's greatest cyclists having won the National Cycle Cross Championships 15 years in a row. But like many cyclists, she hasn't been able to escape GI issues. Chris talked to her about this, and just how individual nutrition and gut issues really are. So, I don't know if this rabbit hole that we want to go down, but it's a deep rabbit hole. I actually really want to go down that one, but yeah, no offense, but you're a typical, I think. Yeah. And I've read a lot about nutrition. I've also tried quite a few things for my own personal, just interest and to see what works. Also, through coaching a lot of people for a long time, every single person is different. And one nutrition program that works for one athlete doesn't work for the other. And I've also found that too. And some athletes can eat a ton of carbohydrates and digest it, and I have any issues. Some people can, you know, eat massive quantities of fructose, and digest it just fine and not have any stomach cramping. But majority of people can't necessarily get away with it. And so I feel like each athlete needs a fair at what works for them. And it's a lot of trial and error, and it's a lot of looking at research. I'm like, well, let's try this, or let's try that and see what works. If it doesn't work, let's move on to something else until you can dial in what works for you as an athlete. And also knowing that what works for you when you're 20 doesn't work with you when you're 30. And when you're 40, it's going to constantly change. And food allergies develop over time. Seasonal allergies can get worse over time. So it's definitely something that's dynamic. And I feel like you need to listen to the body and see what it needs. If you're having food issues, digestive issues, why? What have you been eating that might be different or might just all the sun start affecting you? Because I didn't have any allergies. So I was like 30, probably my mid to early 30, or yeah, mid to early 30s. I think it's my first start having issues before that I could eat whatever I wanted. It didn't matter. Mine is a full like full of acid, but like it was great when I could eat whatever. And now I'm just like, oh, is this bothering me too? Yeah, I bet it's frustrating. It is. Yeah, but like now I've dialed it in and I actually feel really good and I ate a variety of foods and foods that work with me and I don't have many issues anymore. But that's also taken a lot of trial and error and figuring out what works for me. But yeah, I have heard that especially like the Dutch have an uncanny ability to absorb and metabolize carbohydrates more than a lot of cultures in the world. So yeah, and that's I read David Epstein's the sports gene. And I think that's where because he went through all the cultures in the world and the nutrition and different cultures and how some individuals can digest certain foods better than others. And I remember that the Dutch could digest carbohydrates better than most any other culture. So yeah, it depends on where you're from and what your genetics are. We'll realize necessarily. Let's get back to the show and talk about nutrition and races. So what about the fairly old and simple explanation? But certainly one that's been proposed before is that you have athletes when they get to race day, they change how they eat. They have that philosophy of well you know the group right on Saturday is one thing but the race is another thing. And suddenly in the race they're over focused on getting every gel into their system that they can get into their system. Me well at the same time as you said because it's very intense. There's less blood flow to the gut. So you essentially have more carbohydrates, more fuel hitting their gut when the gut isn't functioning well than they're used to. So you start having some fermentation issues. Potentially you particularly have an issue of that highly concentrated valley sodium and carbohydrate mix and the gut is drawing fluid into the gut at a circulation. And then this I know this is a theory that Dr. Stacey Sims has promoted. And those two things are causing some of the the bloating and gas that people experience. Is there any validity to that in your opinion? Yeah, absolutely. I think this is what I was referring to as an attrition mistakes. Especially during during races or during training. This is this can be a real cause but I think it's it's got to be extreme. And with extreme I mean it's got to be extremely different from what you normally do. Now if someone always trains with just water, never takes any gels, never takes any carbohydrate on board then it is pretty quickly extreme. Your gut is not used to seeing gels. So it's it's not surprising I think that that if you then suddenly start to take large amounts of gels and especially if you don't take a lot of water with that then that can easily cause GI problems. And this is also this actually has been discussed in the literature. So there is a clear correlation between high carbohydrate intake, high carbohydrate drinks with a like really concentrated drinks or gels and GI problems. But usually these are problems of the upper GI tract. So it's it's usually stomach related stomach cramping, bloating and usually a little bit less sort of diarrhea. And these these problems are also usually a little bit more acute. And it's simply because if the carbohydrate concentration in your gut is too high then your body will start to dilute that content and keeps it in the stomach for a little bit longer until it is actually diluted. So you're you're just slowing slowing things down if you take too much carbohydrate too soon with too little water. Now having said that there are situations I think where it is it is really appropriate to do that if if we're looking at colder conditions where the carbohydrate need is quite high. In those conditions it is I think appropriate to take more carbohydrate and less less water on board. As a guide we developed a piece of software for people to use. I hope that's okay to to mention. It's the software called core can be found on fuelthecore.com and it's it's free to use but we use the the scientific evidence that is in the literature and came up with a nutrition advice where we separate more or less the fluid advice from the carbohydrate advice and then put it to together. So the fluid advice is based on sweat rates and it is also based on a certain amount of fluid that is okay to lose. There is no need to drink as much as you sweat. It is okay to lose some body weight. But there is a point where you've lost so much body weight and you've lost so much fluid that it's going to impair performance. So it's finding that it's finding that balance and a lot depends on the duration of the event and sweat rate. So that's the the fluid side. The carbohydrate side and this is something that we've shown in many studies. The your carbohydrate needs are really dependent mostly on the duration of the event. If the event is shorter you need less carbohydrate. If the event is longer you also need a higher carbohydrate intake per hour. In events over two and a half or suddenly over three hours we would recommend 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour and that's that's quite a lot. We need to ask you about that because in your research talking about gut training you pointed out that our we can get into the glucose group dose mix in a second. But you said maximal absorption rates tends to be right around 60 grams per hour and there doesn't seem to be a ton that we can do to increase that. So how come you're you're recommending 90 grams if that's beyond what anybody can absorb? Yeah so I have to take you back a little bit in some of the studies that we did. So initially I was interested in this finding from all of our studies but also many other studies that whatever whatever you did we never saw absorption rates or I should actually say oxidation rates because that's really what we what we measure of more than 60 grams per hour. So even when we we gave people 180 grams of carbohydrate per hour ridiculous amount they were still only using 60 grams per hour and other studies found the same. So you see an increase in exogenous carbohydrate oxidation if you go from a very small intake to 60 grams per hour. If you go over 60 grams per hour it doesn't really change your oxidation rates it stays at around 60 grams per hour. So I was kind of fascinated by that by that finding and I thought well if we could find a way to increase carbohydrate oxidation then maybe that can also affect performance but how do we do that? So we had to find the limitation to this why is it that you can only oxidize 60 grams per hour and so we looked at gastric emptying and found well the stomach can empty much more than 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour so that wasn't the reason. We looked at uptake of carbohydrate by the muscle and when we infused glucose directly into the into the blood we saw that the muscle can take up much more than 60 grams per hour so that wasn't the limiting factor and in the end we ended up with only one possible explanation and that was the absorption but if we picked up a textbook then the textbooks would actually show us that well the capacity for the gut to absorb carbohydrate is virtually unlimited so this this idea went against all of the textbooks. So we designed a study because if if we give glucose that glucose is normally transported through a transporter called SGLT1 it's a sodium coupled glucose transport and we believe that maybe that transport was limiting so if you give more than 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour you saturate the transporter and you just cannot get more carbohydrate into the into the body. A little bit comparable with if you have a number of people in the room you open a door and you tell those people to leave the room as quickly as possible. It just depends on how wide that door is how many people can leave the room and it's the same I think with glucose. Oop is the performance tool that is changing the way people optimize their training and recovery. Oop provides a wrist-worn heart rate monitor that features detailed at-based analytics and insights on recovery, strain and sleep. 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Just go to woop.com that's w-h-o-o-p.com and use code fasttalk at checkout to save 15% off and optimize the way you train. This is probably where it's worth mentioning that fructose actually uses a different transporter. It uses glued 5 so that's one of the ways you can increase a little bit of your carbohydrate absorption. Yeah that's right so that would be opening a second door basically and so that's that's where we started to do experiments with combinations of glucose and fructose where we gave enough glucose to saturate the SGLT1 transporter and then we gave fructose on top of that hoping that that would get across through the glued 5 transporter and in the first study we confirmed immediately that that was the case and in that first study we saw oxidation rates were about 30% higher than with the mix of glucose and fructose and with just glucose and that was just yeah the first study of a whole series where we tried to figure out how can we optimize carbohydrate delivery. In the later studies there we found that we can even deliver carbohydrate at a rate that was 70% higher than we thought was initially the maximum that you could possibly achieve. What sort of rates? What sort of absolute quantities were you seeing when you were increasing it that much? In grams per minute we found 1.75 grams per minute so that's yeah 75% more than the 1 gram per minute that we thought was maximum. So yeah huge huge differences simply by using a combination of different carbohydrates. We used glucose and fructose in the first study we also tried different combinations we tried glucose sucrose and fructose we tried maltodextrons and fructose which is actually what I would recommend because fructose is extremely sweet glucose is really sweet so the combination doesn't give you a very palatable solution even though it may be effective but if you combine fructose with maltodextrons then the taste is a little bit more tolerable. So that's a sort of practical solution and we've also seen really good results in terms of oxidation with mixtures of maltodextrons and fructose. So I'm just going to do a quick health aside here fructose in combination when you're exercising it is fantastic but it's not something that you want to over consume at rest because first of all fructose is actually processed by the liver and it isn't great limited when you consume fructose you you maximally oxidize it. So if your body doesn't have a use for it you're going to start seeing big buildups of lactate and other issues that are going to cause health concerns. There is a belief that it's what causing the fatty liver disease and children. Yeah that's true but we're really talking about overfeeding with fructose here and so I think even fructose in moderate amounts I don't think we need to panic about that but it's if we're talking overfeeding and definitely overfeeding large really large amounts which is how many of these studies are done then you're absolutely right that's something we should avoid especially if you're not exercising. So it apples not going to kill you but if your pounding tons of soda and tons of sports strings when you just sit in a round you might have concerns. Yeah definitely like the rates at which we advise to to take it here that's not something that of 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour and then of the 90 30 grams per hour would be fructose those are definitely not amounts that I would recommend for someone who just sits watching watching TV even if it's watching the Tour de France. Yeah so we found really high oxidation rates of 1.75 grams per minute with a mixture of glucose and fructose it was actually a 1 to 1 ratio in that but in that particular study we gave carbohydrate at 2.4 grams per minute. That's a very large amount 144 grams per hour and suddenly not something that I would recommend in a practical setting it was we did the study because we wanted to find out what what is the maximum because every time we did a study we saw higher oxidation rates and so we just wanted to push the system and see where we could take it 1.75 grams per minute is still the highest value reported in the literature but in terms of practical amounts we we think 90 grams per hour is practical it can be tolerated maybe not by everyone certainly not the first time but by most athletes and I think the advice that we always give if we recommend these larger amounts of carbohydrate this are people should train it it's not something that you just decide oh I have a race next week I'm gonna just take 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour I mean there's a recipe for disaster of course so you need to and we call it train the gut and fortunately the gut is extremely extremely trainable just like we can train our muscles we can train the the gut and we we don't have a huge amount of human studies to base this on but there is very convincing animal work and some human studies so I could I just want to ask you about that because in your your review of all this research you said that it is very trainable so the these transporters or glucose can be increased quite rapidly like you can see changes in three days but then at the towards the end of the review you said you still didn't see rates of glucose oxidization point much over 60 grams per hour yeah this is based on one one human study that where where they tried to train train the gut over a period of 28 days they gave extra carbohydrate before during and after training and they compared it to a normal situation where that extra carbohydrate was not provided so in both situations carbohydrate intake was fairly high but one was even higher because they took the carbohydrate around the the exercise and the at the end of that study after 28 days they saw that carbohydrate absorption was increased as evidence by increased oxidation rates but yeah they they were not like dramatic changes but I think they're very significant changes because small improvements in oxidation can can really make a difference I also think that that's only one aspect of it so they they looked at the the transport of of carbohydrate and the and the oxidation but training of the gut means also training the stomach and that's that is something that you your stomach would feel much more comfortable because you've trained this several times and there is another human study that in runners that that shows that the fact after just a few days of training so if you take a certain amount of fluid fairly large amount of fluid the first time during exercise it you feel bloated and it's really uncomfortable but after doing that a few days it it's not uncomfortable anymore or at least it feels a lot more comfortable than it did before and then those are really important adaptations as well I think because we that that feeling of discomfort can actually hold people back taken on fluids taken on carbohydrates that they would actually need I love the analogy you used in that review where you compared it to professional eaters like the people who see I'm fucked up in 10 minutes and so what was it they get six eye and heart dogs something like that in 10 minutes and they wouldn't be able to do that I'm not sure they won't feel bloated after they think that many are like but I think yeah we we see this training regardless something new but for those guys that's that's that's what they do I mean they that that's definitely not news for them that you can train the gut because they they do this preparing for these for their competitions they have an on a season and an off season and in the off season they can't eat that many burgers so it's or hot dogs it's yeah it's incredible so it's it's extremely trainable now obviously we don't want to tell our listeners to go eat a bunch of hot dogs and I can't even I can't even watch that stuff it so gross to me it's unbelievable what they what they're shoving in their faces so and they're usually like isn't that the grand champion of this a small guy from Japan yeah man that stuff that stuff uh no point in telling me the message that people take away from from this that then that's what I'm promoting yeah the please don't the the other message I'm going to give which we're also not promoting is train your gut with sweetest fish the more you need that person I did I said I'll ride this weekend and and I think I was consuming 200 grams of sweetest fish per hour and I was tolerating and I'm so read all of it because of sweetest fish that is that is Trevor's go-to food maybe you guys could have a whole conversation about that offline sometime but it's it's pretty funny uh I actually looked at the sugar ratios and sweetest fish and it's completely raw but I am a strong believer that once they put it in the form of sweetest fish and the disease that my body knows that and absorbs it all it's either that or are you Oscar are you familiar with the key nerds no no there is an American and I don't know if it's only in America but they are called nerds and they're hard little candies that are packed with you know sugar of course and uh yeah that's I think honestly I think you really should switch it up and that should be your go-to ride food is nerds because you know nerd bumps you're you're nerd or what are these days I could actually bring along something healthy that that's true that is true one thing we love to do on this show is use the side interviews to present contrasting opinions this one may take the cake both metaphorically and literally so after my somewhat embarrassing discussion a sweetest fish let's get a reality check from Colby Pierce so I'm sure this is something you've had to deal with yourself and how to deal with a lot of athletes so yeah what are your thoughts eat real food period I think cycling sports in general have a massive double standard that astoundingly hypocritical and it kind of pisses me off a little bit if I went into a 7/11 and I was just a quote normal human because I'm not you know this but I'm a superhero because I wear a standex but if I was a normal person who had a you know job worked in a cubicle that kind of thing and I went into 7/11 and it came out with a box of cake frosting and three gatorades and a Snickers bar and a Kit Kat you'd be like why are you eating that crap but for some reason it's acceptable for us to eat these in the middle of a 50 mile ride if you were I should back up if you were a conscientious person who believed in whole food diets you know eating things that you could find on a forest floor or on a farm you would be like that is the worst food you could possibly eat it's hyper processed bike racers traveling sportsman we all eat all the foods come in plastic wrappers they're all hyper processed I mean some less than more and I whenever I eat a bar a convenience food which is what it is realistically you got to be honest it's a convenience food I search for the foods that are the least processed and derabytes being a great example right Ali's bars were a great example when they existed sad by line but I always search for whole foods I mean eat a freaking banana but for some reason it's acceptable for us to eat gels gels are cake frosting let's be real like they're just straight up sugar you can put fancy expensive amino acids in them and a few other things there's a cake frosting man and that's not healthy it's not healthy for your teeth and yes the insulin response is curved when you're three hours into a hard bike race but that doesn't excuse all the other problems that eating concentrated packets of sugar cause you now ultimately you got to put fuel in the tank to run the drag racer I get that but they make things like purple potatoes and bozmati race Alan published a whole cookbook on delicious real food alternatives you can put in your pocket so I think if you're talking about training the gut to handle things like 74 grams of refined table sugar then have fun with that I don't think that's I think that's a fool's errand to be brutally honest um anyone who thinks that they need to do that for sport is even if you're making a lot of money as a professional traveler cyclist kind of doing it wrong in my opinion you're there will be a cost for that the human body is not a machine we don't pour sugar down a hole endlessly and not expect consequences now I sound like a total soapbox preacher here I was a pro cyclist air quotes for years and I ate lots of gels and lots of bars so I get it now just to be clear like I still race my bike I still ride my bike quite a bit for someone who you know isn't paid to do it that's eight to twelve hours a week plus some gym and occasional big weeks on top of that unless I'm literally dying I will not need a gel for the rest of my life I will never have another highly processed energy bar again period done I don't put sugar mix in my bottles even if I'm doing the old route which is 35 hours of riding in one week just done with that stuff like what about higher priorities for my health what about training the gut to const to process more a larger quantity of calories assuming that they're from a healthy source I mean I'll say this it's a really simple rule you go out and you train long and hard you eat what you're gonna eat on race day and you try to consume it in the same volume I'm also really struggle with and this will be a bit of an unpopular opinion probably in the modern sports world I really struggle with things like calculators uh that try to tell you how many grams of carbohydrate you should have per hour how many liters of fluid of what solution you should have per hour man there's so many confounding variables in that just like there are in almost everything that's also very individual yeah everyone's individual the gut biomes individual I mean you can have two people wearing a dex con blood sugar scanner and have feeding the same thing get different results when they're not exercising let alone when you add exercise into the equation then you add temperature and humidity into the equation how adapt to the athlete is to that environment you've got a million variables it's landing a small aircraft that's all it is look too much speed too low altitude you're gonna crash and burn it's not rocket science like again and these metrics can be useful to instruct the athlete but what are we instructing them to do we're always instructing the athlete to develop their own internal intuition you need to know how much food you need when you wake up in the morning and race day and you go man I'm a little unusually hungry today if you're paying attention you'll go okay I need a couple five extra bites of oatmeal today or another egg because it's a cold race on the other hand if you're like man I really am struggling to get this food down but I know I need something then maybe you cut your breakfast meal in half and you continue to monitor and then you get a hunger paying 45 minutes before the race that tells you something so you're always adjusting your speed and altitude of the airplane based on what your body is experiencing because we are we are the bodies of cybernetic organism it's a system of systems it's very complicated applying a formula of like 40 grams of carbs per however many minutes of exercise it's just no disrespect to anyone who's done this because I know a lot of scientists geek out on this but to me honestly that's garbage useless information guideline huge in the sky guideline at best which I could also get someone by saying don't eat an entire chocolate cake five minutes before road race or five hot dogs and also don't not eat 24 hours before as long as you're between those two windows we're doing we're starting to narrow it down from there you gotta find what's right for you and it sounds like you're on the same page that we're on of there's such a thing as race day food you don't want on race day suddenly eat differently from how you've been eating all the rest of the year I actually have pre conceived race day menus that are the same they're three three menu items I picked from and I manufacture I find a way to pull those together before any important event no matter what even to this day even though I'm not really a race or anymore no matter where you are to matter where I am I find those ingredients and I assemble them and that's a recipe and the beauty of that is that for a given amount of food I can look at the size of the food in the plate without weighing it or measuring it and know like this is about how much I should eat and then I'm monitoring that food intake based on how I feel if I'm really full or I haven't been hungry for a day or really haven't felt hunger pains then I know that I can I can I should be conservative especially if the race is hot and especially if I'm eating closer to the race and especially if the race is shorter and requires more intensity all those are contributing factors on the other hand if I'm doing 110 mile road race or road ride or something and I'm eating farther away and it's going to be a cold day then I'm going to add a couple more. But these are all foods that you eat on days that are race day as well right exactly yeah yes right they're not special race meals they are they are a little bit more carbohydrate oriented than I would eat on a non race day particularly a low volume training day but they're foods that I would eat and just to give it away I want them basically body race a little bit of prosciutto and egg a little bit of goat cheese and sea salt that's the fundamental how much of each of those ratios depends on what the total quantity is a little bit of olive oil on top all that changes based on I think you say cookie in there no cookies I'm currently not consuming gluten just for now I'm a butter so how many cookies do you eat during how many cookies yeah I have I haven't counted oh you're messing with me yeah here's a cookie obsession yeah let's get back to the show and talk with dr. Eukendrup about strategies he uses to train the gut ignoring hot dogs and Swedish fish what do you recommend people do to train their gut and and healthy your way um yeah so um this is partly based on research and partly we we are still guessing um I think in terms of duration you probably need 10 weeks and maybe one day a week that is dedicated to training the gut and I think you will see some significant changes over that period um I say one day a week because I think I don't think it's necessary to do much more or maybe you don't want to do much more because during that session you would be consuming probably quite a bit of fluid but quite a bit of carbohydrate and once a week is probably sufficient to do that I usually say pick the day that looks the most like the the race and then in that particular workout in that particular training you just practice your race nutrition now if you use this software I was talking about fuel the core and it tells you that your carbohydrate intake should be about 80 grams per hour or 60 grams or whatever it is if it if it spits out 60 grams if I take that example then it probably means that you need to start training the gut at a slightly lower level and probably 40 or 50 grams is already quite a bit for you but I would do that one day in the week I would use that use maybe 40 the first time 50 the second time hopefully it feels a little bit uncomfortable but not too uncomfortable and then you build up to 60 and if all goes well then maybe two weeks before the event or three weeks before the event you can actually go up to 70 grams per hour a little bit more than you're actually planning to do in your race because if you can do that 70 grams per hour in training you can probably do 60 grams per hour in the race no problem if the of course if the software would spit out well you have to go 90 grams per hour then yeah you start at maybe a 60 build up to 90 and maybe go 100 or even 110 grams two or three weeks before but it's yeah it's listening to your body a little bit but also at the same time just like any training just pushing the boundaries a little bit if you're always comfortable it's probably not going to improve but it needs to be a little bit a little bit uncomfortable or at least borderline so I think that's how that's how I would approach it yeah that was exactly the question I was going to ask you is you even call in this training training by nature isn't always comfortable so when you're doing this on the group ride you should feel like not so loaded that you have to pull out a group ride but you should feel a little bit loaded you should feel a little bit uncomfortable and that's that's training your body to handle that's that's right yes yeah so the other question I have for you which is an important one to me is are there any health concerns to this and we you said that this endotoxemia doesn't seem to relate to the symptoms but there still is evidence that this high carbohydrate consumption can promote some endotoxemia which isn't healthy for you you even showed in some of your studies that the high carbohydrate consumption can affect the the function of the immune system it drops your your type one cytokine levels it drops your TNF alpha levels are there health concerns today well I think generally those in terms of the immune function those changes are usually positive so generally carbohydrate higher carbohydrate intake will help the immune system so from that that respect I don't think there is any health concern and in terms of bacterial translocation that I said I don't think that really is is a big issue suddenly not like related to the carbohydrate intake if it is so this more related I think to the fact that people become extremely hot extremely dehydrated or very long periods of extreme exercise so I haven't seen any evidence of negative effects of this we also have to put this into a little bit of context here because I talk about large amounts of carbohydrate because it feels like we're taking on a lot of carbohydrate but say we're taking 90 grams of carbohydrate per hour that is 360 calories 360 calories even for that that's for a for a professional cyclist is only one third of the calories they would be they would be burning for the average cyclist maybe it is 50% of the calories they're burning at in that hour so we're we're not talking about sort of overeating or it is like a fairly large amount of carbohydrate but it's not a ridiculous amount so we need to keep that context in mind because I always get the questions of people I will again wait no you want and because you're still burning a lot more than you're actually ingesting when somebody asks you a very specific like a specific what should I eat you know you talked about seeking a mixture of maltodextrin and fructose to get the not two sweets in in one dose and then to use the separate transporters is there a product is there is there specific foods that you highly recommend over others yeah depends of course a little bit on what what you're trying to achieve if this is someone who wants to go up in this so the 90 grams per hour then the composition becomes really important and you need to make sure that you have this combination of glucose and fructose or maltodextrin and fructose but in the most important thing related to this question is that you you choose a product that you can actually tolerate the product that you actually like and this is incredibly individual so I would never say or this product is much better than that product because it really depends some people tolerate one product really well but not the other and the next person it is just it's the other way around so yeah it's very difficult I can give general guidelines I would I would always choose a product that has this maltodextrin fructose ratio of around 2.1 it doesn't have to be that exact ratio but roughly roughly that especially if you're taking 90 grams per hour or something similar I would try and find a product that is not too acidic a lot of products for reasons of shelf life but also reasons of taste have a very high acidity and I think that sometimes relates or links to a GI problems in some people I would always look for a little bit of sodium in that in that drink for a number of reasons it's it's taste it makes your thirsty and therefore you just it's easier to keep keep drinking it helps also with fluid absorption so those are really the the things that I would be looking for but there are many products on the market that fit those criteria so which product you choose really depends on what you like and what you can tolerate sorry I'm going to overrule your Swedish fish they trump everything after that you can debate what second that's number one sure sure how much are they they paying you to say that I thought you didn't take bribes this is the worst thing how many times about promoted Swedish dish and they don't know I guess well they should because we could get a really good sponsorship now this is just pure love all right Chris worked with Ryan Kohler the head coach at the University of Colorado sports medicine performance center on his nutrition strategy for dirty cancer a grueling 13 plus hour event Ryan frequently works with athletes and training their guts to better handle food during events he shared some of his strategies with Chris I feel like we um talked a little bit about it when I talked to you about training for dirty cans and helping your helping your system get used to loading it with more carbohydrates than it's used to stuff like that yeah that sort of brings in the just the metabolic piece and I guess having that that metabolic component to it where we tested you and we knew sort of what you were burning so it was it was easier to suggest you know range for you to be in so so we'll see that with athletes I come in where um you say it Iron Man athletes are pretty typical round boulder and uh and actually one one athlete uh earlier this week uh or last week should say um that's talking with they're already consuming 400 plus calories an hour on the on the bike and on the run and you know and they're still they're still experiencing that bonking sensation on the run so some of it is you know looking at their gut is really well trained to handle a lot of it but um we're able to identify more you know on the pacing side and what can we do to to bring in more carbohydrate at that point by changing the types of food that they're eating so if we think about training the gut we need to get a high amount of carbohydrates so while this athlete was getting you know 400 or so calories and a lot of those calories weren't necessarily from carbohydrate because it was you know there were bars and things like that coming into some fat some protein was was built in there so um part of that training the gut is getting getting the athlete used to consuming the right types of foods and the right types of carbohydrates were that that'll allow them to get to a higher uh ingestion rate so is that um in part considering the the sources of the carbohydrates or yeah yeah going maybe going away from say a bar that's that's rich in fat and protein that they which they don't really need as much about that time and if we find that they have this high carbohydrate oxidation rate they just need more carbohydrate coming into the body we might say hey let's let's take this bar out or maybe just do half of it you know over this hour but then let's find jelly beans or gummy bears or something else rich in carbohydrate that's going to allow them to get that intake up there but then we do have to build in the uh the time component to test it out and I think it's still a common pitfall for athletes to wait until you know three to four weeks before their big event and then they say oh now I just need to eat more but we need to do that farther out so yeah well we'll practice that and you know this time of year it's great where I'll have athletes go out and and do a long ride so he just fuel with this carbohydrate we'll say take this much per hour and and see how your stomach responds to it you know you're talking about the offseason the offseason is the right time to to practice this stuff not right before your your big event yeah right yeah and um what what do you mean more specifically by training the god what are you trying to do so trying to get just get the body used to processing that amount of food you know some athletes have a tendency to either get behind on fueling and then try to catch up and then if if they already have sort of they're in a dehydrated state their guts are already challenged and then they they put this big bolus of carbohydrate in there and then that's that could lead to some GI stress um you know or if they're just not consuming enough throughout then that we'll get a certain outcome from that so it's more just getting the athlete used to saying okay we are we're recommending 68 to 70 grams of carbohydrate for you and if you're normally taking in half that then we need to give give it give it a give it time it's a stepwise process you can't go from A to B right away or else there will be some digestive issues most likely yeah exactly yeah and the hydration piece I think has to fall in line with that because we can throw a lot of food in the gut but if we're dehydrated or not handling the hydration piece then uh probably still experienced GI stress so we have to sort of pair those two together. Let's get back to the show I'm going to jump down to a quick tangent but just something else to bring up or ask you about how do you feel about a lot of this research coming out now about looking at the microflora balance because you're seeing things like higher lactobacet I can never pronounce as lactobacillus increases SGLT one expression you've seen benefits of the microflora to improving intestinal integrity and I know you've been doing some research on hungry tea powder correct yeah I'm I mean this is I think it's really early stages to be honest for this this sort of research I think it is very clear that it plays a role but where it comes to manipulating it or changing it it's it's a whole different catalyst phase I think because we we don't really know what what to give to to change it in our favor and maybe the same bacteria will also have different effects in different people so I think there's still many many questions that are unanswered and at the moment I don't think we know enough to to say this is really what we should this is really what we should take I think where the research probably most advanced is in the sort of the direction of immune function that even that area is relatively unexplored so I find it at the moment I still find it too difficult to really draw firm conclusions about it and and come up with sound advice it's a complex subject like you said changing it in beneficial ways is tough and even if you're taking dramatic levels of probiotics they show that even even when you do change it it can reverse back within a matter of days so it's a tough area for research what about algalutamine does that have anything is that helpful in in terms of reducing GI distress yeah algalutamine has been is a supplement that's been very popular for a for a long period of time for various reasons there's also been linked to GI problems or helping to prevent it a bit of the theory is that the glutamine is a is a really good fuel for for the GI tract but I haven't really seen any any evidence that algalutamine will really reduce GI symptoms and I know people that that have tried low-dose high doses of algalutamine and they still have the year the same complaints that they have before so I'm not convinced I haven't seen evidence in the in the let's show either so since you're not familiar Oscar we do we like to put our guests on the clock at the end of the show we all we'll all take a turn we give you 60 seconds to sort of summarize what we've talked about today give our listeners a very concise takeaway from the episode so I'll put you on the clock got one minute what would you say are the biggest takeaways from this episode I think some of the biggest takeaways are that GI problems are very common we don't know exactly what what causes them but they're extremely annoying one of the best ways to deal with them might be to train the gut at least as far as nutrition goes we can train the gut by practicing race strategies taking slightly larger amounts of carbohydrate larger amounts of fluid than normal and the the gut will just adapt like the muscle will adapt over time so and that is a strategy to to at least tolerate race nutrition a little bit better and of course there are other reasons for GI problems but they're very difficult to tackle with nutrition and we also talked about optimizing carbohydrate delivery we we saw that with different durations of events you need different amounts of carbohydrate with the longer duration anything over two and a half hours we would like to push the carbohydrate intake to 90 grams per hour but that can only be done really when the the carbohydrate that you're taking is a mixture of glucose and fructose ideally in a ratio around two to one if you take that ratio then you we don't saturate the glucose well we still saturate the trans glucose transportable we can actually get more carbohydrate into the body and studies have shown that increased carbohydrate absorption and oxidation can also have a positive effect on performance very good Trevor what would you like to add I've got to first switch I knew that was coming I knew it I feel you're so predictable that leads to my second point which is nerds no no you can have nerds because you are eating all mine on the weekend yes moving on so moving on sweetest fish leads to an important point of help we're talking about performance here but the more you can do this in healthy ways the better you know this is a running joke with me and I love my sweetest fish but the truth of the matter is there's a lot healthier ways of accomplishes anything I guess this is this is something maybe oscar is already touched upon a couple times but I'd like to reiterate just sort of practicing this stuff well before race day not in race day but getting to know what works for you what doesn't work for you what ratios work for you what products work for you well ahead of time and not to experiment in the two or three days leading up to a race or in certainly not with in a race I think the word that you used was very very appropriate these things are annoying but you can you can find ways it's it's it's it's difficult individuals bring their own problems and it's a lot of trial and error sometimes to figure it out but you just have to be somewhat methodical about it and in the patient and persistent so yeah that's what I would end with that was another episode of fast talk as always we love your feedback email us at [email protected] subscribe to fasttalk and itunes stitcher spotify soundcloud and google play be sure to leave us a rating and a comment while you're there check out our sister podcast the vellenews podcast which covers news about the week and cycling become a fan of fasttalk and facebook at facebook facebook.com/vellenews and on twitter at twitter.com/vellenews fasttalk is a joint production between vellenews and countercoaching the thoughts and opinions expressed in fasttalk are those of the individual or doctor ask you you can do it's Katie Compton, Colby Pierce, Ryan Kohler and Chris Case. I'm Trevor Conner. Thanks for listening.