Despite a more than adequate protein intake in the general population, athletes have special needs and situations that bring it to the forefront. Overtraining is one example. Hard-training athletes are different from sedentary persons from the sub-cellular to whole-organism level. Moreover, competitive, "free-living" (less-monitored) athletes often encounter negative energy balance, sub-optimal...

A key challenge to optimising marathon running performance is to train with adequate frequency, duration and intensity as well as get enough recovery to optimise biological adaptations underlying performance. Some marathon runners train inadequately and underperform, while others perform poorly because they become injured or develop staleness in response to overtraining. Staleness, a depression...

The Overtraining Syndrome (OTS) is a physically debilitating medical condition that results in athletes being totally compromised in their capacity to perform and compete. Many physiological systems are affected by the process of overtraining and the development of the OTS which results from it; but one system in particular, the immune, is highly susceptible to degradation resulting in a reduct...

BACKGROUND Overtraining syndrome (OTS), functional (FOR) and non-functional overreaching (NFOR) are conditions diagnosed in athletes with decreased performance and fatigue, triggered by metabolic, immune, hormonal and other dysfunctions and resulted from an imbalance between training stress and proper recovery. Despite previous descriptions, there is a lack of a review that discloses all hormon...

Although its true function remains unclear, sleep is considered critical to human physiological and cognitive function. Equally, since sleep loss is a common occurrence prior to competition in athletes, this could significantly impact upon their athletic performance. Much of the previous research has reported that exercise performance is negatively affected following sleep loss; however, confli...

In essence, the immune system is enhanced during moderate and severe exercise, and only intense long-duration exercise is followed by impairment of the immune system. The latter includes suppressed concentration of lymphocytes, suppressed natural killer cell activity, lymphocyte proliferation and secretory IgA in saliva. During the time of immune impairment, referred to as "the open window", mi...

Based on the available literature, this meta-analysis will summarize the possible role of the previously examined hormones in connection with an overtraining syndrome. It will focus especially on the usefulness of single hormones as indicators for overtraining. Various sports will be considered separately in order to deal with the effects of different kinds of strain and load specifically. Stud...

This study determined the effects of exercise on the ability of macrophages (Mphi) to present antigen to T cells. Pathogen-free male Balb/c mice (8 +/- 2 wk of age) were randomly assigned to either home cage control, moderate exercise (Mod; 18 m/min, 5% grade, 0.5 h/day), exhaustive exercise (Exh, 18-30 m/min, 3 h/day), or treadmill control groups. The mice underwent treatments for 4 days durin...