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In some competitive sports, athletes compete on consecutive days and glycogen stores need to be at their maximum each time. Here it is important to restock the glycogen store in the muscles as fast as possible after the event. High G.I. foods are best in this situation. Sports scientists at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra have shown that high G.I. foods resulted in faster replenishment of glycogen into the fatigued muscles. Muscles are more sensitive to glucose in the bloodstream in the first hour after exercise, so a concerted effort should be made to get as many high G.I. foods in as soon as possible.

Suggested foods include most of the sports drinks on the market (which replace water and electrolyte losses too), or low amylose rice (Calrose rice), breads and breakfast cereals with a high G.I. such as cornflakes and rice bubbles. Potatoes cooked without fat are a good choice too, but their high satiety means it is hard to eat lots of them. Soft drinks have an intermediate G.L, so they won’t be ideal but they won’t do any harm either.

Females weighing about 50 kilograms should aim to eat 50 grams of carbohydrate. Males weighing about 75 kilograms should aim to eat 75 grams of carbohydrate.

If you want to keep up the pace from one training session to another, day after day, you will benefit by learning to select high G.L foods. The trouble is that many people, even coaches and sports medicine practitioners, have got it all wrong when it comes to selecting sources of fast-release carbohydrate. The information in this chapter gives you the most up-to-date information and the key to better performance and faster recovery. Go for it!

Recovery formula. Aim to ingest about I gram of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight each 2 hours after exercise. If you weigh between 50 and 75 kilograms, you need 50 to 75 grams of carbohydrate for each 2 hours after exercise.

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Among the genetic factors thought to influence fat loss response, racial differences have probably been studied least. Yet simple observation shows that there are big differences in body shape between Negroids, Asians and Caucasians in particular. Negroid women store fat more readily around the hips and buttocks: amongst Negroids, the Hottentot women of South Africa, who have survived in a severe desert climate for millennia, are well-known for their exaggerated gynoid tat stores, which may have increased the survival potential of the race in the desert.

Asian women are known for their small hips, waist-to-hip ratios used as a measure of risk in Caucasians, therefore, are generally not relevant for these women because they give measures more characteristic of a man. Other fat measures such as skinfolds or machine measures may be more relevant here, and particularly when comparing between racial groups. Normative values for body rat, therefore, need to take account of racial differences, but to date this has not been done.

The deposition of fat may also differ amongst racial groups. Chinese and Indians, for example, appear to put additional fat on the waist first before then filling out all over. Island races like Sa moans and Tongans are big people and are prone to developing significant obesity, but that fat is stored more evenly over the body. Aboriginal Australians have naturally lean limbs and small hips but also a high tendency for fat gain from eating ‘Western-style’ foods. This appears to manifest more in the form of abdominal obesity rather than the overall obesity more common of Polynesians and Melanesians.

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These measure energy intake or output by a variety of methods including food and physical activity diaries and questionnaires. All these methods are based on a number of assumptions and many are only very rough estimates of energy expenditure. Methods based on heart rate diaries are also not very accurate.

Body weight is the most important component of total energy expenditure, mainly because of the association between resting metabolic rate and fat free mass (FFM). Because bigger people have more total body mass and therefore also FFM, total energy expenditure will be greater. On the other hand, even the lightest female measured at rest in a metabolic chamber over a 24-hour period will expend at least 1200kcals, suggesting that a minimum dietary intake of 1200kcals is necessary for normal daily functioning.

Doubly labelled water. A more recent technique for energy expenditure measurement, which is likely to become more common in the future, is the doubly labelled mater technique. This was first used with humans in the early 1980s and involves loading a person with water which has been labelled with two stable isotopes, deuterium and a form of oxygen, and then measuring the differential elimination of these from the body through the urine. From this information, scientists can calculate the rate of use of oxygen and production of carbon dioxide over the period measured to a high degree of accuracy. The method is simple, safe and non-intrusive. At present its main limitation is the expense of the labelled water and the mass spectrometer needed to analyse the output.

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This means that the narrow canal that leads from the stomach into the next part of the intestinal tract, the duodenum, is extremely narrow. For this reason it does not allow food to pass normally. It is more common in males, and more frequent with first babies.

The most important and earliest symptom is vomiting. This often commences about the 14th day of life, and becomes worse. It frequently occurs about half an hour after a feed. Because the food is not being absorbed by the system, baby is always hungry, but fails to thrive. As time progresses, vomiting may become projectile—it comes out with force and vigour—not merely dribbling down the side of the face, which is the common form of baby vomiting (as with burping). Later on, appetite is lost, as serious changes commence internally. The bowel actions tend to become loose and green in colour. As baby loses weight and fails to thrive, symptoms continue unabated. Between two and five per cent develop jaundice. The baby may become dehydrated, and the stomach may become distended.

Treatment

Any symptoms like these need prompt investigation by the doctor. Often the cause is readily diagnosed, sometimes from an X-ray of the bowel.

Treatment is by surgery. The risks are low and the results are usually strikingly good. The baby soon starts to eat normally, can now digest food, starts to thrive, looks better, and rapidly becomes a normal infant. Long-term the results are also excellent. In short, the beneficial effects are usually dramatic.

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In this book we will discuss many symptoms. Most of these will be related to a specific disease. For example, the child has abdominal pain, vomiting, loss of appetite and constipation. Tummy is tender to the touch, and probably the muscles are in a rigid spasm. Cause and effect. An inflamed diseased organ has produced symptoms which lead to a correct diagnosis and treatment. Acute appendicitis. Surgery. A satisfactory cure.

But take another case. The child has abdominal pains. Probably vomiting, a mild fever, feeling off-colour and looks pale and ill. Stops playing with friends, lies down, and looks and feels unhappy. This happened last month, and investigation revealed that there had been a mild altercation with a playmate over the bat and ball. This time, it was an argument about whose turn it was next. After an hour’s rest, the pains have vanished, the patient has miraculously recovered and is back playing with friends as well as enemies.

In this case, there is no organic cause for the child’s symptoms. But the symptoms are certainly there. The pain is just as real as it is for the little fellow with appendicitis. But the cause is different. Emotional stress and mental tension have somehow reverberated via the child’s mental system to produce very real, organic-type symptoms.

Enormous numbers of symptoms occurring during infancy and childhood are caused by emotional stress. Often the parents are unaware of this, and frequently it has the doctor puzzled also. The symptoms not only relate to abdominal pains (which are enormously common) but to aches and pains elsewhere, as well as many other common symptoms.

Investigators believe that with abdominal and limb pains, fewer than five cases in a hundred have an organic cause. Recurring headaches are similar. Doctors often refer to these as psychosomatic symptoms.

Everybody is born with a brain that has two parts. The smaller part (probably only 20 per cent of the brain) is the so-called conscious part which operates when the person is awake. This is the area that knowingly controls the person’s actions.

The larger part (probably encompassing 80 per cent, or maybe more) is the subconscious brain. This works tirelessly, morning, noon and night, whether the person is asleep or awake. It is often called the body’s in-built computer. Into this is channelled, right from birth, information picked up by all the body’s senses: hearing, seeing, feeling, tasting, smelling, warmth, sense of pressure, as well as emotional senses. All this is stored in the brain’s memory cells, and much of it will remain there indefinitely. Although much will not be consciously remembered, the storehouse of data builds up, and gradually this forms the bank of information that is often referred to as experience.

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