PICTURE OF HEALTH
“CORONAVIRUS HAS LEFT US REFLECTING ON OUR IMMUNITY. IN THIS STRANGE NEW WORLD, IN WHICH A TRIP TO THE SHOPS CAN SEEM HAZARDOUS, EVEN CYCLING CAN SEEM SHADOWED WITH NEW DANGERS”
For decades Professor Neil Walsh has been researching how to keep athletes on their bike and out of the doctor’s surgery. The Liverpool John Moores University academic is an expert in immunology, nutrition and exercise science and has studied training loads, sleep quality, nutritional plans, psychological stresses, temperature extremes and lifestyle behaviour to work out how best to optimise athletes’ immunity. He is as worried about Covid-19 as the rest of us but he knows that any illness – from sore throats and colds, to gastric bugs and respiratory infections – can ruin a training block, a race or a season.
“Athletes do have a problem here: after injury, illness is the second most widely reported reason for underperformance and missed training,” explains Professor Walsh via Skype. “So if we can get an extra 10-20 days of training per year by helping athletes avoid silly gastrointestinal infections or respiratory infections, that is a boon. If an athlete gets sick ahead of the Tour de France, it can be career-defining.”
According to the English Institute of Sport,
