Nutrition in Exercise and Sport, Third Edition

Ira Wolinsky

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000722161
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Medizin
• Subtopic: Allgemeine Gesundheit

The third edition of Nutrition in Exercise and Sport has been updated and expanded to include the latest developments in the field. This third edition of a bestseller among sports nutrition and health professionals now fully discusses the role of exercise and nutrition in both wellness and in disease prevention. In addition, new chapters on the history of sports nutrition, antioxidants, vegetarianism, the young athlete, the older athlete, the diabetic athlete, the physically disabled athlete, sports specific nutrient requirements, and body composition changes have been added. Top sports nutrition practitioners and exercise scientists have contributed chapters that provide practical nutritional guidelines for those engaged in various types of physical performance. This book is a one-volume library on sports nutrition for research scientists in applied sports nutrition, dietitians, exercise physiologists, sports medicine physicians, coaches, trainers, athletes, and nutritionists. The first two editions of this book have been widely used in sports nutrition courses. Nutrition in Exercise and Sport is the standard in the field.

Chapter 1EXERCISE NUTRITION: FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND BEYOND^*

Frank I. Katch William D. McArdle Victor L. Katch James A. Freeman

DOI: 10.1201/9780367813499-1

* © 1998 by Frank I. Katch, William D. McArdle, and Victor L. Katch. All rights reserved. Correspondence regarding this chapter should be made through Fitness Technologies Press, 1132 Lincoln Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104.

CONTENTS

I. Preface

II. Part 1. Antiquity to the Twentieth Century

III. The Early Greek Philosophers and Physicians

IV. The First Sports Nutritionists — The Physicians of the Ancient Olympic Games

V. Post-Hippocratic Medicine and Nutrition

VI. Renaissance Period to the Twentieth Century

A. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)

B. Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)

C. Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564)

D. Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564)

E. Santorio Santorio (1561–1636)

F. William Harvey (1578–1657)

G. Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608–1679)

H. Robert Boyle (1627–1691)

I. Stephen Hales (1677–1761)

J. James Lind (1716–1794)

K. Joseph Black (1728–1799)

L. Joseph Priestley (1733–1804)

M. Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742–1786)

N. Henry Cavendish (1731–1810)

O. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794)

P. Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729–1799)

VII. Nineteenth Century Metabolism and Physiology

A. Claude Louis Berthollet (1748–1822)

B. Joseph Louis Proust (1755–1826)

C. Humphrey Davey (1778–1829)

D. Louis-Joseph Gay-Lussac (1778–1850)

E. William Prout (1785–1850)

F. Françis Magendie (1783–1855)

G. William Beaumont (1785–1853)

H. Michel Eugene Chevreul (1786–1889)

I. Jean Baptiste Boussingault (1802–1884)

J. Gerardus Johannis Mulder (1802–1880)

K. Justus von Liebig (1803–1873)

L. Henri Victor Regnault (1810–1878)

M. Claude Bernard (1813–1878)

N. Edward Smith (1819–1874)

O. Edward Hitchcock, Jr. (1828–1911)

P. Eduard Pflüger (1829–1910)

Q. Carl von Voit (1831–1908)

R. Austin Flint, Jr., (1836–1915)

S. Nathan Zuntz (1847–1920)

T. Wilbur Olin Atwater (1844–1907)

U. Max Rubner (1854–1932)

V. Russel Henry Chittenden (1856–1943)

W. Frederick Gowland Hopkins (1861–1947)

X. Francis Gano Benedict (1870–1957)

Y. August Krogh (1874–1949)

Z. Otto Fritz Meyerhof (1884–1951)

AA. Archibald Vivian Hill (1886–1977)

VIII. Part 2. Exercise Nutrition for the Future: Creating an Academic Discipline

Acknowledgments and Comment

References

I. PREFACE

This chapter consists of two parts. Part 1 presents an historical overview of those individuals from antiquity to our century whose experiments have demonstrated the intimate connection of medicine, physiology, exercise, and nutrition. Building on these seminal linkages, Part 2 urges the creation of a cross-disciplinary academic field to be known as Exercise Nutrition.

The important accomplishments on the time line of Part 1 provide a powerful rationale for developing an integrated subject. We believe it requires the new name Exercise Nutrition to gain acceptance. The currently popular name, sports nutrition, falls short because it restricts itself almost exclusively to athletics. Faculty governance bodies might be concerned that programs with sports in the title lack sufficient academic rigor.

Our proposal for a new field updates the notion that sports nutrition is a subset of nutrition. Exercise Nutrition should develop its own core courses, blending knowledge from traditional fields like biochemistry, chemistry, exercise physiology, medicine, nutrition, and physiology. This new program, independent of umbrella departments like nutrition, exercise science (kinesiology), or public health, would fit logically with other life sciences and benefit them all.

A cross disciplinary field like Exercise Nutrition enlarges the scope of current offerings. Today, sports nutrition concentrates on athletic performance. We differ. Our six-component model includes both athletes and non-athletes (nutritional enhancement of performance, energy balance and body composition, optimal growth and performance, good health and longevity, peak physiological function, safety, Figure 1). Thus, it emphasizes breadth, not exclusivity, for studying nutrition and human physical activity.

FIGURE 1 Model for a discipline of Exercise Nutrition. The six areas constitute the core of the discipline.

People seldom implement new ideas without trauma. However, modern exercise nutritionists should refine and expand the enormous wealth of data bequeathed to us by the pioneers whose contributions follow. Just as they synthesized previous knowledge, modern researchers can consolidate data from even wider sources.

II. PART 1. ANTIQUITY TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Nutrition as applied to exercise and sports originated before the Golden Age of Greece. Concerns about physical exertion, proper food, and general health occupied thinkers in Sumeria, India, Egypt, China, Persia, and other ancient civilizations. Early nomads subsisted on foods available from the environment such as fish, animal meats, nuts, beans, grains, and wild fruits. The most physically able of the group, who traveled long distances over sometimes hostile and unfamiliar terrain to capture and retrieve food for the tribe, were indeed the first “athletes.” After hunter gatherers settled, they could devote time in their towns to games interspersed with manual labor. Early medicine men knew what elements to combine to make soaps, curatives, unguents, and emetics. Even at the dawn of systematized knowledge, Egyptian scribes passed on medical knowledge by mixing dyes and inks to illustrate their papyrus records. The records describe sedatives for pain and cures for stomach disorders and forms of blindness. The versatile Imhotep (ca. 2650 B.C.) not only constructed the giant Step Pyramid at Saqqara but also treated workers injured during its construction. The colossal complex, which was nearly 500 feet tall and required 2.5 million blocks of stone weighing up to 15 tons (15,000 kg) each, caused accidents to uncounted numbers of laborers. The records validate Imhotep’s reputation as a medical practitioner when they describe crude surgical operations.

In addition, the Egyptians realized the importance of diet. Herotodus (ca. 440 B.C.), the Greek historian and traveler, said:¹

… there is an inscription in Egyptian characters on the pyramid which records the quantity of radishes, onions, and garlic consumed by the labourers who constructed it, and I perfectly well remember that the interpreter who read the writing to me said that the money expended in this way was 1600 talents of silver. If this then is a true record, what a vast sum must have been spent on the iron tools used in the work, and on the feeding and clothing of the labourers.

In the ancient view, no particular diet made one strong or wholesome. Overindulgence in food and drink could lead to discomforts like diarrhea, constipation, and disease. Although physicians understood the general dangers of excess, a tomb inscription found near the Great Pyramid of Cheops describes a wealthy landowner who could receive nourishment from cows, oxen, calves, goats, asses, sheep, and poultry, as well as the bread and beer he produced.² Insights about food, work, and well-being from such early records link the ancient world to our modern era.

Our tour of the history of Exercise Nutrition continues with the early Greek philosophers and physicians who provided a conceptual framework about the workings of the human body. Many of their ideas about physiology were erroneous; nevertheless, they governed medical practice for 17 centuries. Not until human dissection and more sophisticated scientific instruments became commonplace could researchers challenge, verify, and discover the true roles that exercise and nutrition play in health. As the famous French physiologist Claude Bernard (1813–1878) said³ when he reused the words of a medieval philosopher:

We stand upon the intellectual shoulders of the medical giants of bygone days and, because of the help they afford us, we are able to see more clearly than they were able to do.

III. THE EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS AND PHYSICIANS

Greek thinkers utilized “scientific” ideas about food, medicine, and treatment of sickness that came from Egypt and other cultures. The earliest philosophers believed that the supernatural governed the human realm. Gradually, logic and observation emphasized the physical workings of the body. Although the ethos of the time suppressed dissection of humans, animal vivisection routinely determined their internal structures and bodily functions. Such knowledge of animal anatomy encouraged analogous conclusions about human systems. Of course, many early biological notions turned out to be incorrect. For example, blood vessels and nerves do not originate from the umbilicus; the sternum does not contain seven segments; there are no pores between the left and right chambers of the heart to transport blood; the nerves are not hollow and carry no air; blood does not circulate through the body only fifty times daily. Still, each philosopher focused on questions essential to understanding bodily functions.

Empedocles (ca. 500-c. 430 B.C.), a pupil of the famous mathematician Pythagoras (born ca. 582 B.C.) and a contemporary of Alcmaeon of Crotona (ca. 500 B.C.), was one of the first Greeks to write about “modern” medicine. Alcmaeon believed that disease resulted from an imbalance of the body’s four humors. Such notions differed from theological beliefs that hostile gods caused sickness. Empedocles went beyond the work of Alcmaeon by dissecting animals. He discovered the nerves leading from the brain to the eyes and the canal leading from the throat to the middle ear.^* He also espoused the religious notion (paralleled by Deuteronomy xii.23) that a mysterious “innate heat” or essential life factor, resided in the blood. Consequently, the heart (and thus the soul) served as the center of the body. Contemporary theory claimed blood vessels transported this innate heat from the heart throughout the body. However naive, the heat-transfer belief explained how circulatory and respiratory systems functioned until challenged by Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) and the later Athenian School.⁴

* In 1562, the Italian anatomist Bartolemeo Eustachio rediscovered these minute structures that connect the middle ear to the back of the throat; they bear his name, Eustacian tubes.

Empedocles contributed another legacy. Figure 2 illustrates the four elements he proposed — earth, air, fire, and water — and their four qualities of cold, hot, dry, and wet. His idea of four elements makes rational an ancient Egyptian faith in the magical power of the number four. The figure shows how the four elements oppose each other — they also interconnect. Thus, hot and dry characterize fire, cold and dry signify earth, cold and wet typify water, and hot and wet identify air. Varying proportions of these elements govern all physical phenomena. Accordingly, man developed from the fire that sprang from the earth, forming shapes that eventually took on life forms; growth took place from a warming of the body, and cold debilitated humans as they aged. Melancholy or “Black Bile,” for example, caused by dry and cold humors or elements, could be treated by using their opposites, wet and hot. Physical conditions like health and disease and emotional states like Love and Strife resulted from the interaction of humors. An imbalance in the four humors could cause an...