COACHES CORNER: Why Wrestlers Get Sick Around Tournaments
by Randall Tomaras, Wrestling USA Magazine.
Every wrestler is concerned about "making" weight. At the same time they are concerned about performance. It is no secret that wrestlers go without a few meals. Some go without many. What we are actually doing is depleting our bodies of the building blocks of life. These building blocks are called "nutrition" and it effects everything we do from what kind of endurance we have in the third period to whether we catch the flu the day before the tourna¬ment. So that places some importance on this article.
We traditionally thou¬ght nutrition to consist of vitamins, minerals and enzymes. We now know that there is a lot more to it. Biomedicine has now proven beyond a
shadow of a doubt that proper nutrition is a recipe of many things that most of us are not receiving even if we ate what we were told and took our vitamins and minerals. Some of the ingredients of proper nutrition we are somewhat familiar with. Others are new, even to most doctors, but not to scien¬tists who have been studying for years how the body works. The question is are you getting fucoidan (facoy¬dan) , amino acids, essential and non-essential fatty acids, polyphenols, glyconutrients, organic iodine, aliginate, and laminarin in your body?
I know nutrition is a word that we have all grown to accept as food. Clearly one third of the food Americans eat has NO nutritional value at all. Plus according to the U.S. Agriculture Department due to soil deple¬tion a pound of fruits and veg¬etables today is seven times less nutritional than what it was back in the early 50s (most scientists say it is many times that). That means, conservatively, we have to eat seven times as much to get the same nutritional value. No wonder our nation has become obese. On top of all that, pro¬duce is picked prematurely to reach the market¬place. When this happens 78 percent of the antioxidants are not allowed to develop. The antioxidants are the necessary ingredi¬ents to build the immune system. Without a healthy immune system is it much easier to catch the flu and other diseases later in life like cancer and heart diseases. Couple all this with a poor wrestler's diet and you can clearly see why nutrition is important to understand.
Nutrition has been understudied and misunderstood for years and that is why we are facing the problems that we are. Only recently since the evolution of bio-med are we really realizing how our bodies work and what is really in nutrients. Most Americans think nutrition is vitamins. That's only a small portion. Unfortunately, a huge percentage of this multibillion-dollar industry people are wasting their money on because they are missing the other ingredients to the recipe.
More important than vitamins are minerals. Minerals are the materials that build the physical structure of the body, whereas vitamins stay with the liquid por¬tion of our body. If you are baking bread what happens when you don't mix the yeast in? If you were building a bridge, would you cut the amount of concrete to sand when mixing? It is the same thing with minerals. Studies show that Americans are grossly deficient in minerals that are extremely important in brain development as well as any physical struc¬ture of your body.
Even more important than minerals are enzymes. Enzymes are bulletproof taxi¬cabs that protect and take the vitamins and minerals to the desired destination. Vitamins and minerals attach themselves to enzymes to make themselves more bio-acceptable. Without these enzymes scientif¬ic studies claim that vitamins and minerals have less than a 15% chance of survival. And the key word here is less. So why don't vitamin and mineral companies include enzymes in their pills. They would have to rebuild their entire processing plants because most enzymes survive in liquid. As soon as the pills are heat pressed together the enzymes would die. This recent discovery is changing the entire nutrient industry. This is very well docu¬mented in the Physician's Desk Reference.
You probably recognized the vitamins, minerals and enzymes, but what about these:
Fucoidan is without a doubt one of the greatest discoveries of all time, but it is also one of the best-kept secrets. It is the best compound we know that can build our immune system. There are already over 500 scientific studies that testify to its value. Doctors claim that this is the closest thing to mother's milk. It is one of the few substances they have discovered that can pop cancer cells while building the immune system. Most medicines kill both. In fact they are even working with fucoidan in AIDS research to build the T-cell count.
Amino Acids are essential for the break¬ing down of proteins, so the body can use them. There are essential amino acids that come from food intake and non-essential that the body produces.
Essential and non-essential fatty acids are vital to good health. I know the word "Fatty" does not instill confidence, but fatty acids are critical for cell growth and the operation of cells, muscles, nerves, and organs. Deficiencies of fatty acids are linked to heart disease, cancer, and dia¬betes. Two fatty acids that you may have heard of lately are Omega3 and Omega6.
Polyphenols are antioxidants that protect the cells from degenerative diseases, malignant growths, tissue damage, skin deterioration, and toxins.
Glyconutrients are one of the newly dis¬covered compounds that doctors claim are essential to good human health. These sac¬charides help individual tissue cells recog¬nize and communicate with each other.
Organic iodine helps normalize metabo¬lism and optimizes thyroid function. Alginate is a natural detoxifier that helps clean the systems of radioactive elements, heavy metals and free radicals.
Laminarin is a polysaccharide helpful in the prevention and treatment of cardio¬vascular disease. It has anti-clotting and anti-cancer properties.
Are you getting all the nutrients you need??? A wrestler needs a STRONG immune system as well as that balance of good nutrition. A lack of balanced nutrition means poor health whether you feel it or not.
Regardless of what you eat, the American Medical Association made a statement June 19, 2002, urging all Americans to take a nutritional supple¬ment of some kind. While it is against their by-laws to endorse any particular product, in the Physician's Desk Reference it clearly states that up to 90% of the "pill form" vita¬mins and minerals are passed through the system because they are not bio-acceptable. That is why whatever supplement you take, you had better do your research or you are wasting your money. Unfortunately supplements are not rated for effectiveness. If they were the scale would be 1 to 100, and most would be around the 5 area. (100 being high). Hope this gives you a better understanding of why it is important to put the right nutri¬tion in your body.
Editors Note: If you want to learn more about the product Limu Moui you can e-mail Randy Tomaras at L@ProtectingHealth.com or go to www.ProtectingHealth.com
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