Chapter 23 — Further Reading

Real sources only. Where I'm unsure of exact details, I describe the source rather than inventing a citation. ⚠️ This is the best-documented chapter in the book, and unusually, most of the primary sources are free.

⚠️ The three documents that cover most of it

1. The joint position stand on Nutrition and Athletic Performance — American College of Sports Medicine, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and Dietitians of Canada. ⚠️ Free, comprehensive, and it is the source of §23.3's carbohydrate table and most of §23.5 and §23.6.

If you read one thing from this page, read this. It is written for practitioners and is more readable than its length suggests.

2. The IOC consensus statements on Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) — successive versions have been published and are free at the British Journal of Sports Medicine. ⚠️ This is §23.2 and Chapter 21 Case Study 2, and it is the single most important document for anyone who trains seriously or coaches someone who does.

Read the clinical assessment tool and the risk-stratification traffic-light model. ⚠️ Then read the section on the sport environment as a risk factor — it is the part coaches most need.

3. The IOC consensus statement on dietary supplements and the high-performance athlete — free, ⚠️ and it is where §23.9's short list comes from. Note how conservative it is, and note that a consensus of sports scientists arrived at approximately five compounds.

On carbohydrate and periodization

Louise Burke's work is the centre of gravity here. Search "Burke carbohydrate periodization train low" and "Burke low carbohydrate high fat elite race walkers." ⚠️ The race-walker study (published in The Journal of Physiology) is §23.7's evidence and is worth reading in full — the economy finding is the mechanism, and it's elegant.

On the classical foundations: search "Bergström Hultman muscle glycogen exercise 1967" for the biopsy studies that established the glycogen-performance relationship. ⚠️ Sixty years old and still correct, which is unusual enough in nutrition to be worth seeing.

On the FASTER study: Volek et al., 2016 — search "FASTER study keto adapted ultra endurance fat oxidation." ⚠️ Read the design before the numbers: it is cross-sectional, comparing self-selected groups. It establishes that the adaptation occurs. It does not establish that it helps — and its authors and its critics disagree productively about exactly that.

On fuelling during exercise

Asker Jeukendrup's work on carbohydrate transporters and exogenous oxidation rates — search "Jeukendrup multiple transportable carbohydrates oxidation." ⚠️ This is §23.5's physiology and it is one of the cleanest mechanism-to-practice translations in the field.

On gut training: search "gut training carbohydrate tolerance endurance athletes" and "intestinal SGLT1 adaptation carbohydrate feeding." ⚠️ Case Study 1's whole premise, and it is routinely absent from race-preparation advice.

On mouth rinsing: search "carbohydrate mouth rinse performance." ⚠️ A genuinely strange replicated finding — the effect appears too quickly to be fuel, and rinsing-and-spitting works.

On the emerging high-intake work: search "120 g per hour carbohydrate ultra endurance." ⚠️ The ceiling is being revised upward and is not settled — treat current numbers as provisional.

On protein

The ISSN position stand on protein and exercise — free, and it covers dose, distribution and quality.

On the timing correction: Aragon AA and Schoenfeld BJ, their analysis of nutrient timing — search "Aragon Schoenfeld nutrient timing revisited." ⚠️ This is §23.6's 🟠 and it is the standard reference for the correction. Read it alongside Chapter 8 §8.6.

On protein during energy restriction: search "protein requirements energy restriction lean mass retention athletes." ⚠️ Relevant to Case Study 2 and to Chapter 24.

On hydration

The ACSM position stand on exercise and fluid replacement, and ⚠️ the consensus statements on exercise-associated hyponatremia — search "exercise associated hyponatremia consensus statement."

⚠️ Read the hyponatremia material even if you think it doesn't apply to you. It is Chapter 15's Priya Achterberg, and the reason the field reversed its advice.

On sweat testing: search "sweat sodium concentration variability athletes" for the range, and your national sports institute for practical sweat-rate protocols. ⚠️ The scales you already own do most of it.

On the five supplements

Search the ISSN position stands individually — there are separate ones for caffeine, creatine, and beta-alanine, all open access and all excellent.

On nitrate: search "dietary nitrate exercise performance training status." ⚠️ Pay attention to the training-status interaction — it's the finding that should change who uses it.

On bicarbonate: search "sodium bicarbonate supplementation performance gastrointestinal." ⚠️ Read the GI-distress literature before trying it, and never on competition day.

On contamination and anti-doping: ⚠️ your national anti-doping organization's supplement guidance, plus NSF Certified for Sport (nsfsport.com) and Informed Sport (sport.wetestyoutrust.com). And read your sport's strict liability provisions once, properly. Chapter 16 §16.2 and Pieter Cohen's research on adulteration are the background.

⚠️ On weight-making — read this if Case Study 2 applied to you

Search "rapid weight loss combat sports position statement" and your governing body's current regulations. ⚠️ The collegiate wrestling deaths of the 1990s and the subsequent rule changes are documented and worth reading about directly — including minimum weight certification and hydration testing at weigh-in, which are the interventions that actually changed behaviour.

Then search "weight cycling athletes long term health" for the cumulative-exposure question, ⚠️ which is the one nobody counts.

On the evidence base's limits

On the male-dominated literature: search "female athlete underrepresentation sports nutrition research" and "menstrual cycle phase exercise metabolism." ⚠️ The field has begun saying this out loud in the last few years and the papers doing so are worth reading — both for the specific findings and as an example of a discipline auditing itself.

On sleep: search "sleep extension athletic performance" and "sleep restriction glycogen resynthesis." ⚠️ The effect sizes are larger than anything in §23.9 and there is no product attached, which is §23.11's point in one line.

A note on what to be careful with

⚠️ This chapter has better evidence than anything in Part IV, and that creates its own risk: the confidence transfers where the evidence doesn't.

Three cautions:

1. ⚠️ Most of this is about people training far more than you. §23.12. If you train four hours a week and adopt the numbers in §23.14's endurance template, you will gain weight and blame the training. The recreational correction is not a footnote; it is the section that applies to most readers.

2. ⚠️ Short-term performance evidence is not long-term health evidence. §23.11. We know a great deal about a time trial next Tuesday and much less about a twenty-year career — which is precisely why energy availability sits at the top of the hierarchy and gets sacrificed for the things below it.

3. ⚠️ And the parts of this chapter that could actually hurt someone are §23.13 and Case Study 2. If you are in a weight-sensitive sport, or coach in one, those two are the ones to reread — and Chapter 34 is worth reading early rather than in sequence.

Everything else here is, unusually for this book, straightforwardly good news: ⚠️ eat enough, eat carbohydrate matched to your load, get your protein, fuel long sessions, sleep, and use one or two of five cheap compounds. That's the chapter, and it works.