THEY seem the picture of health. But there are alarming signs that athletes
are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the unrelenting drive toward
excellence.
鈥淢ost athletes say that they are happy to die early if it means that they
could win Olympic gold,鈥� says exercise physiologist Richard Winsley of Exeter
University. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the mindset we are dealing with.鈥�
Although deaths are rare, sportsmen and women are falling ill with an
ever-widening range of ailments. Many are caused by one particular problem,
overtraining syndrome. 鈥淧eople train harder and harder,鈥� says sports
physiologist David Jones at Birmingham University. 鈥淏ut the more they train,
their performance gets worse and worse.鈥�
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Symptoms include fatigue, sore muscles, loss of energy, frequent infections
and mood disturbances. To arrest this decline, sufferers push themselves even
harder. 鈥淏ut of course that鈥檚 the worst thing they can do,鈥� says Winsley.
Overtraining syndrome troubles around 65 per cent of endurance athletes at
some point in their careers. Now the problem is starting to appear in sprinters
and power athletes too. 鈥淭hey present primarily with changes in mood with
subsequent changes in performance,鈥� says Richard Budgett of the British Olympic
Association. Although rest is the usual cure, sometimes the condition becomes
increasingly hard to treat.
When we exercise normally, the body releases hormones such as cortisol and
growth hormone to help cope with the stress. 鈥淚f you do it over and over, the
hormonal responses become abnormal,鈥� says Jones. Chronic high levels of cortisol
can lead to muscle wasting, loss of bone and a suppressed immune system. The end
result can be recurrent injuries such as stress fractures, and minor infections
such as colds that won鈥檛 clear up.
Jones believes overtraining syndrome may have similar origins to chronic
fatigue syndrome. Some doctors think that the reason people with CFS find easy
tasks arduous is that they are hypersensitive to the neurotransmitter serotonin,
which tells the brain how active the body is.
Jones thinks that overtrained athletes also sometimes become abnormally
sensitive to serotonin, and that this leads to feelings of extreme tirednes. He
is currently testing whether these athletes show the same sensitivity to
buspirone, a drug that mimics serotonin, that CFS patients do.