By Boak Ferris, Certified WPH Coach
This article seemed to become necessary after a recent conversation I had with a volleyball athlete at my university. She confided, “Coach, most of the time I feel great in competition, but, frankly speaking, I suffer during my period, especially with blinding migraines. I can’t even play. Have you learned anything that might help me? My family and the team doctors say ‘It’s just your hormones, and you will have to live with it.’” To my mind, she needed a second opinion, from a female endocrinologist, and I mentioned as much, while I reviewed with her what I knew from the literature.
As part of my ongoing duties staying current as a nationally certified coach, I have learned about health issues unique to competitors, and how these may differ by gender. For example, athletes I have coached of both genders have reported migraines, so severe as to prevent competition, while others have reported asthma or breathing difficulties, triggered by unknown causes—or even reported nausea and vomiting or diarrhea brought on by psychological stress. Furthermore, bouts of dizziness or weakness or nausea or breathing difficulties may be triggered at unexpected moments in competition.
So here are the results of my mom’s and my research so far. As always, consult with a licensed Sports Nutritionist/Ph.D. in Dietary Science, as well as with your personal or family physician(s). 1). A migraine sufferer needs to keep a food-diary, of what’s eaten every day. Keeping such a diary is highly informative and can be fun. In the diary, you correlate and evaluate your performances with your prior meals, up to and including 48 hours prior to competition.2). Whenever a migraine hits, check the foods eaten one to two days prior. A common food or ingredient may be a cause. A hidden food-allergy can also trigger migraines, and many other issues.3). Too much or too little salt may trigger migraines for some people.
4). Too much sugar can trigger many negative artifacts for athletes. Caffeine can trigger. Dark soft drinks often have caffeine, as does the computer-nerd’s favorite, Mountain Dew. A high-performance athlete needs to fully recognize the total milligrams of caffeine ingested daily, by the hour. Caffeine ordinarily improves performances, in personally-tested and measured amounts, but can trigger stress, cortisol, insulin-resistance, inadvertent nerve-and-muscle firing, among others.
5). Certain nuts, cashews, peanuts, and walnuts have been linked as possible triggers of migraines. Many peoplehave allergies to nuts, and will likely wish to take a food-allergy test with a knowledgeable physician.
6). Three additives: MSG, (monosodium glutamate, a “natural flavoring agent”), magnesium stearate, (a common additive to pills, to keep them soluble, also called stearic acid, or vegetable-stearates, etc.), and potassium sorbate, a preservative in canned/packaged foods and used as a grocery store wash for fresh vegetables, can trigger migraines, and/or intestinal or rectal bleeding. Many products have MSG, but not listed directly as MSG, but simply called “natural flavoring” on “tricky” food labels. Many vitamin- or health-supplements contain one or more of these three additives.
7). A lack of hydration and/or a lack of electrolytes, calcium, magnesium, zinc, vitamin D, and potassium can trigger competition’s negative-health artifacts.
8). A lack of iron, especially prior to a period, can trigger migraines. Humans need about 11-27 mg. iron a day, while more can get toxic. The most easily digested and safest source of iron, according to my mom, a World Health Organization Expert in nutrition, is medium-cooked red meats. Vegetarians who won’t/don’t eat animals will need an iron supplement, and the safest iron supplements are vegetable-iron, such as can be found in curry-leaf, or else as a ferrous-fumarate supplement. But, as always, with all the advice herein, consult with all relevant medical experts, to know your personal best supplement-regime. Iron supplementation can cause constipation, so someone definitely NOT getting enough iron might consider an 18-25-mg. supplement three days a week, along with lots of fruits, vegetables, fiber, or safe probiotics. Too much iron can also trigger a migraine, by the way! Balance is urged.
9). All humans should avoid blackened or charred foods, which can cause prostate and other cancers. This has been proven and reinforced as recently as 2022. (References available upon request.) Regarding prostate health, nutrition experts have noted links between too much chicken in the diet, and/or not ingesting enough dark vegetables. Well-demonstrated prostate-friendly diet and health-management practices include the following: a) eating lots of dark vegetables; b) correlating any chicken-intake with possible issues that may arise; c) avoiding salty foods and processed white foods that introduce lots of salt, which can cause various body-parts to retain water; d) correlating sugar intake with any possible issues. Too much sugar-intake can turn to insulin-resistance, which, in turn, lead to organ and/or gland “fatigue” (I have published elsewhere at this site on sugar-management); e) finding and using “friendly” bike seats, desk-chairs, seat-cushions, etc., to prevent unnecessary impacts and stressors to the prostate-region.
10). Some people are extraordinarily sensitive to yeasts, baker’s yeast or brewers’ yeast, or BOTH, and these people can experience a whole catalogue of health issues without ever knowing why. This condition is often inherited. Please note the differences between the two types of yeasts. Baker’s yeast is used to “raise” bread-doughs and pastry doughs. Brewer’s yeast is used to ferment grains for beers and ales. I, for example, have long been allergic to both kinds of yeast. This allergy messed up my digestion and my breathing, for many years, and I had no clue until I finally underwent a lifestyle-altering blood-drawn-allergies-test, on my physician’s advice. By the way, yeast can be hidden on food labels, while it is used in lots of canned and powdered foods to flavor and/or embody and thicken foods. (Chili, soups, dip-mixes, etc.). Label-reading is a must, but companies can hide yeasts used as flavoring under the term “(natural) flavoring agent,” similar to the way MSG can be disguised as “Natural Flavors.”
11). Notably, too much blue-light exposure from monitors, phones and tablets, televisions, and video-game screens can cause ocular or cerebral migraines, along with negative vision-artifacts. Some monitors have an adjustable blue-light setting, as do some more modern televisions. Similarly, the blue light from fluorescent tubes and light bulbs, such as used in many handball courts, can add undetected blue-light exposure, if these exist in the house or in courts. Fortunately, your eye-doctor should be able to offer anti-blue-light filter coatings to your goggles or glasses. Full-spectrum light bulbs are now available, as are reduced-blue-light bulbs, because lightbulb companies have known about these health issues for a long time. Too much gaming or work on a monitor heavy with blue light can not only cause headache-migraines, but ocular migraines, where the sufferer gets lightning flashes inside the eyes, and around the edges of vision, which can be scary.
12). Last, but not least, soy, dairy, and eggs are common allergens for too many people. Further complicating the matter are the hormones that are introduced by the many various foods, natural and/or packaged, and this matter needs to be directed to your personal research, or to your selected nutritional experts and physicians. Some foods, like soy, and ingredients used to flavor meats are estrogenic, and will alter athletes’ hormonal balances. Some foods are androgenic, too, etc.
**Important Note: Some formula-coatings used inside of cans and other kinds of packaging, to help preserve foods, as well as used by many packaging plastics, are “hormone-genic” meaning they introduce hormones from the entire gender spectrum to possible human or athletes’ ingestion. Workarounds include doing diligent research, and finding and purchasing only such goods from companies that have solved and addressed these issues, or otherwise by buying only fresh ingredients outside your allergen list.
Such an article as this cannot be complete or comprehensive, but it should cover most of the statistically likely issues to arise for invested tournament athletes and competitors.
As always, consult with an experienced Ph.D. in dietary science, along with your family physician, before making any changes!
Boak Ferris Bio
When Boak grew up overseas, Boak’s dad insisted he learn martial arts while attending boarding schools, and so Boak studied Boxing (his dad’s sport), Aikido, and a bit of Kendo over a period of twelve years. He also competed at tennis, golf, soccer, swimming, and handball between elementary school, and then in High School competed at Handball and Track. During College, Boak competed at the hurdles and long jump with the track team, and took handball courses. Moving forward in time, in 1989, Boak first befriended David Chapman, without involvement in any coaching. In 1991, Boak was recruited as a faculty mentor into CSULB’s TEAMWIN project to help university athletes excel in sports and academics. Among his university clients, he coached various members of the university’s tennis, water-polo, and volleyball teams, as the university directed to him, about 16 in all, including James Cotton in basketball and Jered Weaver in baseball—both of whom enrolled in Boak’s courses. Among his topics of engagement, he included sports psychology, cognitive psychology, analytical skills, and lifestyle issues. The TEAMWIN project, though successful, lapsed as a result of a loss of funding, about 1995. Around 1991, Boak also engaged in contributing coaching tips to Steffi Graf’s team and agency, while also becoming a persistent friend and spectator at David Chapman’s matches. Starting in 1994, Boak began his own handball career, independently traveling to 8 venues (dates and locations available on request) where David competed in national championships, and spectating at David’s matches until about the year 2000. By 1994, David began including Boak as a “sounding-board,” one of the very small duties a coach may have when supporting one of the world’s most elite athletes. By about 2000, however, David’s travel schedule became too hectic for Boak, who had since been promoted to Coordinator of Graduate-Required Testing and Evaluation of CSULB students. He last supported David at the 2009 USHA Nationals in Austin Texas. Today, Boak is a number-two ranked handball competitor in the USHA Veteran Super Masters Division, and has six handball clients, ranging from 16 up to 70 years of age.