The Championship-Longevity Diets *Updated* December 2023
By Boak Ferris, WPH Certified Coach
Human beings did not evolve to eat straight sugar—or exclusively sweet foods. Nancy Appleton’s breakthrough research (Lick the Sugar Habit) into sugar’s effects on inflammation, premature aging, and overall health revealed very interesting observations. Prior to 1900, the average recorded benchmark for glucose in human blood was 85 mg./dcl., or 85 milligrams per deciliter of blood. (Glucose and blood-sugar testers are available in drug and medical supply stores–and can link to apps.)
After immigrants moved to the new world, where food resources became readily available and cheaper, the temptation to eat sugary and sweet foods was too strong, and humans’ average blood-glucose levels climbed. As blood-glucose levels rise to 90 mg./dcl. or above, according to hematology research published very late, in the 1980’s, hematologists discovered that human white blood cells (WBC’s) ALL go dormant; though these are the primary cells that fight inflammation. No other cells clean out the debris and inflammasomes and excess hydrogen ions (acidosis) from your body. Now, imagine your joints, cartilage, and musculoskeletal systems oxidizing (being damaged by oxidants), developing sclerosis (= aging, corrosion, degradation, and edema/swelling = pain), simply because too much sugar in your body first put the wbc’s to sleep, and thus stopped them from reversing runaway inflammation!
*Research out just this month, October 2023 (from Colorado University, Anschutz) has just directly linked specifically fructose, fruit-sugar, and thereby high-fructose corn syrup as direct causal factors of obesity. Now ordinarily handball athletes, because of their active lifestyle, do not have to worry about obesity, but kinetic activity does not “neutralize the other harmful effects of too-much sugar/starch/alcohol intake,” especially regarding the harm to the immune system and to the musculoskeletal systems.)
Modern research now reveals that diabetes 1 (can’t produce insulin) and 2 (can’t make enough insulin) are likely results of dietary habits of eating surplus glucose-raising foods. While some humans are more genetically resistant to diabetes 1 and 2, a secondary terrible inflammatory condition arises, for almost all people, which we used to call aging, but today is more and more being recognized as Insulin Resistance, (the dangers of which I first published about in the late 1990’s; please see important updates at the end of this article**), whereby the pancreas fatigues and cannot release enough insulin to turn all that incoming sugar in the body into energy. (Very similar to diabetes 2). Under these conditions the body is forced to convert all excess sugar into fat, and, since the fat cannot be excreted, biomolecular processes must store this fat in various organ tissues, the heart, the liver, the kidneys, and the skin (also an organ), etc.—leading to oxidization (commonly called aging), and organ-failures over time, also formerly called “aging.” Some researchers today believe that “love handles,” for example, represent an external signifier of this kind of fat-storage. You can find research now showing links of “disproportional” waist sizes to BMI and lowered health/aging outcomes.
*Please note brand new research out this month about the role of the thymus gland in controlling inflammation. The thymus, it turns out, is a master-gland that directs the body’s inflammation-fighting resources, except: researchers found that the insulin resistance and diabetes that cause the body to replace glandular cells with fat cells also affect the thymus cells, by turning those anti-inflammation cells into useless fat cells. Thus, with continued overages of sugar in the diet and blood, the thymus loses more and more cells for directing the combat against aging, inflammation, oxidation, and toxic buildup. [You can visit the research by searching on “Complete fatty degeneration of thymus . . . .,” in the journal Immunity and Ageing, 2023.]
This particular research suggests very strongly that humans cannot afford to even BEGIN an insulin-resistance cascade with poor sugar-management habits. How can the thymus generate new thymus cells and combat whole-body inflammation, if it turns to fat?
Knowledgeable sports-nutritionists, studying insulin-resistance research, began seeking alternate sources of energy, (not the –ose foods and sources), and, using some very old research from the early 1900’s, they rediscovered and reinvigorated the keto diet, whereby the human organism relies on ketones (safe-fats/oils-energy) instead of calories (glucose-based energy). The advantages of keto-diets for athletes were first established in research about 1995, and later confirmed in a clinical clearinghouse paper titled “Nutritional Ketosis Alters Fuel Preference and Thereby Endurance Performance in athletes,” 2016. If you think of handball as an endurance sport, as opposed to a sprinting-sport, then you may wish to investigate ketones for your sole source of long-lasting-fuel—and for delaying aging and halting a possible insulin-resistance cascade.
Lately, sports nutritionists have developed a more balanced approach, to argue for eating complex carbohydrates rather than simple ones, along with the safe fats, for extending the benefits of youth into middle age. Ketones play nicely with calories, under these conditions, if ketones provide the base for the diet, and then the complex carbs are the addenda. The simple carbs need elimination from the diet, and include all white vegetables, starches, refined sugars, -ose sugars, and, yes, beers and wines, which also contain a surplus of too-simple carbohydrates. By contrast, the complex-carbs + safe-fats/oils + protein approach represents the modified keto diet. A Paleo diet has much in common with a keto diet, but the Paleo diet needs more study to correlate with or add to the keto.
Alcohol: Furthermore, as a proven neurotoxin, alcohol remains a danger to neurons in the brain and elsewhere (liver/heart/kidneys/blood vessels), and causes proven neuronal death, as approximately 40, 000 neurons are killed after imbibing one ounce or more of pure alcohol, which is equal to about 3.5 12-ounce beers, or two glasses of 12.5 % wine. (Remember, your whole body has neurons, in the spine, in the gut, at the sites of pain-receptors, where nerves command muscles, etc.) Though the brain has about 86 billion neurons, we don’t get to choose which neurons get killed by each bout of alcohol.
A couple of years ago, researchers across different disciplines discovered that alcohol first targets the neurons for death in the region of the brain that requires blood the fastest, (logical, right?), where the alcohol was being delivered fastest: to the ventromedial pre-frontal (vmPFC) cortex, where all top-flight human “executive functioning” occurs: decision-making, moral judgment, ethical judgment, perceptions of self-identity, perceptions of others, empathy, altruistic-thinking, and, especially for the purposes of this article, for athletes and combatants, tactical decision-making. That executive-functioning part of the brain is hungriest for energy and blood pumped from the heart, while the brain itself requires about 40 % of your sum available biological energy.
Now, why would elite championship athletes elect to destroy the parts of their brains that give them the greatest tactical advantages over their opponents, the part of their brains that also calls directly to the hippocampus to remember and enact past successful tactics and biomechanics that ensured successes on the court? Furthermore, evidence exists that chronic alcohol-use renders the blood-brain barrier more permeable to specific biomolecules that target and alter neural wiring, while affecting connections between the vmPFC, the hippocampus (where memories are stored), and the amygdala, where emotions are generated. The adverse biomolecules also strengthen neural wiring that becomes addictions and imprints new habitual behaviors. We all know athletes and acquaintances whose reactions, decisions, judgments, and personalities have been adversely, and seemingly permanently, affected by chronic alcohol use.
In this respect, for example, Roger Federer’s coaching and sports-nutrition team failed him, because after he won his last Wimbledon, he went on a champagne binge, as he admitted in the news; understandable, but self-devastating. His team should have had the research about alcohol available, to serve their client, since he had already expressed a desire to win more Grand Slams. He has not done as consistently well since that binge, as measured by incorrect tactical choices made at key moments in high-valued tournaments, (references available on request), whereas prior to the binge he reliably found winning adjustments to remedy being behind during games and sets.
For those of us who coach and follow his career closely, we have a pretty good idea about why he has failed to remember and enact tactics that won him past matches, prior to the binge. Those preciously hard-earned and crafted neurons in his brain were destroyed, (by alcohol-toxified, neural-cell-apoptosis) in one night, and they cannot be recovered, though he can go back to the (re)learning-book, study his past wins, and practice competition-scenarios, and generate new neurons, as the brain remains plastic through 90 years of age, plus. He could retrain what worked in about 3-6 months.
Meanwhile, very good news for athletes concerned about aging and performance came out yesterday. Modern humans are reaching ages 70 and above with many more markers of youth than their counterparts of two generations ago, largely due to better science, diets, and exercise-habits. Theoretically, a top championship pro athlete can continue to dominate well into his forties, today, and perhaps maintain dominance over his younger rivals, because his brain has had extra time to eliminate the unnecessary neural wiring that costs biological energy. In short, senior athletes conserve energy better, and, if you add that “economy-of-thought” to staying younger longer, you have a lot of promise for breaking records!
If you wish to become an elite championship athlete, you must investigate your daily sugar-ingestion with a sports-nutritionist who understands your unique biogenetic makeup and who can help you devise a perfect diet. It usually starts by keeping a daily food diary and then making charts correlating the meals from the previous 48 hours with your ongoing competitive performances. Note that investigating eliminating and replacing sugar in my coaching here refers to any carbohydrate spelled with an –ose on the end: fructose, lactose, glucose, maltose, dextrose, etc.). Please do not accept at face value superstitions about needing sugar for energy; your body in perfect health with no insulin resistance can make all the glucose it needs to produce energy (supply the ATP and Krebs cycles), simply from converting complex carbs (all dark veggies/whole-grains/richly colored veggies, dark beans and lentils, and dark or richly colored fruits (along with ingesting safe fats (fish/avocado/olive oils/nuts) and proteins (meat/fish/dairy/nuts/soy non-allergenic-proteins) for your specific DNA.): On this diet, yes, you will be hungry more often but can eat more often, and will not gain weight. You will want to design a diet tailored with your sports-nutrition specialist, who is up to date on keto vs. sugar and alcohol. Males may also wish to be cautious with consuming estrogenic foods or using products that contain absorbable estrogenic compounds [search], including products encased in plastics/cans that cause estrogenic effects within the body. Strange, but true, males need estrogens, just as women need testosterone, but a good Ph.D. in nutrition can give you better advice about achieving the right balance, than found here.
TIPS TO CONSULT WITH YOUR DEDICATED PH.D. SPORTS NUTRITIONIST
- Should you remove all –ose foods from your diet.? Investigate the modified KETO diet, which relies on ketones for energy instead of calories. (We have long known that a calorie-high diet ages the body prematurely, likely due to the sugar-inflammation cycle talked about above. Which was why physicians recommended caloric-restriction to extend life. See footnote 1 below.) Research has proven that the brain prefers ketones, anyway, (safe-fats/oil-based-energy), and neurons gobble those up, in preference over glucose. Handball IS mental, and your greatest competitive asset is your brain. Ketone energy is slower-delivered to the body, and slows the fast-reactions a measurable bit, but, in exchange, ketones provide energy that last 5 hours or more—without leading to a crash, and without producing insulin-resistance. You will actually be able to hydrate with plain water during a bout, and maybe even eat food while in a match, if the food is a precise balance of safe-fats/protein/complex carbs. You won’t want to depend on a sugar-energy drink. Note how Gatorade and other brands of competition beverages lately have read the research and are now all producing sugarless formulas. Why is that?
- Should you always eat breakfast within an hour of rising in the AM, and when you eat, eat protein first? Research has shown when you eat 4-6 ounces of protein prior to eating carbs at every meal, and wait about five minutes, your body produces an enzyme which slows down and allows for long-term release of measured insulin production. So, the carbs you do eat will be integrated into your energy cycles over a much longer time-frame, than will eating the Sugar-Bomb cereals, Pop-Tarts (TM), or sweet-rolls, or jelly-toast outright, without eating protein first.
- Should you abandon alcohol? It prematurely ages the body, and destroys the best part of your brain. The risk? No friends, and no invitations to the bar after playing. The benefits? Winning. New research out in 2023 demonstrates that even occasional alcohol-drinking cascades to long-term negative effects.
- Should you get your blood checked for allergies? I was having mild breathing problems during matches, and, after testing my heart and lung functions, my family physician recommended the blood-allergens test (not the skin test, too many false positives, while actually causing your body to react). The lab technicians can learn more by getting some blood out, and working on that, so you don’t personally experience an allergic reaction). The special lab (my physician found) reported that I was high-chart-allergic to ginger, damn!, my favorite spice, in all my drinks, menu-items, coffee, etc. I removed it from my diet, and my short-windedness evaporated. Any good doctor can order the blood-allergy test, requiring about four test-tubes of blood, sent to a special lab, which will provide a readout, and often provide a recommended series of alternate recipes and diets enough to last you for a sample month. Note that hidden yeasts (brewer’s and baker’s), and gluten sensitivities and allergies are quite common, especially in cases where they cause mildly adverse symptoms–until the symptoms crescendo over time.
- Should you reconsider the timing of when you drink your coffee? Expert nutritionists have long known that coffee and caffeine spike glucose release which in turn spike too much sudden insulin release. Yesterday, October 2, 2020, researchers confirmed that drinking coffee before eating may be a prime driver of insulin-resistance, pancreas-fatigue, and thus, premature-aging. This very common worldwide habit may be responsible for the great numbers of people “presenting” with insulin resistance, as well as suffering other metabolic conditions. Experts now say “Eat protein and then breakfast before the coffee.” Then, perhaps, the 4-6 oz. protein-first rule can counteract the insulin spike? I’m not sure that adding protein powder to the coffee plus some MCT or other oil will slow the sudden production of glucose. Very likely the caffeine acts faster than the enzyme-production aided by consuming the protein.
- For male handball competitors, maintaining a healthy pelvic floor includes prostate-gland preservation. So, while remembering that a high level of dark green vegetables in the daily diet has been proven to reduce BPH (unnecessary enlargement), remembering that too much sugar in the diet can also feed any cancer-cells that may exist anywhere in the body, as cancer cells feed on and need quick sugar. (This historic medical observation has been noted as part of the Warburg Effect.) Also, recent research over the last five years has proven a direct causal link between eating overly charred or grilled foods and developing prostate cancer. [References available on request.] This latter news should not be too surprising, considering that burnt and carbonized materials or ingredients ingested or breathed into the lungs have a long long association as being carcinogenic.
- Jayanta Kumar Das, Nirad Banskota, Julián Candia, Michael E. Griswold, Melissa Orenduff, Rafael de Cabo, David L. Corcoran, Sai Krupa Das, Supriyo De, Kim Marie Huffman, Virginia B. Kraus, William E. Kraus, Corby K. Martin, Susan B. Racette, Leanne M. Redman, Birgit Schilling, Daniel W. Belsky, Luigi Ferrucci. Calorie restriction modulates the transcription of genes related to stress response and longevity in human muscle: The CALERIE study. Aging Cell, 2023; DOI: 10.1111/acel.13963