Great Britain Women take home Gold Medal; 12 Players for 40 Minutes

You may or may not know that I am fortunate enough to be an assistant coach to Great Britain's Women's Wheelchair Basketball Team, and we have just finished a major tournament here in the UK with a shiny Gold medal. What follows is an edited news report of the final event, and of course it doesn't do justice to the amount of effort applied by every member of the 12 man squad as well as the team behind the team (Physio, Dr., team manager, and coaching staff), but hopefully it provides an insight into one of the greatest weeks of my life to date. 


As a coach I often relate to people that you're somewhere between the crowd and the players, and of course physically that's exactly where you are; but more so in the sense that the coaching staff provide direction, or instruction to the athletes, relay a game plan or whatnot, but ultimately have to watch the athletes deliver on this. This week I spent considerable time with specific athletes who individually performed at an exceptional level. I would never take credit for anyone else's performance, and they of course, did all the hard work. But let me say that I have never felt so proud, and so involved. The details below and the photos can never truly tell the full story or show the input of EVERY player, without whom this simply wouldn't have been possible.....

Helen "Hooch" Freeman

In front of a packed out crowd at the Manchester Regional Arena, GB were enigmatic in defence and equally unforgiving in attacking the basket with Helen Freeman top scoring with 22 points while Amy Conroy and Laurie Williams were also in double figures as they hit 16 and 11 respectively. Germany were led by Gesche Schunemann, who posted 18.

The GB team out rebounded their German opponents and the depth in their bench, which has been a common theme throughout this tournament, saw them storm to a commanding 15-point lead by half-time, and it was a lead they didn’t surrender for the remainder of the game.

Unsurprisingly it was Freeman, who has dominated the paint for Britain this week, who opened the scores with a clean lay-up. And from there GB and Germany alternated baskets with as much speed as they showed up and down the court, but it was the host nation who ended the period with a slender 16-15 lead.

Amy "Tiger" Conroy posting up against Germany

Freeman only had to wait until four minutes into the second quarter to enter double digits, when her basket took her to ten and Britain to a five-point cushion at 22-17. They extended the difference when first Freeman turned provider, setting up Helen Turner and then she added to her own tally. A pair from the free throw line for the University of Illinois student, bucket from Louise Sugden and shot off the glass for Turner saw GB’s 10-point run put them in a commanding position going into halftime, with them asking Germany to respond to a 36-21 lead.

And it took Germany over two minutes of the third quarter to find an answer as GB continued to lock them out. Having picked up an early three fouls in the first half, Conroy returned to the floor and immediately cancelled out the German basket. And once the gates had opened Britain came flooding in, in the form of another six points which saw them stretch a game-high 19-point lead.

A couple of German buckets managed to weather the storm, but where in previous games Freeman had been the driving offensive force this time GB were very much a double-pronged attack, with Conroy on target to match Freeman’s 14 points and see her side 46-32 good at the end of the third.

And it was perhaps apt that WNBA side, the Atlantic Dream, who are in Manchester for a game on Sunday, were introduced to the crowd before the fourth period because GB were very much living the dream on the court in their quest for a first gold at the BT Paralympic World Cup.

Laurie "Legend" Williams about to hit a tough shot under pressure

Freeman is no stranger to American basketball either, as a student of the University of Illinois, and she had definitely been a firm friend of the free throw line during this week’s tournament so there was little surprise that she calmly and assuredly slotted a pair home early in the fourth.

Gada Jammoul was ejected from the game with four minutes left to play and Germany’s frustration was clear as Great Britain continued to break down plays and rack-up the defensive rebounds. Each time Germany shot there would be at least one red jersey under the basket waiting to pick off the leftovers, while GB were also sure to keep them away from the charity strip.

As the final minute ran down GB broke away and Conray played it off the glass. Germany responded before they fouled Freeman who made one for two from the free throw line. Mareike Adermann was the second German to foul out when she picked up two in quick succession, the first on Sugden who made one for two and then on captain Claire Strange who hit one. Schenemann added a basket to take her personal to 18 but the effort was in vain against a British team who had dominated this final from the very start.

I guess the real beauty of the performance and the tournament as a whole was the team are still not playing to their full capability. They are excelling and yet there is even more to come.....

...I can't wait.

Be well

JF

Eat Well, Sleep Deeply - Nutrition and Hormones for a BETTER life

Lets be fair this isn't something new to you right? I mean we all know to eat well and sleep well. Blessed as I am, my mother reinforced this with me for the most part, and the phrase "burning the candle at both ends" (getting up early and staying up late) was banded around like my enemy.

Of course we're told eating well should include 60%+ carbohydrates. And sleeping well is around 8 hours. I always thought that, and then I thought well I'm busy so if I get 7 then that's fine. What if in reality we should be getting more than 8 hours. What if in reality we should be sleeping from sunset to sunrise. Which in the summer might be 8 hours (ish), but in the winter is far far more. Let's be clear that's what we're designed for. I mean, ten's of thousands of years ago we didn't have a light bulb, and we were potential prey so we made ourselves small, hid in a cave and slept. And it was good.

My mother was really onto something, more than even she knew about.....

Testosterone
I've discussed previously about carbohydrate and sleep patterns screwing up testosterone levels. Hmmm, actually now I look back I don't think I really talked about sleep and testosterone. OK, take it from me, lack of sleep reduces testosterone. As masculine as you think you might be try to go off only a few hours sleep each night and by the end of the week your hormone levels better reflect a teenage girl.

However, that's not the only hormone that sleep plays with. But I'll get to that.

Palaeolithic Nutrition
Firstly I want to summarize palaeolithic nutrition in a nutshell. We hadn't refined grains yet so our carbohydrate intake was at best seasonal and very natural (fruit and vegetables). Carbohydrates are sugar. It's plain and simple, don't think there's much difference between the packet of Haribo and the rice, bread or pasta you're thinking about. Ultimately they're one and the same. And that sugar requires insulin in the body so the pancreas releases insulin. The problem with all of this is that insulin literally shuts down our body's ability to use any fat stores. (In simple explanation; our bodies have not evolved much beyond the concept that we eat sugar in the summer when it's available and that helps us store fat for the coming winter. - The problem is that in modern society we live in a perpetual summer.Winter never comes so our body is never forced to release those fat stores when food is less available. Food is always available so we just eat and get fatter. Unless we just exercise a lot to keep it burned off. But that in itself has inherent problems associated with it. - I'll get to that too).

So by eating less carbohydrates our insulin stays down, which in turn allows what blood sugar we do have to be soaked up by our muscles which is where the sugar should stay until we need it for sudden bursts of energy e.g. escaping from a predator or chasing to catch a bus, (more commonly the latter, hopefully).

In addition lower insulin means you can't make cholesterol, so that goes down too. (Smiles all round.)

Since eating carbohydrates is our way of telling our body 'it's summer' we encourage unnecessary (in modern society) water retention. So by reducing carbohydrates we drop any weight from unnecessary fluid retention, this in turn causes a drop in blood pressure (which we know is good), and acts to reduce the hormone serotonin.

Before I move onto hormones, let me just clarify what palaeolithic man did eat. A lot of meat and protein sources (fish, etc), fruits, nuts (proper nuts, not peanuts which are actually legumes) vegetables (potatoes are tubors not vegetables - think about how inconvenient they would be for palaeolithic man to cook). Of course we think of meet as fatty, but that was OK. Yes fat is OK. Fat won't kill you or cause you diabetes, it's sugar that triggers all the mechanisms that cause diabetes and heart disease, and actually makes you fat! Click nutrition or palaeolithic on the right of this blog to see my previous blogs and read more.

Hormones
So serotonin is a hormone linked with depression and paranoia at high levels. (although interestingly at zero levels it is linked with violence, aggression, and schizophrenia) - you didn't think it was so important to keep your hormones in balance did you!! Of course depression is not so much because of the high serotonin it is more because of low dopamine. So we need higher dopamine levels (consider them on scales - e.g. when one is up the other is down, etc). But this is easy because dopamine stays high in the summer, or the sunlight. Oh. we have eternal sunlight (if we can afford the electricity bill).....so our dopamine goes up and stays up and because which feels good, and is what kind of makes light addictive. But really we just need to get to sleep.
even by not eating carbohydrates we should be getting ~9.5 hours of sleep each night. By staying up we crave sugar because our body still perceives it to be summer so we are meant to be storing food (fat), by being up and around we also have higher cortisol levels (which we'll talk more about in a minute), but even if you're not getting fat you're cortisol is helping to retain the 10 or so lbs of water retention that you're going to need to hibernate. That additional water weight will change salt and glucose absorption in your gut and kidney function for hibernation, which in reality is causing sub-clinical hypertension. This is bad.

Thankfully our body has a really weird shut down mechanism which finds us stood gazing into the fridge at stupid o'clock at night; we crave food ....we're actually craving sugar and for a logical reason. The insulin spike caused by the sugar intake acts to turn any serotonin into melatonin which is what get's us off to sleep. Phew. But it shouldn't have gone that far is the point.

Too much exercise is bad!?
So in our 'stay up all night, don't eat fat (but sugar is OK), and exercise as much as possible lifestyle' we've got problems in all areas. We've talked of sugar and sleep but what about exercise. Well this is the easy bit to be fair; exercise increases the hormone cortisol. Cortisol is not that bad, it's a stress hormone we release during exercise and we know some exercise is good. But the problem is that cortisol acts to suppress the immune system, and has the potential to decrease bone formation. But it also causes the mobilization of blood sugar which causes insulin to go up. If you've got this far I'm going to assume you know what insulin does. Of course cortisol actually acts to aid in fat, protein and carbohydrate metabolism but like with most things; some is good, too much is bad. The key is brief and intense. Not hours and hours of plodding away on a treadmill (which has it's own issues).

Since this has already been a lengthy and detailed blog and really only scratches the surface of a more complex area I'm going to leave it there. I say complex. In reality it's not, eat well and sleep deeply. Be happier and more productive, healthier and live longer.

Be well

JF

Why being a vegetarian is wrong (subtitle: Why Gillian McKeith is stupid)

Firstly; apologies for the length of time since my last blog; it was 9th April, and is now 6th May. I've been busy and have had little that I felt the need to share.

Secondly, no apologies for the title of this blog. Although I accept that it is a little antagonistic, especially with the coming sentence highlighted in bold and center justified with a larger font. But then this is MY blog. If you don't like it; don't read it. As for the Gillian McKeith bit, well it's a little unnecessary I'll give you, but if I called myself a Dr. and wasn't and called myself a nutritionist (a non-protected term; which basically means YOU can call yourself one too), and then I made a tonne of money by selling all of that crap (literally) then I'd be prepared to take a stab for it too.

I digress...

Most that know me know that I live by a simple policy of including meat in every meal. I stand true to my saying:

"I've never met an animal I wouldn't eat".

I tend to allow vegetarians to do their 'thing' and not really get heavily involved in debates over dietary choices. I generally feel that most people don't understand enough about nutrition to make those choices and mostly because the government and media constantly feed them a load of rubbish. That said, I often ask as to why people are vegetarian since I feel this gives me some idea as to who they are, etc. Whether it be not liking meat, or not killing animals to eat, etc.

However, in my recent overgrowing interest in nutrition I came across a simple analogy of an omnivorous vs herbivorous diet with regard to protein intake. This comes from The Paleo Diet for Athletes (just so we're clear I'm not taking credit for someone else's work). [On a side note, this is a pretty good book, although a little on the fence with regard to it's commitment to paleolithic diets.]

So Protein is ESSENTIAL to the human body; I don't even think vegetarians would disagree with this. It's responsible for muscle and brain development and growth, recovery from exercise and aside from water is the major structural component of all cells in our body, including body organs, hair and skin. A large part of this protein necessity comes from the need for essential amino acids EAA (amino acids that we can't synthesize ourselves). Initial studies of EAA deficiency reported nervousness, dizziness, and exhaustion, and without laboring the point, you can see where this is going.

To take in 108g of protein (a respectable sum for an 85kg male (myself)), I could settle for approximately:

110 grams of cod
170 grams of turkey breast
110 grams of chicken

This provides me with 44.5 grams of essential amino acids (which is primarily the point in taking in the protein nutrient to begin with). It equates to approximately 454 calories.

Alternately a vegetarian would need to eat:

1 cup of tofu
1 cup of kidney beans
6 slices of whole wheat bread
1 cup of navy beans
1.5 cups of corn
1 cup of red beans
1 cup of brown rice
2 bagels
2 tablespoons of peanut butter

Apart from the obviously larger appetite required to eat the quantity of food, the vegetarian is also taking in an additional 2,300 calories  in that day. This clarifies how difficult it is to get the necessary protein intake as a vegetarian , and how inefficient it is to rely on grains and legumes for your daily protein intake. And worse; after all this is eaten our vegetarian still hasn't taken in enough essential amino acids!!

So there we go, I'm going to leave it there as I have things to do, but perhaps that has given you some food for thought as it were.

Be well

J