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For Big Athletes, 'Fat and Fit' a Myth
Reported October 29, 2009
(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Superior size and strength can mean
championships, scholarships and million-dollar paydays for today's athletes.
But a comparison of professional baseball players and football players
reveals that the larger professional athletes -- specifically football
linemen -- are at greatly increased risk of cardiometabolic syndrome. These
findings come on the heels of media reports suggesting that professional
football players are twice as likely to die before age 50 as professional
baseball players.
Researchers collected and studied the cardiometabolic syndrome parameters of
69 current professional football players and 155 current professional
baseball players. Parameters studied included blood pressure, fasting
glucose, triglycerides, waist circumference, high density lipoprotein (HDL)
cholesterol, body mass index, waist-to-height ratio, insulin resistance and
levels of alanine aminotransferase, an indicator of fatty liver disease.
As a whole, professional football players demonstrated higher fasting
glucose levels, increased body mass index, larger waist circumference and
higher waist-to-height ratios compared to their baseball counterparts. In
particular, among the 19 professional football linemen studied, including
guards, tackles, centers and defensive ends, there was a significant
increase in these parameters and, as a result, an increased incidence of
cardiometabolic syndrome, defined as exhibiting three or more risk factors.
"Most studies that have examined cardiometabolic risks in professional
athletes have been conducted after athletes retire,” study lead author Dr.
Michael Selden was quoted as saying. “This is one of the first to study
athletes in the midst of their playing careers. We expect professional
athletes to be in peak physical condition given the demands of their jobs
and the amount of time they spend exercising heavily. However, there does
not seem to be a complete protective effect of exercise, particularly among
the larger athletes -- football linemen. Instead, the impact of their sheer
size may outweigh the positive benefits of exercise to mitigate their risk
for cardiometabolic syndrome, fatty liver disease and insulin resistance."
"Much research over the last 10 years has definitely established adipose
tissue as an important modifier for inflammatory responses, adding to its
already well known role in energy metabolism," Russell P. Tracy, Ph.D.,
professor of pathology and biochemistry at the University of Vermont College
of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, was quoted as saying. "It
seems likely, given what we now know, that the amount of excess adipose
tissue carried by many of these athletes may contribute to increased risk of
chronic diseases through both of these pathways."
This phenomenon impacts the next generation of players as well. A recent
report in the Journal of the American Medical Association that examined high
school football linemen found 45 percent were classified as overweight and 9
percent would be classified with severe obesity.
"As younger athletes in high school and college are encouraged to get larger
for competitive reasons, these conditions may manifest themselves in younger
and younger populations," study co-author Dr. John Helzberg, Co-director of
the Division of Gastroenterology at Saint Luke's Hospital of Kansas City and
Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Missouri--Kansas City
School of Medicine, was quoted as saying. "For the population in general,
the concept that you can be both fat and fit may simply not be true."
SOURCE: Presented at the American College of Gastroenterology Annual
Scientific Meeting, San Diego, October 26, 2009 |
