Immunologist on Tamberi’s diet: “He went beyond the physiological limit”
The renal colic that struck Gianmarco Tamberi on the eve of the 2024 Paris Olympics and which effectively prevented him from competing for a medal has opened a debate on the risks to which athletes are exposed in preparing for such an important event as the Olympic Games.
Asked by theAdnkronos Healthimmunologist Mauro Minelli, professor of dietetics and nutrition at Lum University, underlined how a physical condition like Tamberi’s can lead to “unpleasant side effects”.
The expert based his findings on data reported by the athlete himself, who “was keen to let us know that the fat component in his overall body mass was even less than 3.5%”.
According to the immunologist, the ideal fat for a male should be between 10 and 20%: “Even if we want to consider the important objectives of every athlete who aims for the minimum level of that range, we cannot fail to register unpleasant contraindications in the face of changes that distort the basic biological functions of man”.
For Minelli, “It is never good practice to exceed what is permitted. Even worse when you are aware of going beyond the limits of the physiological. In a study published in the International Journal of Sports Physiological Performance, a percentage of body fat lower than 4.5% was declared, on the basis of evidence gained in the field, capable of negatively impacting physical performance and the functional performance of the immune system”.
Regarding body fat, however, the expert states that “beyond the ‘deposit’ fraction that can serve as ‘reserve mass’, there is a category of fats not by chance called essential that can ensure the correct performance of metabolic, immune and thermoregulation processes”.
In the case of Gianmarco Tamberi, then, the expert refers to an additional complication, always starting from a piece of data provided by the athlete, that is, “the desire to lose over 5 kilos of body weight that he himself defined as ‘ballast’, through a ‘terrible and hallucinatory’ diet”.
Although the details of the athlete’s diet are not known, according to the expert “it is believed that his dietary profile was almost exclusively based on a protein matrix, in the total absence of fats, with the addition of practices that may have favored a progressive process of dehydration”.
“The concentration of urine that followed all this, with consequent crystallization of lithogenic solutes, including urates whose presence is evidently conditioned by high-protein diets, did the rest, compromising the results of a test associated with a path that, as Tamberi himself said when enunciating it, ‘should in no way be emulated’ not only in its execution but, probably, not even in its programming”.
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