The odyssey of the Health conditions of Giammarco Tamberi at the 2024 Paris Olympics, recounted in detail on social media by the high jump champion himself until the epilogue – the excruciating pain from kidney stones and the disappointment of the final – has highlighted the risks that elite athletes face in preparing for such an important event.
What the immunologist says
“Tamberi himself was keen to let us know that the fat component in his overall body mass was even lower than 3.5%. Considering that the Acsm (American College of Sports Medicine) establishes the ideal percentage of fat for males at a range between 10 and 20% and even if we want to consider the important objectives of every athlete who, during competitions, obviously aims for the minimum level of that range, in the face of the aforementioned changes that overturn the basic biological functions of man, we cannot fail to register unpleasant contraindications”, he tells Adnkronos Salute immunologist Mauro Minelliprofessor of dietetics and nutrition at Lum University.
“It is never good practice to go beyond 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, – explains Minelli – 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. Speaking of body fat, it will always be worth remembering that, beyond the ‘deposit’ fraction that can serve as ‘reserve mass’, There is a category of fats not by chance called essential that are able to ensure the correct performance of metabolic, immune and thermoregulation processes“.
In the Tamberi case there is an additional complication, once again communicated by Tamberi himself, “of wanting to lose over 5 kilos of body weight that he himself defined as ‘ballast’, through a ‘terrible and hallucinatory’ diet. Even without knowing the details of the diet followed by the athlete – specifies the immunologist – it is to be 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”.
#Tamberi #risks #contraindications #Gimbo #diet
