Another great read from the desk of Dr. Aaron Levin M.D., HSP Health Consultant and Pro Shop team rider:
Yeah, I was sick the past few days. Real sick, hot, cold, shivery, achy. For three days. I felt like crawling under a rock and dying. At first I thought it was a bad case of too-much-TH (TMTH) on HSP ProShop lunch ride. But while TMTH usually targets my lungs, legs and morale, this was different. Everything hurt. Turns out, one of my twins had strep throat, and so did I. I was sick for three days until I figured out my diagnosis, but about 6 hours after taking my first dose of antibiotics, I felt better. Not perfect, but better. Next morning, even better: fever gone, myalgias abating, sore throat just a dull ache. So of course I figured it was time to start riding again. After three days off the bike, one part of me expected my legs to be rested and fresh. Another (wiser) part of me expected to feel terrible. Of course, I felt terrible. Riding easy felt like a chore. All the strength and fitness I’d been working on over the winter seemed to be gone. Any athlete who has ever been sick knows this all too well. The time you spend sick isn’t rest for your body, and even after the illness passes, there is a significant amount of recovery that needs to take place before you can expect to be back to 100%. But why does it take so long to come back after illness? Why does it make sense that infected tonsils should weaken my quadriceps? And is there anything one can do to minimize that recovery time?
I’ve actually thought a fair amount about this subject, and while there is no hard scientific proof for what I’m going to suggest, there is some data which may explain this phenomenon, and may also offer a way to speed recovery. The situation I’m talking about occurs not only after illness. After trauma (such as a bad crash or surgery) your body can also require a relatively long recovery time to resume peak performance—even after the acute healing phase is done. The common theme in these situations is stress on your body. Your body reacts to stress by producing a number of hormones—special chemicals designed to help you survive. Cortisol, for example is a hormone that normally helps maintain blood pressure, blood sugar, immune response and even muscle mass. In response to acute stress your body pumps out extra cortisol, giving you a burst of energy, mental acuity, increased pain tolerance, heightened immunity.
As early as the 1930’s, however scientists noticed part of the stress response that was not wholly beneficial. They found something called “obligatory negative nitrogen balance” after injury or illness. Basically, after the body is stressed it triggers a hormone driven system in which protein sources (proteins contain nitrogen) within the body are broken down`and ultimately wasted—even in the presence of adequate nutrition. The theory is nice: your body is facing attack, so it makes available a ready internal stockpile of protein for use in rebuilding damaged tissue. Unfortunately, your body is programmed to use skeletal muscle as a handy source for that protein stockpile. So the bigger better quadriceps I worked on all winter got broken down and ultimately pissed away just to be available as a means of repairing my bacteria ravaged tonsils. That might be why I still feel crappy on the bike even though antibiotics have cured me. (There is no known cure for TMTH.) All the while my body was facing the stress of infection, it created a negative nitrogen balance cycle, breaking down protein just in case. And now I’ve got to rebuild.
There may be a way to avoid the catabolic—muscle breakdown—state after injury or illness. Not all nutrients are created equally, and as I mentioned before, adequate nutrition is not enough to stop the protein wasting cascade. One specific nutrient source may help. Branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) are basic protein building blocks, and there is data that BCAA supplementation, especially the amino acid leucine may blunt, or even eliminate the muscle breakdown seen after stress. Apparently if your body is flooded with a “ready to use” protein substrate it won’t feel the need to cannibalize itself. In theory it would have been best to start branched chain amino-acid supplementation as soon as I got sick. Even after my strep has been treated, however, there still may be some benefit in getting back up to speed. Hammer Amino Endurance caps have plenty of BCAA in them, and I’m going to give them a try. After all, the lunch ride is only three days away.
