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Vitamin D and sports: overhyping a strong case

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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The current issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise has an article called “Athletic Performance and Vitamin D,” a topic that ignited some mild controversy when I dealt with it in a Jockology column back in March. The authors review five lines of evidence in support of their hypothesis that vitamin D helps athletic performance. In particular, they focus on a series of German studies from the 1940s and 50s showing that ultraviolet irradiation improved athletic performance, and on the spectacularly unsurprising result that athletes seem to be fitter in the summer (when vitamin can be produced from sunshine) than in the winter. Tellingly, they include this caveat about studies of vitamin D deficiency:

No attempt was made to associate athletic performance with 25(OH)D levels (a measure of vitamin D levels) in these four studies—or any study that we could locate.

Continue reading “Vitamin D and sports: overhyping a strong case”

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Caffeine: is it all in your head after all?

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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Caffeine, as we’ve noted before, is probably the most versatile and powerful legal performance enhancer out there. Researchers can’t seem to find enough good things to say about it. And one of its most head-scratching properties is that it appears to give as much of a boost to habitual users as it does to caffeine virgins. But a new study in the journal Psychopharmacology offers a rare discordant voice. Continue reading “Caffeine: is it all in your head after all?”

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Running in pollution, core strength, toe joints and more!

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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The new issue of Canadian Running magazine is on newsstands now. Lots of good stuff in there, as usual — I particularly recommend the article by Canadian 1,500-metre star Hilary Stellingwerff on her training stint in the highlands of Ethiopia. Lots of behind-the-scenes details about the training of top Ethiopian stars, and a very interesting window into a country that few of us have visited (well, I haven’t).

There’s also my regular Science of Running column. Topics covered: how much pollution you inhale running alongside a four-lane highway; why it’s better to measure your heart rate in a race or workout than in the lab; whether core strengthening actually makes you run faster; whether heavy shoes make you run slower; and whether running is bad for your toe joints.

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Follow-up on “non-surgical” Achilles treatment

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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I now have details from the ARRS Annual Meeting presentation on the “non-surgical” Achilles treatment discussed yesterday. Continue reading “Follow-up on “non-surgical” Achilles treatment”

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New “non-surgical” treatment for Achilles problems?

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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[UPDATED INFO HERE.] There’s a press release from the American Roentgen Ray Society (a.k.a. radiologists — “Roentgen ray” was the original name for X-rays) that has been making the rounds over the past few days, thanks to a fairly optimistic opening line:

Researchers have found an alternative, “non-surgical” method to treat chronic tendinosis (tendinitis) of the Achilles tendon that fails conservative treatment, according to a study performed at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University in Chicago, IL.

This, of course, would be great news, especially for the 10 to 15 percent of runners who may be affected by Achilles problems that don’t respond to the usual treatments. The new approach seems to be “ultrasound-guided Achilles debridement.” This is a little confusing, because debridement (removing the damaged tissue, and possibly making some incisions to stimulate the body’s natural repair processes) is (a) a well-established treatment for Achilles problems, and (b) generally considered a surgical procedure.

So what’s new here? Perhaps it’s a minimally invasive procedure, made possible by the ultrasonic guidance — though that still sounds like surgery to me. I’ve requested a copy of the full study, so that should answer these questions. In the meantime, the press release reports that about 60 percent of the 17 patients who underwent the procedure reported either marked improvement or complete disappearance of their symptons, so it’s worth keeping an eye on.