Endurance and Immunity
No performance without an intact immune system
Not in a good mood? Your day was stressful? You got up at 5 a.m., went for a run in the dark, dashed around at work all day and went for a swim late in the evening? Then you slept bad at night, just to get up at 5 a.m. again the next day, etc, etc... Are you often faced with the choice of either having a bad conscience for not training enough or filling your day up so much that you are worried you might collapse? And do these problems arise every year when you are stressed out: colds, sometimes turning into the flu, pains in the groin, in your back, and noone knows where they come from? Knee pains; no diagnosis. And on top of it all, training is not showing any progress. And your motivation is going through the floor? Horror scene? An exaggeration?
Maybe: but some of you have certainly gone through the whole range of horrors? So what's up? To always feel great as a triathlete on the edge of your limit to performance is quite tricky. It means a balancing act where you can easily lose your balance. A step into nothing and... gone. Counting calories, dividing these up into carbohydrates, proteins and fats is one thing, but the distribution of energy is another. This distribution of energy that happens in the metabolic processes is not regulated by the intake of calories but by a number of regulatory processes.
So the magic word is: regulation
When the limit of performance is constantly provoked in the hope of relocating it, and the body should still remain in balance, then very well trained regulatory systems are required. A difficult task: not to overexert or underchallenge body and soul (important!). It must be trained and given time to regenerate in the individually adapted tempo.
Triathlon sport is often pure stress merely due to the effort of training and thus demands an optimal biological stress response. The best person is the person whose stress response is best optimized. An immune system and a nervous system as well as hormones at the peak of performance; that is perfect regulation. That means that each system itself works optimally and the cooperation between them, too. What does that tell us? That the immune system is not principally a defense system but a regulatory system.
They guarantee that the heart, circulation and respiration adapt to the requirements. It also guarantees that energy depots are activated, the blood sugar level does not sink, the body temperature stays more or less constant. As well as that they ensure that get energy for their work and yet all vital organs are provided with sufficient energy.
The immune system is activated within the first minute of stress. It releases a large number of cytokines like interleukin-1, interleukin-6 and tumor-necrosis factors, which adapt the distribution of energy within the body to the needs. If energy is required for healing processes – these having top priority when it comes to energy distribution – then this energy is lacking for other processes. That is why slight health problems withdraw so much energy during a lot of bodily strain that you feel tired and weak.
Delayed healing processes and proneness to injury due to a weakened immune system
It is fundamentally regarded that physical activities, meaning an appropriate intensity of sport adapted to the individual requirements, activates the immune system and thus prevents diseases. Yet as a triathlete, you count among those athletes who are under physical stress and thus often show too low immune system activities. It can be explained in this way: endurance training always involves many small injuries to the muscles and other tissue. Torn muscle fibers trigger inflammatory reactions that precede the healing process. Inflammatory and healing processes are the domains of the immune system. If the period of regeneration is insufficient for the immune system to balance out the catabolic situation where the processes of degradation outweigh, to then heal the micro injuries, it can come to a weakening of the immune system. The known consequences are proneness to injury, pains without physical causes, delays in healing processes or increased susceptibility to infections
Injuries and infections withdraw energy for themselves like parasites. In the case of endurance athletes this can go so far that the condition of the immune system is similar to that of tumor patients. Possibly a catch-22 situation in which the immune system regulates itself to death. An over-training syndrome, a chronic fatigue syndrome or even a viral infection like glandular fever can develop. To find the right balance between training and competition stress as well as regeneration is a trick that has to be learnt during training. The immune system as a defense system is basically always challenged. Viruses and bacteria accompany us all the time and everywhere down to the most intimate. Every weakening caused by infections – for reasons of changed energy regulation already spoken about – makes itself noticeable immediately in the form of a decrease in sports performance. The same goes for the process of wound healing.
Metabolic regulation, wound healing infection defense are not the only territories of the immune system. Our behavior is also influenced by the immune system. The inflammatory cytokines interleukin-1, tumor-necrosis-factor and interleukin-6 force us to slow down. And who would be able to understand this phenomenon better than an athlete trying to access his best performance in vain. A simple cold can prevent someone from unfolding his fullest potential. Listlessness, exhaustion, need to sleep, loss of appetite and weight are typical symptoms that can be triggered by an effect of the immune system (cytokines) on the central nervous system.
Immune system: players in many games and at many fronts
Above all, the immune system is a regulatory system. In the scope of endurance performances and stress, it influences the metabolic regulation to a great extent and thus the energy distribution. In the phase of regeneration, it co-ordinates the healing processes and contributes to the adaptation of the metabolism to the structuring processes. At the same time, it is active as defense system. It fulfils its traditional tasks as defense system. Being an inflammatory and healing system, wound healing is also one of its tasks.
As a triathlete, you should pay attention to the signals that warn of an immunodeficiency. You shouldn't push your body any further when you notice the following: a longer phase of regeneration than you are used to, unusual fatigue, lip herpes, sleeping bad in spite of being tired, a bad appetite in spite of high consumption of calories. Also pains arising without any obvious reason, badly healing wounds or increasing proneness to infections and injuries. These are all only a few of the signals of a weakened immune system. The great art of training is ultimately to find one's own rhythm by switching from stress and regeneration.
