Chia for the Win?
Filed under: Nutrition, Training
EC sent me a Pubmed link to a pretty interesting study recently performed at the Human Performance Laboratory at The University of Alabama.
In this study they took six highly trained endurance athletes and had them carb load for several days prior to testing.
First the group was given its extra carbs for the loading from Gatorade. Then a few weeks later they were given half of their loading carbs form chia seeds, and the other half from Gatorade. Both of the treatments had their carb-loading based on subject bodyweight, so that their intakes were isocaloric.
They then had the subjects perform a 1-hour run at ~65% of their VO2 max, which was followed by a 10k time trial. Without getting into too many details, this part of the study was well designed and controlled, with a crossover repeated measures design and a washout period.
They found that there was no statistical difference in time trial time between the two groups (chia 10k time – 37min 49sec, gatorade – 37min 43sec). They concluded that doing part of your carb loading with chia seeds appears to be a viable option for performance enhancement in endurance events lasting more than 90 minutes, while also decreasing the intake of sugar and increasing intake of omega-3′s.
While clearly not a definitive study, it only had 6 people, it was pretty neat to see a whole food be used in place of Gatorade and hold its own. Now if they used something like a banana as well so that the carb intake wasn’t all fiber, and which added some electrolytes, that might help even more.
Interesting none the less, and I will be curious to see what direction this research heads.
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Posted on March 10th, 2011 by Brian St. Pierre
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