Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Title
Sports Medicine
Publisher
Springer
School
School of Medical and Health Sciences / Nutrition and Health Innovation Research Institute
RAS ID
58124
Funders
GSSI / Royal Perth Hospital Research Foundation / Emerging Leader Fellowship from the Western Australian Future Health Research and Innovation Fund, Department of Health, WA, Australia / Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions
Abstract
Vitamins and minerals are of fundamental importance to numerous human functions that are essential to optimise athlete performance. Athletes incur a high turnover of key vitamins and minerals and are therefore dependent on sufficient energy intake to replenish nutrient stores. However, many athletes are poor at servicing their energy replenishment needs, especially female athletes, and although a ‘food first approach’ to meeting nutrient requirements is the primary goal, it may be important for some athletes to consider a vitamin and/or mineral supplement to meet their daily needs. When working to determine if an athlete requires vitamin or mineral supplements, practitioners should use a robust framework to assess the overall energy requirements, current dietary practices and the biological and clinical status of their athletes. Of note, any supplementation plan should account for the various factors that may impact the efficacy of the approach (e.g. athlete sex, the nutrient recommended dietary intake, supplement dose/timing, co-consumption of other foods and any food–drug interactions). Importantly, there are numerous vitamins and minerals of key importance to athletes, each having specific relevance to certain situations (e.g. iron and B vitamins are significant contributors to haematological adaptation, calcium and vitamin D are important to bone health and folate is important in the female athlete); therefore, the appropriate supplement for a given situation should be carefully considered and consumed with the goal to augment an athlete’s diet.
DOI
10.1007/s40279-023-01875-4
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Comments
Peeling, P., Sim, M., & McKay, A. K. A. (2023). Considerations for the consumption of vitamin and mineral supplements in athlete populations. Sports Medicine, 53(Issue 1 Supplement), 15-24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-023-01875-4