Hey everybody. I hope you're enjoying the end of 2019. I know that I'm not alone in wondering where the year is gone feels like yesterday that I was planning a 20-19 s goals what I wanted to achieve, I guess time flies when you're having fun. If you like me in the northern hemisphere dealing with the snow and the ice and the cold which I'm not ever going to get used to. I hope you enjoying some easier training or some indoor workouts. And for everyone back home in Australia. I hope you're enjoying a lovely sunny days.Today's guest is louisbourg of fellow Aussie, and she's been the head of Sports Nutrition at the Australian Institute of sport since 1990 and has over 30 years experience working directly with the world's best athletes and coaches who research includes post-exercise recovery carbohydrate and fat metabolism during exercise and fluid needs and Sport her understanding and knowledge in the realm of carbohydrate fueling and utilization is game-changing and is directly resulted in multiple.Double Olympic medals, in fact any athlete with goals to increase their performance can benefit from Louise's work when she speaks people listen, and that was definitely the case when I got to spend a morning with her in New York following her participation in the New York Marathon earlier in November having grown up in Australia. I was excited to meet Louise her books on Sports Nutrition Grace book shelves across the country. I remember growing up and cooking from her books. And in fact my parents use recipes from her books to this day 20 years later Louise was so gracious with their time. We got to spend a few hours together following the interview reminiscing about Australia and talking about are many Mutual connections. I got a lot of tips and ideas from Louise about how to fuel my training and racing Ambitions for 2020 during the interview, and I know you will too a special shout out and thank you to Julia and the team from unit nutrition for bringing the weasel night together. I hope you enjoy this episode of inner voice Travis Mackenzie. Well, I feel very very privileged to be sitting here with louisbourg right now. And it's quite surreal. I don't know if you ever have these moments of how did I get here? But we're sitting in New York. I remember growing up. I had this survival for the fittest and from the fittest books. So a little bit of a fanboy moment being able to sit here with you. How are you today a little bit sore, and sorry, so I'm feeling that your life has been not very good place to be. You think well, it's funny because I was thinking back when Julie had mentioned Julia from unit nutrition had mentioned that we would me and I was thinking back of my favorite recipes from those books and my dad was an athlete a triathlete in the early 90s and you know growing up. I did my first line man in 2003 and that was around about the time when those books are coming out. I think 1999 and 2001. So yeah, it's cool to kind of think back to my time when I was when I was And and learning a lot from you. Then you did run the marathon yesterday. Give us the quick synopsis of how that went for you disappointing. I wanted to do better. I did the first half really well and then I tripped it an aid station and tweened my hamstrings. So then it was just survival Shuffle home. So good thing about marathons is always another one and I'm hoping that the next one's going to be better. But at least I made it home and I've got a medal to show for it. Yeah, and you did itso. Some context on it. You still had a very good time even though you're a hobbling and shuffling your way home. I think 338 you mentioned the 338, but I always like to try and go under 3:30 some sort of magic mark and so far as I get older. I'm not getting any slower. So I kind of figured by 80. I'm going to win my just Outlast everyone. That's the tree could see where are my other technique of running? Well as it the day before you go and do all this window shopping and you look at all these things you promised yourself you. If you make your target, you can go back and get them the next day. So I can't do that today. I'm reviewing next year. Next year or next year is the 50th Anniversary. Do you plan to come back to New York? I love New York. It's my favorite city. And it's just a wonderful run. Yeah, tell me a bit more about your athletic background you, you know, you obviously running marathons now, but where does your kind of athletic history come from? Oh my goodness. I'm a very very modestly trained and tested. Talented athlete I started doing Ironman actually. I mean, I've always done something at school, but then when I left school, I started doing a few fun runs and then saw the Iron Man and thought that sounds like something I should do. So I entered the Ironman in Hawaii and this is in the days when there was a lottery and I got in without even knowing how how unusual has special that was and I hadn't done a triathlon at that stage. So imagine Yeah day booze is the Iron Man. And the reason I do it is partly. I like to have a challenge, but for me, it's all about that n equals one experiment with Sports Nutrition. And so when I find a challenge to really push the attrition and its effects on performance, I kind of feel well if you've not got much talent, maybe you can do everything else as well as possible and learn from the experience, but get the best out of yourself. And so I'm hoping that one of the reasons I'm not getting slower as I'm just Just continuing to use new strategies around science to get the best out of yourself. Hmm. That's interesting because I feel like Sports Nutrition and the science in that space is in its infancy compared to sport itself what has been some of those really dramatic developments over the last 20 to 30 years that you've seen in that space fueling definitely. So we've gone from a feeling back in the sort of 80s that you couldn't really take in much during a The size because once you put something in your stomach and interferes with gastric emptying and if you're wanting to maintain hydration status will then you've got to keep really dilute and then there was a whole series of studies in the 90s and beginning of the century that showed that actually your ability to tolerate and absorb carbohydrate when it's consumed was much greater than we thought and when you're doing these longer events or doing really sustained high intensity. Events, like the two hour marathon that the more cards you can take in during the race to supplement what you've been able to store beforehand really gives you the best ability to work at the top end for as long as you can so that was one breakthrough, but then almost opposite to that there's new breakthrough shown that you can fuel your brain in different ways without actually absorbing any nutrients to improve performance and that's really good for some of the shorter events. Where You're not limited with your muscles fuel availability, but we forget that the brain is what's telling the muscle how hard it can go? And so now there's a whole range of different strategies. We can offer that make you just feel better, whatever the environment or the event that you're doing and it offers so many more opportunities for nutrition during events that we hadn't thought of previously. I'm going to go back we'll go back to that and touch on that in a moment, but I want to hear a bit more of your journey to get in getting into sports. Science, how did you kind of find your way there? Was it something you were interested in in school? What was that Journey like for you getting in getting to that place? Oh gosh, look at the most accidental career possible because when I studied nutrition there was no such thing as Sports Nutrition. And in fact, I only studied nutrition by accident and because it was a personal interest and as I was studying at one of my lecturers was a marathon runner and I can remember going around his place for do you know him? The whole class is starving students around to his place and his wife are put on this huge spread and he's just there with lettuce and cheese on his plate and I said to him, you know, don't you like your wife's cooking and he said no, I'm I'm doing a marathon in the weekend this the swedes have just published this paper on this new technique where you can deplete the glycogen in your muscles and then replace it in super compensated. It means you can run a marathon faster and something just went off in my head. And I thought well gosh, that's that's the angle. I love Sport and I love nutrition and they actually intersect and so he allowed me to do some studying this him. I went on to do a PhD with him after I finish dietetics and then it was a matter of trying to convince the rest of the world. There was something and again like just totally accidentally your Australian. So, you know how Australian Rules Football is the life of others Australian Sport and I follow securely which is a really unfortunate team who In a hundred and twenty years of competition as I only won the premiership once and so I wrote to the star player on the team Trevor Barker who didn't spit of like David Beckham and write a letter teams as a 20-year old saying nutrition is really important for performance. And I think this could be the thing that gets the Saints the next friendship and he must have received. I don't know how many hundreds of letters every day from 20 year old girl. Yeah. And he took my letter and he gave it to the team Doctor Who rang me and said would you like to come down and have a play with the guys? So how how lucky is that? Yeah, I got my first sort of step into into professional sport worked with them for a while and then eventually the Australian Institute of sport advertised a position and the rest is history really but it's you know, it's just a complete series of Lucky accidental moments that really Solid acid and a wonderful career was when he said I have a very strong belief that you're in the right place at the right time and everything happens for a reason and you obviously took that opportunity saw an opportunity took it, you know, and and the rest is history funny son killed a story. So I grew up playing I was Rules Football and one of my best mates growing up was Nick re what was who's my absolute hero? There you go. Have you met Nick? I will I work well still work with a team. No, I did some work in the these and they're now in about 2006. They contacted me again and said we know you come down to Melbourne for the games on the weekend, you know, is there any way that we can use your involvement? And so I had another three years going back and working with them on a part-time basis and that's what I met Nick. Yeah, and he's just a superb human being a wonderful athlete but a real supporter of nutrition and as captain of the team. Was really instrumental in make sure that when I came back again that what I did was really appreciated and it was really time. Yeah, I've got it though. No Premiership sadly. I was agile long supporter as a kid and we lost many many Grand finals when I was following them and then when Nick went to st. Kilda, I became a secured a fan and lost many many Grand finals. I'm still waiting for the championship as a supporter as well. Tell me. About your time at the AIS you were there from the beginning or early on I believe what was that, you know building I guess a program there and you know, you put the books out and you work with some up-and-coming athletes and some amazing athletes. Tell us a little bit more about your journey in your story at the AIS. Gosh. It was wonderful when I started the heroes was really new and it had sort of no really strict guidelines around what it could do other than just to work with athletes and we had scholarship program for 35 Sport's most of the based in Canberra, but some of the other campuses around Australia and I was The dietitian and so, you know, my remit was to do what I could to work with all these Sports and it was just I look back now and think how to manage it, you know back then the expectations of what nutrition could do were a lot smaller and so you are doing that first exploratory work with coaches and athletes and everyone was so welcoming and it was you know, such a new thing and I was surrounded by terrific people to work with these days Sports become far more sort of organized if you like and there's a lot of structure and expectations around what happens and it's improved in lots of ways, but I really do miss that time where the main interactions and with coaches and athletes and I don't think it's just the change in the area. So I think it's a change in the whole way. We live our lives because I Many of the game just to say a camp with an athlete or sport back. Then he go away to an altitude came for a month and you take a book because there was no laptops and emails at all the things that you know, take up our time now and so when you are with athletes and coaches you were just with them and you developed great Rapport and relationships and those serendipitous conversations, you'd have it at night you'd sort of, you know brainstorm what you could do in the sport to improve it and so there were so many Opportunities for those just little tidbits of insights that made a real difference. Whereas now we're all so busy doing 25 things at the one time and you sort of have to have a workshop to put coaches with you to force a conversation and it's not the same as just those sort of serendipitous really long term things. So, I mean, I've loved everything I've done and I still love what I do, but it's certainly different ways in which we were able to Order your own do you think that that led itself to those bigger gains or those bigger changes happening by being in that environment where you can work directly with coaches and athletes, whereas now it feels like all of the changes were making a very much more incremental. Do you think that has something to do with it? I agree with you because certainly in the early days. There was a very low starting point I guess and so everything you did was likely to make a bigger change. And Australia was ahead of the curve. I think in trying to be systematic with applying Sport Science and setting up these like I think the beauty of the area sin was it was a chronic situation where coaches and Sport scientists and athletes were always together. And so we got the best out of of each other and now the whole system is changed and there's some benefits and having athletes and coaches back in the daily training environments, but that Continued interaction is not there anymore. It's diluted in different ways. And so I think the rest of the world's caught up and we've probably made a lot of the games and now we know everyone talks about marginal gains and we're looking for those one percenters which make a difference but they're harder to find and they're sort of harder to prove that they work because there's so much else going on as well. Tell me about some really memorable athletes or coaches that you've worked with that, you know through Olympic Cycles or that have you know, gotten better results than you thought they would what are some of those kind of memorable interactions that you've had. Oh gosh, he's so ready. Look at me starting back at the very beginning. You know, when I started at the AIS I was at the dietitian and there was you know, perhaps and feeling of well, what's this got to offer and you know, we haven't had one before so why do we need one now and one of the first coach To embrace. The idea of nutrition was Terry gather Cole who was a swimming coach and he was a lovely guy really sort of surly and we started off as a bit of a love-hate relationship, but he was the one that gave you my first opportunities to travel with sports and I would have a role managing the camp or the team. So I was sort of paying my dues in one way, but it really allowed me the opportunity to be with the athletes and certainly enhanced. my ability to understand Sport and Logistics because a lot of people understand maybe a sports science better, but they've got no idea how to roll it out on the ground and they can either go one or two ways either they can be too officious and try and take over and want it to be all about the science and then it sort of over plays its role and it makes it just too difficult for athletes to do because you know, it's complicated and athletes are going to million things to think about Moment when they're competing in so it's not really doing the right thing. But on the other hand, you know, sometimes the activity just doesn't understand either the rules or sport or the practicalities of the culture of what's going on and it just simply can't be implemented because it's you just haven't understood what the athlete needs to have on the day. So, I hope that just that immersion for me in those early days of just leave. Begin breathing sport all the time. It might be a time intensive and sort of wasteful experience to do that. But certainly the degree of learning that you make and the ability to sort of have insights about it was really important for me and then going sort of more recently one of the sports that I've been working with most recently is race walking and if you'd asked me ten years ago about race walking on a set up my stupid sport. He uses and then I was thrown into working with them and I recognized a couple of really interesting things about it. The first is that the athletes and coaches themselves are fantastic and I've had a wonderful relationship with International athletes and some research camps that we've been doing our Supernova series, but from the race event itself the 50k event for men and women is really demanding. It's about a three and a half hour for men for our foreman. Event, which is in a really interesting spot in terms of that fueling that we talked about before but the way that the race is repeated. They do it on a 1 or 2 K Loop because they need to have judges watching the technique and so there's an aid station every two kilometres into K Loop which means that the opportunities for nutrition during the event a huge that's you know, you look at the marathon and we've got Aid stations every 5K although Looking at what they've learned from watching race walking. They're now bringing in for the elite races at least eight stations more often than we try and go after things like the two hour marathon record because the more frequently consumed things during a race particularly when you're doing it on the on the run and you having to manage juggling actually consuming as well as performing the more often you can do it makes the success of the nutrition plan more likely. And so for me the experience with race walking gave me that perfect mix of a very nutritionally demanding event with a setup that allowed nutrition to be implemented. And so I was really lucky to work with some Brett Valance coach and Jared talent in 2012. Jared had been the silver medalist at the Beijing Olympics in that event and had come to me afterwards and said look, we think that Next four years will be an explosion in the way that those races is addressed and that to do what he had done in Beijing require a much better tactic and that was about the stage that this idea regressive fueling was coming in and Jared hadn't been a good future. In fact, if you Google Jared Talent, one of the top things that comes up is Jared Talent vomit and you look of the picture and see that in Beijing as he came into the stadium in the 50k avenging is vomiting and as he finished he had a huge vomit which is not pleasant to watch but it was a sign that whatever his nutrition strategies were weren't working because he wasn't absorbing them and it was interfering with his race. So to start with him with that background and say I want you to be more aggressive with what you do in 2012 was a challenge but he was a perfect specimen to work with because he was just, you know completely trusting and confident in the work that we did together. A-and we really address that over that that particular the year leading into the London Olympics with a lot of work around the type of feeding that is frequency of feeding and the practice of feedings. We know now that your guts like every other muscle in the body. It's trainable. Hmm. So the more you do it in practice the more that you learn both the culture and the behavior, but the more that your gut adapts to be able to absorb nutrients and so In London, we had that perfect day where he just executed the plan right on Target and came back to the gold medal amazing and I so I used to live in Vancouver. So I know Evan done free well and know that you've worked with him quite a bit and I follow his Instagram and when he's doing the camps and how miserable he is on certain days and just you know, one square of chocolate or things like that, but I Funny Story running on the Seawall in Vancouver and I was there was a guy head of me. I'm not that guy was walking and I can't catch him. So yes race walking is a funny sport, but those guys and girls who compete are absolutely amazing athletes. They are phenomenal and I guess that's the other reason I like race walking. Is that on a good day I could run with them when they're walking and so I've had the ability to spend a lot of time with Jared out in training sessions and we literally true the fact we don't talk about how it's going and I can observe the way that he's been able to manage his feeling and For me to just get some insights into what makes these really Elite athlete stick has been really good. And also they appreciate that. You know, I'm committed to sport as well and my modest ability. I can try and get the best out of it. So it's been really like it's the experience of these supernovae camps and the interaction to people I gave them has been really great. They've been incredible ambassadors for Sports Nutrition. I really appreciate everything they've done to be able to bring to the world's attention. Just how important it's been in the way that they do their events. I think it's a couple of things that come to mind for me is the fact that you are able to take things from a lab and take ideas away and Implement them in the real world. I think is really impactful and I think the fact that you're an athlete as well, you know builds that relationship with the athletes and they understand that you are not only someone there is thinking about the theory but you're actually putting it into practice yourself. Well, it's been generous to call myself an athlete but I certainly believe that you have to practice what you preach and you have to think of it through the perspective of an athlete size and the only way you can really do that is to to have that experience yourself. So and I should talk about just briefly the Supernova studies because I've just had the most incredible generosity from these race Walkers who come at you in January to the area somewhere. Do a research Camp and the idea that allows athletes would give up their sort of training in nutrition control and for a month just allow me to be able to work with them. And and it is a collaborative effort. You know, we don't do anything that they don't have an investment in their collaborators the co researchers, you know, we sit down and say what we want to find out and how can we do this experiment so that you will really trust the answers. It's not a matter of they just come in and sort of in a performance and we write up a paper. Everyone goes happy. They they really want to invest in finding out the truth to whatever it is that we're studying and so we work together to make sure that they'll put a hundred and ten percent on the line and we do any testing so that whatever the result is. They know it was real and we can trust the outcomes and interpretations. Hmm. What do you think? So unique about race walking and they're there? They're interested in being a part of that study. I'm sure that you know, obviously you mentioned the consistency of fueling and racing but surely, you know cycling would be another example where you've got unlimited fuel sources. You can feel whenever you're like, so tell me why do you think that race walking has been able to approach this in the manner that they have because probably play some time and I was really lucky to have the experience of working with Jared. Jared is hugely respected. Rice walking and I think Bryce walk is just really nice people. They are very collaborative. They they support each other. It's as I said, it's an unusual Sport and doesn't get a lot of a lot of AirPlay. And so these efforts are amateurs and so they don't make a huge amount of money from from what they do and I think that they're grateful for any help that they get and when I put a camp on and Can look after them for a month. Then that makes a viable difference to them. But I think that we just build up a fun culture and now it's become a thing and I'm just lucky to be the sort of conductor of this or mr. That's really true. That's really cold is probably a bit of a chip on their shoulder to their kind of insulate themselves against other people because people think of them as this crazy Silly Sports, there's probably a bit of a Brotherhood and a Sisterhood there with that sport as well. Right? So talk to me a little bit more. About Average Joe. So, you know, we're here watching the marathon yesterday and there's people walking and you talk to people after their races and that, you know, they messed up they're fueling and that's a big thing in a lot of Endurance Sports. What are some things that people can take away as Average Joe Weekend Warriors that they can learn from your all of your expertise and knowledge. I think that people need to look past tweets and hundred forty characters and just sound bites about Mission or any aspect of their race preparation. It's really important that you invest in good advice. It's personalized and periodized and individualized for you. And so being able to be part of a group or being able to go have a consultation with someone who can work with you to come up with a plan that you practice is really important. And you know, I really love Sports Nutrition companies or parts of the industry. We chillin Based in China to promote that message but also provide opportunities to athletes so that it isn't just his this Latest Buzz signal. I'm going to try it on the day or I'm just going to do it how I think I'm going to do it rather than really invest in understanding how it could work and then following through with the best way so you often hear people having that experience where they've heard about something or tried something and It's not even necessarily new on the day, but it's just not well thought-out and in all the excitement of the race. They just completely misjudged their pacing or what they've done what they bring into the race and 42 kilometers will expose the cracks some of the first guy that tried it died. So it's not easy and it's not forgiving you have to really have you act together. Otherwise, I'm you'll come across over one thing. You said to me there that Stood out was practice and knowing that you know, even when you're doing your long runs or long rides, are you getting ready for your major race? You're very rarely. Are you are you out of pace that you will be in the race situation. So I think the practice part of it is judging how you're going to fuel at that desired effort as well. You know, so many times people say I did a long run and I took a gel and that's enough and then they get into a race and they try and take for jails or something like that. So it's it really is about good advice good. Practice and and having that translate into that race performance. Yeah, I think what you're saying is really important and I talk to people about you won't have the perfect storm of three things going for you. You want to have something that's going to have a true physiological benefit you want to have the sort of a placebo effect of it being able to enhance your performance because you believe in what you're doing and then there's the some intangible is the whole experience that when I work with It's a high poem working with them to build up like an environment of just confidence and feeling special. And so when you can do that and have all those parts going together, that's why I like the idea that you know working with a practitioner or you're in a group or whatever it is so that you're building up all those experiences, you know, one of the things that Jared and I always did was we logged every time he did a training session more than 30 kilometers and we log what it happened. We did feedback about how much you consume how it felt what the weather was like boys performances like and that was learning that you could go back and objectively look at what was happening. But what I was also trying to create for him was that experience of just feeling like you you're accumulating just all the bits and pieces that you need to do a really good job on the day. So a lot of it is physiological but a lot of it also is this sort of psychological Crashing way you fine tune and just get to the point where what's going to happen on the day is just so well thought out for you that you can't help but do a good job tell me if this has been your experience because it has been mine where potentially athletes who compete the best may not be the best physiological athletes, but they have this unshakable belief and confidence in their own ability that they can perform. Whereas you see other athletes who may be more talented maybe don't have that same performance because they don't necessarily believe in their in their talent. Is that something that you've seen it's just the Classic case. It's almost a cliché isn't it now? Because we see it so often and I'm not sure whether it's people who have all the talent don't feel the need for the investment and all the other things. They think they can get away with it and even when I look at my G you and I when I'm out of those training sessions with Elite athletes recognize the difference between me and then like I need to go shopping and have incentives to that to get ready to the Finish Line where he's really Elite athlete is intrinsically motivated and they can just push past the pain in a different way, but certainly having someone who knows that they're not going to be the best in the world and less they have everything going for Or them is an observation that I see and the people like Evan and people like Jared they'll tell you that they don't have the physiology and some of the other Elite athletes but their preparation in the air. I'm attention to detail and then their ability to put a game face on and just get every ounce out of themselves on the day that some really remarkable. Other trusted resources that you could give people that you know, if they're interested in learning more about a certain, you know feeling technique or what have you what are some of those trusted resources that you can point people towards look a lot of good books and these days open access journals often provide a really good resource because they're available in the public domain and that's often a way of getting really recent information from Top. Researchers and practitioners, but I think if you can get that experience of working with someone yourself, you know to go and see a sports dietitian or a sports scientist and actually have the one-to-one relationship and the ability to do a lot of dynamic interaction. That's that that's that's terrific and we spent a lot of time trying to teach our practitioners to be able to represent Sports Nutrition as well as possible. So there's a whole Army of Sports dietitians in Australia, and in every other part of the world that should be able to help an athlete do their best job and I'm really proud that my colleagues can fly the flag for nutrition do a great job and there any specific questions that someone should ask so same with coaches same with you know, anything that has good and bad coaches and there's good and bad practitioners. What would be a couple of questions that people should be asking of that in the beginning of that relationship to ensure? It's a good fit. I don't know what I don't hate ask it directly. But I think I'd like to work with a practitioner who's not in it for themselves. Like it's not all about them and their career and their celebrity as a practitioner. If you could find someone who's really invested in helping athletes and would like to be in the background of doesn't want to make a dependent relationship. I think that's really important. And I mean that's what we sanding contradictory to what I said before about you know, when I That's a lot to have them benefit from that environment. But I also like to be in the background like I don't want it to be all about me and and when an athlete wins or whatever, I want them to be able to recognize it was their contribution. I don't expect anyone to say well I'd like to thank the weeds because it wouldn't have been possible without her because then that I mean that would be incredibly nice but it also be incredibly overstated so, you know, it's defined. I don't know how you asked that question. And you up yourself or is there a way in which you could find out enough about that person to think what's in it for them? Yeah, I'm probably background as well. Obviously, you know same with coaches there's a million and one of those. Yeah, so asking those questions around the background and the history and what they've done what they've done exactly exactly. Now you touched on a few upcoming or newish techniques a little earlier and I'm grateful for Julia the Of unit nutrition for bringing us together. So I want to talk specifically about carbohydrate rinsing and that technique and some of the developments that you've seen over the years in in that in that regard. Yes. So if we go back to the beginning the early interest in carbohydrate really started to push forward because we were interested in the fueling to the muscle and so the idea was that, you know, if you could get extra carbohydrates during an event consumed it Would be delivered to the muscle and the muscle would be able to make use of it, but it was only necessary in events that went longer than the body's ability to store its own glycogen and have it ready. They're so there are so many events where we thought don't worry about it. You know, you just turn up do you think on the day as long as you got reasonable glycogen stores, then nothing else needs to take place, but plenty of personal experiences and laboratory Studies have shown that some of these events and you could think of like a half Our Father 40K time trial the bike there was plenty of evidence that people did better when they had some carbohydrates during even though he said no, but the muscles got plenty of fuel like what you're taking in is so inconsequential compared with what the muscles got its can't have any effect and then asking you can droop Dutch researcher did a whole series of really systematically elegant studies to take that apart and one of the studies Eddie's that you did was to compare what happens when you infuse the glucose into the bloodstream and provide it to the muscle directly bypassing the gut and when you did it, that way there was no improvement in performance. So it seemed to be something special about the act of putting it into your mouth. And of course, if you've had the personal observation of doing that you recognize that, you know, if you're feeling a bit tired and flat and you have some carbs during the race you feel immediately better. You don't have to wait until it's been absorbed taken to the Salon in lined up to be a fuel source its instantaneous. So there seems to be something about the act of putting something in your mouth that does something that makes your body feel good and then people went on to then apply pet scanning techniques where brain Imaging was able to look at that aspect and find that putting carbohydrate in your mouth interacts with receptors in your tongue in your mouth in your gastrointestinal tract and it lights up parts of the brain that Operate in the area of reward and well-being and makes them feel good. So it all makes sense that this idea that once you put some carbs in your mouth and have contact with those receptors. Like if you saw it immediately, you're not going to get a lot of contact. But if you can keep it in your mouth sort of 5 to 10 seconds, then all those areas of the brain light up and suddenly you start feeling good again. And so that made good explanation of why people would feel better even though the muscle didn't need the fuel and then it led to More systematic observations of well, if it happens once can you do it again? I can use your brain like Homer Homer Simpson that you can keep track it and it is so as soon as you put something in your mouth gets the light it gets the benefit and then 10 minutes later you can do it again and it's like it never happened before and so it then let us to understanding that this regular consistent intake of carbohydrates and it didn't have to be actually consumed. I mean There's no disadvantage to swallowing it most cases but it did offer then some advantages and tricky situations where you might have an athlete who's not feeling that good in the stomach. They've been consuming things during the race and they're starting to feel a bit queasy and rather than just not having anything for a period till I start feeling better again being able to just swirl around your mouth and spit it out with sort of allow you to get the benefits from the brain perspective without having to threaten the Guts discomfort until you can then join it up and you know, there's other scenarios in sport where we might deliberately try and train with low carbohydrate availability to try and increase the stimulus and the training effect, but you feel bad when you do it, so you could come up with that scenario where you've got low carbohydrate availability, but you're swelling it in your mouth and spitting it out. So you're not into not interfering with the fact that you do actually want to have low. A availability but you're also allowing yourself to train a bit harder and feel a bit better than the misery that's normally associated with low glycogen training. So you gave a couple of practical examples there so, you know in a race or in a situation where you're feeling queasy and you're not necessarily wanting to feel anymore or in a lower carbohydrate training session or things like that. What are some of the other uses of a carbohydrate rinse product or something that could help where else would you see that being useful? You can add it to the fueling benefits of carbohydrates. So the way that we would change things now is that in the past we would have said well in sport as long as you get the carbs in it doesn't matter how you do it. So if we want to Target say 60 grams of carbs, you can just have it all at half-time in a soccer match and you've that's fuel for the muscle that makes the bill that the muscles down to have for fuel. So tick whereas now it's a spread it out more frequently. So not only does the muscle get that 60 grams of carbs, but the brain every time you putting it into the system is going to get the benefit of the effect making it feel better. So that that's sort of a different way of approaching it strategy or in a sport where you don't need to fuel. So it's a shorter event. Then you might say well don't really care about how much you take. We just want you to take some carbs and have the sensation of it more frequently so that could be for a lot of the shorter sessions or Of exercise that people do and it opens up, you know for lots of events, you know, you might want to be doing a 10K Fun Run or basketball or any sorts of those shorter sportswear fuel doesn't become limiting. But where you can just make yourself feel better and perform better just because you've got the the brain sensation. It's really interesting and the more people I talk to about it. You kind of see this lighting up, you know, pardon the pun of oh, and now I understand it makes sense to me and I think there's a bit more rich And research and education is becoming more available to people but it still feels a bit quite and Stein people kind of don't necessarily understand this process. Where do you think that the opportunity is there for more education and more availability to come from for this particular process of feeling. Well, I think look having products that help you do it so useful, but I also think that using them as a baseline or a vehicle for being able to do this. Education around it is really helpful cops got a bad sort of reputation at the moment and and many of us over consume them in terms of the energy requirements we have in our tolerance of carbohydrates. So being able to get the best of both worlds where you can get the brain effect without over consuming them for a lot of people could be useful. Even if it's someone who's doing exercise just to lose weight. I mean it drives me mad when you go to a gym and you see people in there and there rappelling at this sort of low frequency and you know that they're just trying to get fit and you know, they've probably been told by the doctor to go in and do some exercise to improve their weight control and metabolic profile, but they're sitting there and they've got 600 miles of a sports drink and they're sort of cancelled out the energy balance of the session, but they feel that they need it because they just need the drive to be able to keep doing things. If those people could switch to just having the mouth rings then they The Best of Both Worlds were they actually felt a bit better during the exercise session and enjoyed it more but they haven't sort of reduced the total physiological benefit of doing it by swapping solving it with carbs in sports events. I think the same thing would happen that if we gave people more education about strategies to consume carbohydrate or just swill carbohydrate over the event and get a better effect out of it. They certainly something in new to do and something that they could improve their performance with and then that gets them hooked into continuing to look for other avenues or just even to continue in their sport because they always feel there's a PB round the corner of they keep trying new evidence based ideas. All that's going to contribute to a better outcome in the long-term. What's next the obviously there no the developments in that and the research and education are you know, we're coming up to the 2020. Picks and you know, it's a major High watermark for athletic achievement. Every time the Olympic cycle cycle comes around. So what's what's next in Sports Nutrition? Well, I think the brains got a lot more that we can do to make use of its power to tell us how fast we can go and how well we can do things and it turns out that there's quite a few nutrients or other constituents in food that also react with brains brain function. So we've got Menthol that allows Allows us to feel cooler, which could be really useful for a hot environment like Tokyo. There's the bitter sensation that's often used with quinidine that gives you that flight-or-fight experience that just sudden sudden shock where you sort of find another gear that you didn't have we think that we mouth sense caffeine and there's probably a whole other range of different nutrients. Although there's some involved with some the trip Channel activists that That are involved with cramping. So there are now new mouth rinsing products that claim and should be investigated further around being able to to reduce the sensation to transfer to cramping in some longer events. So I think you know, the brain is an untapped organ in terms of sports performance. We've spent most of the last 40 years looking at what the muscle needs, but we forget that we are whole human being Beings and we've got a head on top of our muscles and that that that often directs the the traffic in terms of our Sports Performance. So things that we can do to exploit the brain and the nutrient interactions with the brain. I think that's still going to be a big news Concept in Sports Nutrition for the least the next couple of decades. What about you? Personally? What's next for you? Athletic was? Oh well marathons. I really am interested to see Laura can hold my performance as I get older and I want to get those six Marathon major Marathon targets ticked off. So I've still got to do Boston and Tokyo to get that medal and then I'll just try and age gracefully and get to the top of the leaderboard with some of the age group things. There's always something you could do and meanwhile, I've got a son who swims and plays water. The polo and Rose and soccer. So I've got plenty of opportunity to be the parent on the sidelines and working with a really young athlete and trying to help them get the best out of their sport. What's up, tell me a bit more about that balance. You're obviously, you know, you're busy with work. You've got your own athletic goals. You've got a family. Like, how do you how do you balance at all? Hmm. My husband calls me n plus 1 because what he means is that whatever resources or time or money or whatever it is. That I've got I always do one more thing and it drives him Bonkers, but it keeps me happy. Yeah, so busy as your balance, this is your balance, but trying to be more efficient with what I do and just care about the stuff that's really important and recognize just how important family and friends are in making your life really fun. What are some final words that you might have for for anyone who's listening or watching and they're maybe they're looking for marginal gain incremental performance boost and it doesn't necessarily have to be about nutrition but maybe some other things that you've learnt through your own athletic Journey or you know business Journey family Journey that can just help them and give them a little bit of a boost as their as a movement towards their next goal. Well, I think two things we've already talked about is what is that luck plays a huge role in your life, but you've got to be in the position to recognize an opportunity and then to to be able to run with it. And so I think everybody should have enough opportunities in their life just to look at what's happening in to say I can go with that. Maybe that's not plan a that I have but this plan B's are really good thing and you can invest in it and it turns out to be the best thing. ass and I think the other thing is that you know, when you get a life where you're able to integrate things that you love doing with something that pays enough money and you know keeps you off the street and then there's something that you can involve all your family and friends with I to be able to really rather than compartmentalizing life to wrap to make it all integrate with all those things that you love doing and need to do that's that's the best kind of life you can have and I've you know, maybe it's just lucky that I've been able to To do it, but gosh, I wouldn't I wouldn't want any other thing and you know you if you can look back over your life just say well wasn't that fantastic. That's great. Very well said how can people find you how can people follow you? I'm on Twitter. I have a Love/Hate relationship with Twitter is you can contact me through the heroes and then just look at all the different Publications and things that I hope will continue both in sort of the peer-reviewed literature. And also some of them just practice practical literature amazing. Well Louise, it's been a pleasure so great to meet you. Thank you for your time today and all the best will be forming new Journey for the sixth American makers. Thanks very much as big bud. Well, that was the Leesburg. I hope you enjoyed the conversation. I made a ton of notes of further reading and techniques and products. I wanted to look into and I'll share some of those in the show notes for you if you enjoyed the show at Love to hear from you. I'd love if you could go and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts and make sure you let Louise know that you enjoyed the episode send her a note on Twitter. She's super responsive and a great source of knowledge and resources. I've said it before but I look forward to bringing you more great conversations on a more consistent basis over a few special episodes lined up that I recorded earlier this year, which will bring out over the next few weeks and months. Thank you so much for listening now get out there and embrace the day cheers and all the best. East
Our brain holds more power than we know. The science and research in sports nutrition has almost entirely focused on what the muscles need, and that's all changing thanks to industry leader and my guest, Louise Burke. "We forget that we are whole human beings, and we've got a head on top of our muscles and that often directs the traffic in terms of our (sports) performance." - Louise Burke When Louise speaks, people listen. And that was the case when I spent a morning with her in New York, following her participation in the New York Marathon. As a fellow Aussie, I was excited to meet her. Having grown up in Australia, where Burke's books on sports nutrition grace bookshelves across the country. My parents use recipes from those books to this day, almost 20 years on. Aside from generational recipe creation, Burke's legacy is guaranteed via her three decades of work with the Australian Institute of Sport, working directly with the world's best athletes and coaches. Her research and knowledge focused on carbohydrate fueling, and utilization is game-changing and has resulted in multiple Olympic medals. In fact, any athlete with goals to increase their performance can benefit from Burke's findings. To understand where the opportunity lies, we must look back at where we've come. For most of us, we have the personal observation and recognition that if we're feeling a bit tired and flat during a race or a training session, we consume carbohydrates and feel immediately better. We don't have to wait until it's absorbed and taken to the muscle to use it as a fuel source. It's instantaneous. This is one of the many concepts we discuss when it comes to fueling and carbohydrate use in sports. We also discuss where the future of nutrition lies in elite sport. This conversation is a fascinating look into the life of one of the world's greatest scientist, who has been able to develop her career in putting science into practice. Thanks to Julia from Unit Nutrition for bringing Louise and me together. Because of this introduction we spent time touching on the innovative practice of mouth-rinsing carbohydrates. As Burke mentioned, "there seems to be something about the act of putting carbohydrates in your mouth that makes your body feel good." And the research proves it. "When we use brain imaging techniques, we can see that putting carbohydrates in your mouth interacts with receptors on your tongue, in your mouth, and your gastrointestinal tract, and it lights up parts of the brain that operate in the area of reward and wellbeing." While there's an immediate impact, Burke goes on to state, "It all makes sense that once you put some carbs in your mouth, they'll have contact with those receptors, if you swallow it immediately you're not going to get a lot of contact. But if you can keep it in your mouth for five to 10 seconds, then all those areas of the brain light up, and suddenly you start feeling good again." But what about the future? It turns out; there are quite a few ingredients in food that also impact our brain function. Burke and other leading scientists are researching these effects, with the upcoming 2020 Olympics clearly in their sights. Each Olympics represents a new high-watermark in human achievement. So what's next? Specifically, in a high-temperature setting and environment like Tokyo, cooling strategies are top of mind. Burke said, n"menthol allows us to feel cooler, which could be useful for a hot environment like Tokyo." The research doesn't stop there, Burke states, "there's the bitter sensation that's used with Quinine that gives you a fight or flight experience, a sudden shock where you may find another gear that you didn't have." 