Health experts always advise that regular exercise should be part of your daily schedule. But how would you know if you were overdoing it? Health24 investigated.
Overtraining: the basics
Overtraining is exercise beyond the body's ability. It's when training intensity or duration surpasses the recuperation time being offered to the body.
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A long-distance runner who goes out and runs hard every day, perhaps for several hours, and allows no time for recuperation, is probably overtraining.
Common signs and symptoms of overtraining include:
dwindling enthusiasm for working out;
increases in resting heart rate and resting blood pressure;
muscle or joint soreness that won't go away;
changes in the menstrual pattern;
increased incidence of colds and infection;
a decrease in appetite and weight;
disturbed sleep;
increased irritability, anxiety or depression.
"Overtrained runners find that while their minds are ready to run, their bodies would much rather be asleep in bed. And the more their minds force them to train, the more their bodies resist until, in the race, the body has the final say," Professor Tim Noakes from the Sports Science Institute in Cape Town writes in Lore of Running.
The effects on the body
Noakes points to the following physiological changes that take place in the body:
Histological changes in muscle, including evidence of muscle fibre and mitochondrial abnormalities. In athletes who suffer from impaired athletic performance after years or decades of heavy training, there may also be alterations in the genetic material of the exercised skeletal muscles, suggesting that those muscles have a reduced capacity to respond to the stress of exercise, repair damage after exercise, and tadapt to training.
Reduced capacity of the brain to recruit the muscles used in the activity for which you are trained.
Impaired capacity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-axis to mount the normal hormonal response required to adapt to any external stress, including daily heavy training.
Reduced sympathetic nervous system activity both at rest and during exercise.
From the above, it is clear that the so-called "overtraining syndrome" can have serious debilitating effects on the body. When overtraining is severe, it can lead to a higher rate of infection, hormone depression, mood disorders, fatigue and restlessness.
Research also suggests that women who run long distances are at risk of lower bone density, which can lead to osteoporosis. The more a woman runs, the greater her chance of low bone density.
However, there isn't sufficient evidence to suggest that overtraining per se can lead to sudden death.
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