For Big Athletes, 'Fat and Fit' a Myth

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Superior size and strength can mean championships, scholarships and million-dollar paydays for today's athletes. But a comparison of professional baseball players and football players reveals that the larger professional athletes -- specifically football linemen -- are at greatly increased risk of cardiometabolic syndrome. These findings come on the heels of media reports suggesting that professional football players are twice as likely to die before age 50 as professional baseball players.

Researchers collected and studied the cardiometabolic syndrome parameters of 69 current professional football players and 155 current professional baseball players. Parameters studied included blood pressure, fasting glucose, triglycerides, waist circumference, high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, body mass index, waist-to-height ratio, insulin resistance and levels of alanine aminotransferase, an indicator of fatty liver disease.

As a whole, professional football players demonstrated higher fasting glucose levels, increased body mass index, larger waist circumference and higher waist-to-height ratios compared to their baseball counterparts. In particular, among the 19 professional football linemen studied, including guards, tackles, centers and defensive ends, there was a significant increase in these parameters and, as a result, an increased incidence of cardiometabolic syndrome, defined as exhibiting three or more risk factors.

"Most studies that have examined cardiometabolic risks in professional athletes have been conducted after athletes retire,” study lead author Dr. Michael Selden was quoted as saying. “This is one of the first to study athletes in the midst of their playing careers. We expect professional athletes to be in peak physical condition given the demands of their jobs and the amount of time they spend exercising heavily. However, there does not seem to be a complete protective effect of exercise, particularly among the larger athletes -- football linemen. Instead, the impact of their sheer size may outweigh the positive benefits of exercise to mitigate their risk for cardiometabolic syndrome, fatty liver disease and insulin resistance."

"Much research over the last 10 years has definitely established adipose tissue as an important modifier for inflammatory responses, adding to its already well known role in energy metabolism," Russell P. Tracy, Ph.D., professor of pathology and biochemistry at the University of Vermont College of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, was quoted as saying. "It seems likely, given what we now know, that the amount of excess adipose tissue carried by many of these athletes may contribute to increased risk of chronic diseases through both of these pathways."

This phenomenon impacts the next generation of players as well. A recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Association that examined high school football linemen found 45 percent were classified as overweight and 9 percent would be classified with severe obesity.

"As younger athletes in high school and college are encouraged to get larger for competitive reasons, these conditions may manifest themselves in younger and younger populations," study co-author Dr. John Helzberg, Co-director of the Division of Gastroenterology at Saint Luke's Hospital of Kansas City and Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of Missouri--Kansas City School of Medicine, was quoted as saying. "For the population in general, the concept that you can be both fat and fit may simply not be true."

SOURCE: Presented at the American College of Gastroenterology Annual Scientific Meeting, San Diego, October 26, 2009

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