Yes, athletes do need more protein

Vast research supports the contention that individuals engaged in regular exercise training require more dietary protein than sedentary individuals.

Protein intakes of 1.4 – 2.0 g/kg/day for physically active individuals is not only safe, but may improve the training adaptations to exercise training.

The current recommended level of protein intake (0.8 g/kg/day) is estimated to be sufficient to meet the need of nearly all (97.5%) healthy men and women age 19 years and older. This amount of protein intake may be appropriate for non-exercising individuals, but it is likely not sufficient to offset the oxidation of protein/amino acids during exercise (approximately 1–5% of the total energy cost of exercise) nor is it sufficient to provide substrate for lean tissue accretion or for the repair of exercise induced muscle damage

Relative to endurance exercise, recommended protein intakes range from of 1.0 g/kg to 1.6 g/kg per day [2,4,7,15] depending on the intensity and duration of the endurance exercise, as well as the training status of the individual. For example, an elite endurance athlete requires a greater level of protein intake approaching the higher end the aforementioned range (1.0 to 1.6 g/kg/day). Additionally, as endurance exercise increases in intensity and duration, there is an increased oxidation of branched-chain amino acids, which creates a demand within the body for protein intakes at the upper end of this range. Strength/power exercise is thought to increase protein requirements even more than endurance exercise, particularly during the initial stages of training and/or sharp increases in volume. Recommendations for strength/power exercise typically range from 1.6 to 2.0 g/kg/day [3,11-13,16], although some research suggests that protein requirements may actually decrease during training due to biological adaptations that improve net protein retention

How long does it take to work off long-term sleep debt?

 it can take several weeks to fully work off a sleep debt; there were some studies done on this by Wehr at NIMH in the 90s. I think this is their main paper:

http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/265/4/R846.abstract

They found that if they took otherwise healthy people and put them in an environment where they could sleep up to 14 hours per day, they slept well over their baseline amount (as if working off a sleep debt) for as long as 3 weeks. The first few days they would sleep 10-11 hours a night, then after a couple of weeks it would be 9 hours - only after 3-4 weeks did it subside to the final equilibrium of ~8.5 hours a night, at which point the subjects reported that they felt terrific.


There are more recent, similar studies done at Stanford on athletes that show that in a similar environment, sprint times continued to decrease as much as two months into the study.

Athletes Sweat More. More Sweat is Good.

devora:

 

Here’s something interesting that I read on FitSugar:

“There is a myth that people who are out of shape or are just starting to exercise sweat more profusely. This is generally not true, as sweating during exercise is a sign of more efficient cooling. An athlete who has adapted to keep the body core temperature cool during exercise will move more blood to the skin’s surface quickly and thus release heat more efficiently from the body. It could be that you are working out more regularly now compared to when you were younger and thus are more efficient at cooling by sweating. However, in my research on the topic of sweating and aging, typically the number of sweat glands decreases with age, so I don’t think that age has anything to do with why you are sweating more.”

I found this comment on a BodyBuilding.com form the most interesting:

“Basically, when you exercise the main way you keep your body cool is by sweating. An athlete who has adapted (through exercise/training) to keep the body cool during exercise will shunt blood to the skin’s surface more quickly and release heat from the body. At the same time the sweat glands increase their output and so cool the body through sweat evapourating. Therefore the fitter you are the more effectively you keep your body cool = the more you sweat. Training harder, for longer, in hotter and a more humid environment, will also make you sweat more. 

Genetics - some people simply sweat more than others 
Body Size - larger people tend to sweat more than smaller people 
Fitness - more fit people sweat more and in larger volumes 
Environment - sweat losses are higher in hot, humid conditions 
Exercise Intensity - as intensity increases, sweat loss increases as well”

Salt : bad for most people, good for some athletes

Got curious about basic sodium needs

Your body needs only 500 mg of sodium per day to function under normal circumstances. Endurance athletes need more and should consume fluids that contain sodium if they are exercising for two hours or more.

How much sodium do athletes need?

Studies have shown that ultra-endurance athletes can lose 1-2 grams of salt per liter of sweat.

athletes may lose up to a liter (or more) of sweat each hour

Here’s another source

In some endurance athletes, measured sweat losses have exceeded 1.8 liter per hour and range from 0.5 to 2.5 liters per hour.  

Research measured results have ranged from 230 to 1380 milligrams per liter or even higher. 

You can certainly become depleted in one ironman (8-10 hours), and have low sodium despite eating a lot of salt on a regular basis. 

Hyponatremia means a low concentration of sodium in the blood. When it occurs in triathletes, it usually happens during long or ultra-distance races in the heat but may occur anytime. It is estimated that approximately 30% of the finishers of the Hawaii Ironman are both hyponatremic and dehydrated

So how much sodium would an athlete or avid exerciser need? Assume someone works out 1 hour per day. That works out to 500 + 0.5 * 230 = 615 mg of sodium for some athletes and 500 + 2.5 * 1380 = 3950 mg of sodium for some athletes. 

It’s a reasonable assumption that cavemen exercised at least an hour a day, getting food etc., so where did they get their sodium? Chicken breast and most fish have about 50-75mg of sodium per 100g serving. Salads have about 75mg per 100 gram serving. In short it’s hard to eat a lot of sodium naturally. One potentially better alternative might be swiss chard, which is relatively easy to buy, and has 200mg of sodium per 100g serving, and can be cooked for easier digestion. The obvious conclusion is that cavemen probably ate a lot of vegetables. Research suggests they  ate 10-20 servings per day of fruits and vegetables. 

If you don’t eat a lot of vegetables and you are an athlete your health alternatives are not that palatable. You could drink milk which has some health problems of its own.

One option might be to buy seaweed. Wakame seaweed, for example, has nearly 1 gram of sodium per 100 g serving. I found this source which lists nutritional information for certified organic seaweed that you can buy. I was thinking about mercury in sea vegetables. One linked study I saw showed about 0.004 to 0.04 PPM. This is about the same amount you’d find in a lot of fish, making it a bit less desirable to eat daily.

You could just slather salt on your food. One hazard of that is that sodium is likely not the only thing that gets depleted in exercise, but other things aren’t really that depleted, so it’s probably ok to add salt. Salt licks occur naturally - wild animals have access to them. Some cave men also lived near the sea and could likely get some salt that way.  In short salt may well have been available to cave men as well. So if you’re going to add salt, what type of salt should you add? Sea salt is out because of mercury etc., as is industrial salt, because of chemical impurities. You could buy mined salt that hasn’t been processed. The risk when you ingest a lot of sodium is that you tend to flush out other minerals via urine, so extra vegetables is likely the best bet, followed by good, mined, non-processed salt.

As someone who prefers natural solutions, I would prefer that athletes eat more vegetables, but that isn’t always an option for some - simply because it’s hard to eat for some athletes to eat that many vegetables because they require calorically dense foods. The best solution as I see it is to reduce salt conception and increase vegetable consumption as much as possible, and supplement only if needed.