Among the main triggers of serious diseases, there is the accumulation of CO2 in cells that deprives them of oxygen, and therefore energy. Excess acidity comes from many factors one of the main ones is stress but also the industrial diet made of coffee, sugars, white bread, refined cereals, alcohol, soda, cheeses, cold cuts and other pre-cooked dishes… When everything is fine, the acids are expelled through urine, but unfortunately most of the time they accumulate and promote hypoxia (lack of oxygen).

Sports enthusiasts who train several times a week, who only drink water or worse nothing during exercise, show a very high acidosis on my Esteck machine test.

Anaerobic-type (without oxygen) trainings naturally increase the acidity of the athlete hence the interest of properly feeding the athlete's cells during and just after exercise with suitable drinks.

But let's go back to our cell oxygenation...

Two Nobel Prize winners in medicine, Warburg and Donagh demonstrated that unlike normal cells, cancer cells can easily develop in a low oxygen environment. On the other hand, they become very sensitive to oxygen and are even unable to survive in the presence of a normal level of oxygen.

Experiments show that by increasing the oxygenation of cancerous tissues, the cells have less resistance in the presence of an attack from the immune system. We know that the immune system constantly needs oxygen to defend itself. Interestingly, two big words have just come out in a row : "immune system"! And what organ is largely responsible for an optimal immune system? It is our famous second brain, the intestine.

If we come back to our sports enthusiast who regularly subjects himself to high-intensity sessions, he puts his intestine in serious use very regularly. Indeed, during anaerobic effort, the intestine is very poorly vascularized to the detriment of the brain and muscles; this results in poor intestinal oxygenation leading to a weakened immune system... We begin to understand the importance of pre and probiotics to strengthen the athlete's microbiota.

But even in a normal state, without high physical activity, our body constantly needs oxygen to produce cellular energy, including ATP molecules, at the level of our mitochondria, our real cellular batteries.

There are different ways to improve the oxygenation of our cells, among these, a diet rich in alkaline foods such as: avocados, berries, ripe bananas, carrots, raisins, celery, garlic, alfalfa sprouts, sweet apples, apricots, pears, pineapples, passion fruits, vegetable juices, chicory, asparagus, seaweed, watercress, lemon, melon, mango, beetroot, watermelon.

Honestly, when I read back the list of foods that I have just suggested, I think that very few athletes consume five portions of these daily! If that were the case, we would likely avoid a lot of injuries, even autoimmune diseases or worse, cancers that are increasingly reported among athletes too…

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Would you like to improve your sports performance, in good health? The athlete's nutrition training is for you. During these 8 hours of training, cut into 59 short videos, Olivier Bourquin shares his 25 years of experience in the field of sports and nutrition in a very concrete way. Discover the detailed program right here.