Dr 8a - Anorexia long version

Does climbers have to be scarecrow skinny?

After reading the comments in (a about banning anorectic climbers I thought I would be a good idea to set the record straight in a scientific viewpoint. I have professionally treated anorectic patients and published articles on the subject and I share 8a’s concern about encouraging an unhealthy way of life.

Since climbing is a lot about pulling your own bodyweight – body weight to strength ratio is a very strong determinant of your climbing ability (once you have a good technique).

Thus bodyweight will always be one of the factors a good climber will want to manipulate.

Your bodyweight is determined by the size of your body and the composition of the material it is made up of.

Since muscles weight about five times as much as fat compared to volume (and the total weight of all the bones in the body is only about 12+-) the uninformed person will easily behave in a way that looses active weight (muscles) instead of deadweight (fat).

For a nonscientist there is still a number of ways to gather information about the mass and the composition of your body

1. Body weight – On the whole uninteresting since it doesn’t tell you anything about the relationship between muscles and “deadweight”. You will however, due to the biomechanical laws, become proportionally weaker for every kg  you put on (even if it is pure muscle) above around .
2. BMI (body mass index – a division of BW (kg) with height (m) squared) will get you mostly misinformed!  A muscular person with low body fat can easily get a BMI of more than 40  (fat!) while a fat person with no muscles can go below 20 (lean!?).

Swedens former prime minister, Göran Persson , an obviously fat and unfit individual actually boasts the same BMI as one of our most celebrated icehockey players (“Foppa” Forsberg), who certainly is a solid pack of muscles. Once again BMI will only tell you how much you weight relative to your body volume. If you were made of steel your BMI would be awful if you on the other hand were composed of pure fat your BMI would be really low! Using a set point for BMI (Eg, 18 ) will serve to alert people to the fact that they are likely to be close to katabolism ( unhealthy breakdown of all the systems in the body) But, as you realized from the above, it doesn’t give you all the pertinent facts.  Using only BMI will let some “katabolic” individuals slip through the net and some anabolic (individuals in a positive metabolic state) will get banned.

3. Body impedance – is a relatively inexpensive way for a “normal individual” to keep trac of body composition. The technique uses the relationship between the electrical conductance (ability to transmit electrical current) and the type of body tissue. Fat will conduct electricity poorly while muscle is a good electrical conductor. Since the weight of the bones and the organ systems (excluding fat and muscles) is proportional to body length and weight bioimpedance will give you a fast, cheap  and “non invasive” (you don’t have to draw any body fluids  etc.)  Body impedance is a good body fat measurement for ”normal” people but there is too few studies conducted on the extreme athlete body so it is not directly accurate for a top climber. Body fat recommendations for sedentary individuals is between 10 to 15% in men and between 15-25% in women It you have the resources you can do a ”water weight” measurement and correlate that to your bio impedance measurement – then you have a way of knowing the accuracy of the bioimpedance measurements and will subsequently by able to easily keep track of your body fat level. This would be a god way to go for organizers of competitions – setting body fat % levels at minimum 6% for men and 10% for women.  Remember that the female body’s anabolic hormone (the hormone keeping you strong and healthy) is Oestrogen. This hormone is stored in body fat and thus when the fat levels are to low there will be to little of this hormone with serious impairment of health as a result. Young women should be extra wary of this because  long dips below recommended body fat levels will get you permanently crippled ( low bone mass, infertile, loss of immune systems functions etc!)

4.             Water weight - Try the water test

While a muscular but lean climber will sink if he/she empties their lungs in a pool the anorectic will ( as well as a fat person) most likely float (little fat yes but also low muscular volume). If you sink even when you have your lungs full of air then you are most likely becoming to lean.

Body builders have long used this method where you weight  a person who is totally immersed in water. If you compensate for the amount of air that is residual in the lungs after a full expiration this allows a very accurate calculation of  the amount of fat and muscle in a person.

5.                   But to waist ratio – you divide the circumference of your waist ( at your navel) with the circumference of your but ( at the widest point). The ratio should be 0.8 or lower for a fit and healthy person. A true anorectic tend increase the ratio due to loosing not only fat but all mass.

For the scientific community there are several more ways to more accurately calculate body fat levels (eg. Marked water, Computer tomography ) but they are not feasible to use in the real world.

More interesting than the above would however it be to steer the climbing community to behavior that denotes the anorectic behavior.

The low bodyweight race will unfortunately be more beneficial if you allow “human spiders” to take endless time scaling walls. First of all – as proven by many of the world best climbers – light is not the game but relative strength is (e.g. Chris Sharma, Dean Potter, Lisa Rands and don’t forget Wolfgang Gullich)

From a sport physiologist point of view there is a one trend in top climbers towards more muscular bodies – most likely because the routes at top level are more like a lot of boulder routes stacked on top of each other and boulderers have always tended to be powerful (e.g. John Gill being an obvious, early and shining example) this we should encourage!

 If we let the other current trend of very long routes take dominance we will enhance the “loose all body weight at any cost” race.  If we start to enforce time limits on accents, keep the routes within reasonable length and encourage “power” routes - we will encourage behavior which leads to strong and healthy climbers.

True Anorexia is a mental disease – a very deadly one! – So it is not a bad mission to try to not lure people in to an anorectic eating behavior! Remember that, while the hospitalized anorectic patient most often have trauma in their childhood more specifically in their parental relationship, the anorectic behavior of the climber is most often induced by the misconception that it will deliver better performance. Just as for the true anorectic the anorectic climber will loose performance and increase illness with this behavior – it should however be easier to set the climber straight if he/she realizes that they are playing a loosing game, than it is to help correct the motivation that drives the true anorectic.

Pushing your body fat extremely low will in itself be  a health hazard but the low calorie intake strategy will also, most always, lead to deficiency in protein , carbohydrate, vitamins and minerals intake.  True anorectics have / amongst other things) poor healing, easier to obtain injuries, tooth decay, bone mineral loss, muscular wasting, imunosystem deficiency , low sex drive and low anabolic hormones … you get the picture…

Remember that the climbers would want to keep only the unnecessary weight to a minimum – climbing muscles (that is actually most of them) you will want to keep!

I am not naive enough to think that we don’t have true anorectics in our ranks; through I think they are a minority. I however think that there are many climbers that by ignorance tread the anorectic path. They will face the same consequences.

If performance is your game then;

Keep your body fat at a safe level;

Not lower than; 8% for a healthy male and 12% for a healthy female

Top competitors might drop even lower for short periods of time but that is risk taking

When loosing body weight;

Your body fat should go down but not your muscle mass – if your muscle mass goes down

 – bioimpedance will tell

–        Rest and eat more.

 Remember that every top athlete

–        Need plenty of carbohydrates on a regular basis

–        Need at least per kg bodyweight of protein, of high biological value, per day

–        Needs a low but steady dose of poly unsaturated fats

–        Needs vitamins, minerals at set dose every day

Some tips;

If your resting pulse starts to rise – rest and eat more

If you start to be more frequently ill (trivial infections) -– rest and eat more

If you compare your body weight with your relative waist to butt circumference you have a much more precise tool for measuring performance weight loss – your butt should always be bigger than your waist otherwise you are loosing more muscle than fat!

If you keep you butt to waist ratio at 0.8 or below and at the same time keep your BMI above 18 (at least) you should be safe (healthy)

Loosing weight in total ignorance of these facts is simply stupid and counterproductive

Climbing is about living life to its full extent life not about denial

Climb better – loose only the deadweight by smartly applying scientific fact to practice – Don’t loose to much!

See somebody out there who has lost his or her perspective?! Help them out –point them in the right direction

Dr 8a Björn Alber

Md sport medicine PhD Sports physiology

www.genesishealth.se

References

Applied body composition assessment  VH Heyward, LM Stolarczyk

The fat loss handbook G egger, B swinburn

Understanding nutrition  Whiny, Rolfes

The care and feeding of athletes GV Mann