Long term effects of overtraining

Cianos

Hi,
A friend of mine over-trained himself about 5 years ago. I don't know much about this kind of thing, but he said he over-trained himself, and then after a couple of weeks rest went straight back in to it and over-trained himself again.

So, for ages he took things as easy as possible. He works from home and never has to do a long commute, he leads a life that is just about as stress free as anyone could ask for.

He has a really healthy diet, has been a very well informed vegetarian, then vegan. He doesn't drink and he doesn't smoke or do any drugs.

So in short, he is super healthy and his life is really relaxed and he has no day to day stresses or anything that would demand much out of him physically or mentally. He no longer does any exercising, jogging, weights or anything. This has been the case for pretty much the last 5 years.

Of what he has told me about his over-training, it can lead to prolonged periods of tiredness and fatigue if you exert yourself too much.

The problem is he still to this day thinks that his over-training 5 years ago still effects him. For example, yesterday he went swimming and today didn't want to walk literally 3 or 4 minutes to a market and carry bags back, because he's afraid this would wipe him out for the next 2 weeks.

Does overtraining really have such a long lasting effect? Is 5 years of relaxing and taking it really easy not enough for your body to go 'back to normal'?

I just find this really hard to believe and am thinking his problem is more psychological than anything else.

Advice appreciated!

Stark

Cianos wrote:

Of what he has told me about his over-training, it can lead to prolonged periods of tiredness and fatigue if you exert yourself too much.

The problem is he still to this day thinks that his over-training 5 years ago still effects him. For example, yesterday he went swimming and today didn't want to walk literally 3 or 4 minutes to a market and carry bags back, because he's afraid this would wipe him out for the next 2 weeks.

That doesn't sound like over-training, it sounds like chronic fatigue syndrome.

It's also possible that he's simply not getting enough nutrition from his fad diets. A vegan diet isn't something to be undertaken lightly; it's much more difficult to get all your required amino acids and minerals from purely vegetable sources than it is with a mixed vegetable/animal products diet.

He should try a more balanced diet for a while, and if that doesn't work, he needs to go see his doctor as the symptoms he's describing are in no way normal.

Cianos

Stark wrote: »

That doesn't sound like over-training, it sounds like chronic fatigue syndrome.

It's also possible that he's simply not getting enough nutrition from his fad diets. A vegan diet isn't something to be undertaken lightly; it's much more difficult to get all your required amino acids and minerals from purely vegetable sources than it is with a mixed vegetable/animal products diet.

He should try a more balanced diet for a while, and if that doesn't work, he needs to go see his doctor as the symptoms he's describing are in no way normal.

Thanks for the reply. Regarding his nutrition intake, I can only presume that he is getting the proper nutrition requirements. He is really passionate about the subject and has read loads about it.

Also he only became vegetarian then vegan within the last 2 or 3 years...so for a good 2-3 years after the overtraining he still had the same complaints.

Maybe as you say it is chronic fatigue syndrome. He said that he has been to the doctor before but he found their knowledge about this particular subject not as comprehensive as all the reading he has done.

cormie

He's only been vegetarian/vegan for a year at this stage and was getting plenty of animal products for the 4 or so years previous to this since he overtrained. He's been to a lot of different doctors and nobody knows what it is and can give a diagnosis on it and nobody has been able to help him.

thirtyfoot

Sounds like the chronic fatigue syndrome. What kind of training was he doing? Running 150 miles a week or excessive intervals like 25x400 with 2 mins recovery or running in 2 or 3 races a week or training/running while injured or not 100%. That might be overtraining. Many athletes have overtrained and I'd say within 5 years they wouldn't be wary of going to the shops, overtraining might mean you lose that 1-5% edge in performance but wouldn't wreck your life and mean you can do standard chores.

Cianos

Tingle wrote: »

Sounds like the chronic fatigue syndrome. What kind of training was he doing? Running 150 miles a week or excessive intervals like 25x400 with 2 mins recovery or running in 2 or 3 races a week or training/running while injured or not 100%. That might be overtraining.

As far as I remember, for a while he ran pretty much every day. It was mostly long distance, but I don't think it was ever nearly as high as 150miles/week though. And when he overtrained for the second time I think that was because he continued running when not 100%.

Many athletes have overtrained and I'd say within 5 years they wouldn't be wary of going to the shops, overtraining might mean you lose that 1-5% edge in performance but wouldn't wreck your life and mean you can do standard chores.

That's what I would have thought...5 years of rest just seems like such a long time!

thirtyfoot

Cianos wrote: »

As far as I remember, for a while he ran pretty much every day. It was mostly long distance, but I don't think it was ever nearly as high as 150miles/week though. And when he overtrained for the second time I think that was because he continued running when not 100%.



That's what I would have thought...5 years of rest just seems like such a long time!

Having thought about this and far from me to be giving a medical diagnosis but your friend sounds like a quack self-diagnoser. You say he has been to "a doctor" and disregarded the doc's opinion over his own reading and self-diagnosis and has lived a messed up life for 5 years and blamed it on his overtraining. Maybe he should get a second opinion from an expert in the field. There are lads in my club in their 50's who train and run a lot of miles every day and I would hazard a guess trained much more than your friend.

I'd still be interested to hear what your friend regarded as overtraining, any chance you could find out with specifics like miles per week, sessions per day etc. Very few people overtrain whereby it can seriously affect their health (apart from people who train injured or with eating disorders or who have an underlying illness) and by and large people undertrain. Some people train in a stupid way that leaves their best performances on the training track or road but very few people train so much that they can't bring a bag of organic carrots back from the market for the rest of their lives for fear of lying on the couch when they get home and not being able to get up.

Your friend should spend a week with hunnymonster when she is fit and healthy and then he'll know what training is:D

kangaroo

Here's a recent study. The talk about personality is speculation as they didn't study that:

1: Psychosom Med. 2008 Mar 31
Etiology of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Testing Popular Hypotheses Using a National Birth Cohort Study.
Harvey SB, Wadsworth M, Wessely S, Hotopf M.
Institute of Psychiatry (S.B.H., S.W., M.H.), King's College London, London, UK; Medical Research Council's National Survey of Health and Development (M.W.), Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Royal Free and UCL Medical School, London, UK.

Objective: To review the etiology of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and test hypotheses relating to immune system dysfunction, physical deconditioning, exercise avoidance, and childhood illness experiences, using a large prospective birth cohort.

Methods: A total of 4779 participants from the Medical Research Council's National Survey of Health and Development were prospectively followed for the first 53 years of their life with >20 separate data collections. Information was collected on childhood and parental health, atopic illness, levels of physical activity, fatigue, and participant's weight and height at multiple time points. CFS was identified through self-report during a semistructured interview at age 53 years with additional case notes review.

Results: Of 2983 participants assessed at age 53 years, 34 (1.1%, 95% Confidence Interval 0.8-1.5) reported a diagnosis of CFS. Those who reported CFS were no more likely to have suffered from childhood illness or atopy. Increased levels of exercise throughout childhood and early adult life and a lower body mass index were associated with an increased risk of later CFS. Participants who later reported CFS continued to exercise more frequently even after they began to experience early symptoms of fatigue.

Conclusions: Individuals who exercise frequently are more likely to report a diagnosis of CFS in later life. This may be due to the direct effects of this behavior or associated personality factors. Continuing to be active despite increasing fatigue may be a crucial step in the development of CFS.

PMID: 18378866 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

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Age Measured (years) Variable Number of Subjects CFS Diagnosed After This Age (%) Adjusted Odds Ratio (95% CI) p

31–43 Persistent sport or vigorous physical activity at least oncea week No 1197 0.67 1.00 Yes 102 3.92 10.80 (2.66–43.79) .001

This means that the most active 8% of the population between the ages of 31-43 had 10.80 times the risk of developing CFS by age 53 as the other 92%.

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It wouldn't surprise me if he has CFS.

People with CFS have an abnormal response to exertion. They've come up with a way of testing this (although people with severe CFS may not be able to do it). People do two maximal exercise tests 24 hours a part. Depending how fit a "normal" person is, they'll get certain results (for VO2 max, etc). But the results don't normally differ by more than a few percentage points between days. What they found with the CFS patients, is that their results were more than 20% lower the second day.