Does Sugar Addiction Affect Sports Performance?

Debate Over Lamar Odom's Candy Habit Brings Focus to Healthy Eating

Jun 18, 2009

The Los Angeles Lakers' Lamar Odom has brought a spotlight to sports nutrition with widely publicized discussion on his sugar cravings, "erratic play" & sugar addiction.

Just how bad is sugar? The health impact of sweet, white sugar is still hotly debated by doctors, naturopaths, and other experts. Now the sugar addiction of the Los Angeles Lakers' Lamar Odom has brought the discussion about sugar back to the table, for another round on the importance of diet and food in sports performance.

L.A. Lakers' Lamar Odom Says Candy Improves His Game

Stories have been circulating in newspapers, websites, and blogs that feature the L.A. Lakers' Lamar Odom and his candy cravings. The basketball star munches on candy all day, even waking sometimes in the middle of the night to chow down on a chocolate bar or other snack before going back to sleep.

The Associated Press quotes him as saying he ate "a whole plate of jellybean Starbursts" before each of his best two games this season – an improvement he attributes to the candy's boost to his performance.

"It's funny because the games I played well were the games where I ate candy for breakfast…" he says. "I guess I'm going to have to eat candy for breakfast in order to play well."

Is It Sugar Addiction?

Dr. Daniel Amen, a psychiatrist and founder of the Amen Clinics, believes Odom is sabotaging himself with sugar. A lifetime Lakers fan, Amen writes about his disappointment in Odom's playing and how the basketball player "often acts like a space cadet" and "is constantly criticized because no one knows if he will play well or not."

"This is bad news for the Lakers," say Amen, who specializes in brain health. "I’ve been telling my patients for years that sugar acts like a drug in the brain. It causes blood sugar levels to spike and then crash, leaving you feeling tired, irritable, foggy, and stupid. Eating too much sugar impairs cognitive function, which may explain why Odom doesn’t always make the smartest decisions on the court."

Odom, however, maintains that his sugar consumption is reasonable, even as he says in an interview, "Who cares? You only live once… you eat as much candy as you can eat."

The Science: Is Sugar Good or Bad Nutrition for Sports Performance?

Although massive sugar consumption is known to cause problems like diabetes in the long run, there really aren't studies that consider the impact of sugar on long-term athletic performance.

Sports and nutrition experts suggest that athletes make healthy eating a habit, and say it's best to eat a balanced meal (including lean protein and healthy carbs) about four hours before a game or competition. This recommendation agrees with the evidence that athletes perform better if they've had a meal, a snack, or an energy drink shortly before a game or workout.

Eating a chocolate bar just before a workout does improve athletic performance by a small but notable margin, but a healthy meal four hours earlier has about twice the impact of a candy bar alone. Of course, none of this addresses the long-term impact of sugar consumption, about which Dr. Amen is especially concerned.

Odom Has a Sugar Addiction, Says Dr. Daniel Amen

Odom defends his sweet tooth because his best two games of the season were the ones before which he had candy for breakfast, but Amen says this only proves that Odom is addicted to sugar.

"Lamar uses sugar now not just for the high he gets," writes Amen in his blog, "but more importantly to prevent the withdrawal symptoms he invariably feels."

Amen cites the long term results of sugar addiction – "inflammation, heart disease, diabetes, depression, and even Alzheimer's disease," and observes, "Being addicted to anything can seriously ruin an athletes' [sic] performance."

Sources

The copyright of the article Does Sugar Addiction Affect Sports Performance? in Holistic Nutrition is owned by Victoria Anisman-Reiner. Permission to republish Does Sugar Addiction Affect Sports Performance? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.