The importance of good nutrition for your staff

By Lissa Oliver

Unique to the racing industry is the daily need for staff to meet required maximum weights. Many in racing already believe they understand nutrition and the best methods to make weight, using tried and tested practices that have been in common use for decades. The perceived success of such practices leads to an attitude of ‘it works for me’ and a reluctance to change or adopt new suggestions, and few consider the future consequences on health in later years.

Dehydrating and starvation to make weight is commonplace, and long periods in saunas and salt baths, laxatives and self-induced vomiting are familiar practices. The health implications associated with these include poor bone density, hormonal issues and impaired mood profile. Despite increased awareness of these problems, they remain as common globally as they were thirty years ago.

To help address this, the UK based Racing Foundation awarded a grant of just over £200,000 ($260,000) to support a ground-breaking, nutritional intervention programme developed over three years by a specialist team at the Research Institute of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University. The team is led by former jockey, Dr George Wilson, and includes the head of nutrition for cycling’s Team Sky, Dr James Morton, and Daniel Martin, a doctoral researcher and high-performance nutritionist for the Professional Jockeys Association.

Dr Wilson has already spent seven years (part-funded by the Sheikh Mansoor Racing Festival) researching the serious health implications of extreme weight-making practises in jockeys and has designed healthier, alternative weight-making programmes. In addition to offering the facilities at the University to measure bone and body composition, hydration, metabolism and provide strength and fitness assessments, he also works with racing organisations to provide workshops, tests, presentations and bespoke advice. He is in the ideal situation to conduct research into the health issues faced by racing staff, having ridden as a steeplechase jockey in his younger days.

“For my first ride as a conditional (bug) jockey at Southwell in 1985, I lost a stone (14 lbs) in five days to make 10st (140 lbs) minimum weight, felt awful and, given the occupational risks, I shouldn’t have been near a horse, let alone riding in a race,” he reflects on his experience. He later rode as an amateur mostly in point-to-points and hunter chases when weight became a problem. “Having ridden over jumps, I fully empathise with staff and understand the need for, and risks from, dehydration and starvation. Riding out stable staff are weighed in some yards and most vacancies are advertised with a maximum weight, so making weight is not just a problem for jockeys but also for a lot of racing staff.

“I was aware that not a lot had changed since my own time in yards in the 1980s and 1990s and so I decided to do my doctorate in the effects of common weight-making practices such as dehydration and nutrition (or lack of!). In 2009 I started my first research and have now had 11 papers published.”

Currently, Dr Wilson is studying the effects of diet, dehydration and bone health of jockeys, but, as he recognises, comparisons of bone density between standard 12st (168 lb) athletes and 9st, (126 lb), jockeys may have potential flaws given jockeys are an atypical population, being much smaller athletes. Furthermore, unlike other athletes, jockeys don’t tend to perform substantial hard surface training that helps maintain healthy bone metabolism.

Assisting Dr Wilson is Daniel Martin, and their paper, Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health (31 August 2017), is the first body of research to investigate the opinions and practices of racehorse trainers in relation to rider welfare. Disappointingly for the researchers, from over 400 invitations, only five trainers expressed an interest to take part, something that certainly needs addressing.

A reluctance to face up to industry problems isn’t new and is not confined to trainers. “When I first went to the British racing industry authorities and said I wanted to do this, they originally didn’t offer any help,” he reveals. “There appeared to be a reluctance to accept that the current services and advice to help riders, particularly with weight-management, were clearly not working. Therefore, I just ‘kicked on’ with my research, and because jockeys had not received the sports science support in the past, they flocked to LJMU to undergo the testing and receive bespoke weight-management programmes.

“Thankfully, now everyone is aware of the issues and have embraced the research findings on healthier weight-management practices, and it appears we are all singing from the same hymn sheet. Indeed, Dr Jerry Hill, the Chief Medical Advisor at the British Horseracing Authority, is a collaborator on some of my recent published research and we have some other research projects we are currently working on together.”

Even so, it is an industry culturally-driven and based on the shared knowledge and experience of its senior professionals, which can represent an obstacle to Dr Wilson and his team when some of that knowledge is outdated and incorrect. As Martin explains within one of the published papers, “If apprentice and conditional jockeys can carry some knowledge of evidence-based practices and the dangers of traditional methods into their early careers, there will be less of a reliance on seeking advice from senior jockeys. Similarly, over time the ‘new’ practices will hopefully supersede the current archaic medley of dehydrative methods.”

It certainly behoves trainers to ensure that younger staff members are set good examples and it isn’t asking too much of their time or level of expertise to provide suitable meals, in yards where catering is offered. Where meals are not provided, posters and literature should be made available to display in the yard to help encourage awareness of a good diet.

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Understanding Concussion and Protection

By Lissa Oliver

As helmet technology moves forward, concussion remains an issue. So the question we must ask is whether this is despite improvements to helmets, or because of them. Could the lifestyle of a work rider contribute to the risk of sustaining concussion in a fall, or could a change in lifestyle protect against the risk? Can a poor state of mental health increase the risk of concussion, or is mental health affected by repeated concussion? These are just some of the questions being asked by scientists, doctors and engineers in ongoing research to protect riders.

A concussion is a brain injury that occurs when a blow to the head causes the brain to spin rapidly in the opposite direction from where the head was struck and is the most common type of “closed brain injury,” where the skull is not split. Those suffering from concussion may have symptoms such as headache, sensitivity to light, tinnitus, dizziness, sleepiness, confusion and behavioural changes; although many of these symptoms can also be caused by other injuries sustained in a fall and unrelated to brain injury. A specific diagnosis is vital to securing the necessary treatment and correct aid to recovery.

Our natural protection comes from cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which cushions the brain within the skull and serves as a shock absorber for the central nervous system. CSF is often thought of as existing only between the brain and the skull, but the brain has a much more complicated structure. CSF also fills a system of cavities at the center of the brain, known as ventricles, as well as the space surrounding the brain and spinal cord.

The transfer of energy when a rider’s head hits the ground causes rapid acceleration and deceleration, which briefly deform the brain. Because of this deformation, the volume of the brain decreases while the volume of the rigid skull remains unchanged. CSF flows into the skull from the spinal cord and fills the empty spaces created by the brain deformation, flowing back with acceleration and forward with deceleration, to prevent the brain impacting against the skull.

Research on turf impact has shown that concussion can occur without any associated helmet damage. The soft surface of the turf distorts and collapses, instead of the helmet, and the energy from the impact is transferred to the head. Currently, equestrian helmets are designed and tested to protect the head from impact with hard surfaces, but concussion most commonly occurs after being thrown from a horse onto a soft surface such as turf.

To improve performance for concussive injury, helmet technology needs to be rethought. Several research projects have risen to this challenge, with help from the sporting communities most at risk. A key player in this research is the NFL and in 2016 pledged $100 million, to become one of the largest funders of concussion research in the U.S. Its "Play Smart, Play Safe" initiative aimed to spend $60 million to create a safer helmet as a means of reducing concussion, joining with global sports organizations such as the NHL and World Rugby.

Another major research group is HEADS, an Innovation Training Network funded under the European Commission’s Marie Sklodowska-Curie Programme, structured around 13 individual research projects focusing on the three main topics of accident reconstruction and simulation, head model refinement and helmet certification improvements. This involves six partners, three industry and three academic across five countries who are already involved in working toward new helmet standards: Lead Partner, University College Dublin, Ireland; KU Leuven, Belgium; KTH-Stockholm, Sweden; AGV, Italy; Lazer Sport, Belgium; and Charles Owen, Britain.

Charles Owen is widely recognized as one of the leading manufacturers of riding helmets and the company was chosen in 2015 as one of five first-round winners of the $60 million Head Health Challenge presented by the NFL to develop new advanced materials for helmets.

Roy Burek

Professor Roy Burek of Cardiff University is the managing director of Charles Owen, and one of the supervisors of the HEADS project. He explains, “The length of time the impact lasts in contact with the surface is becoming an important factor. For example, impact lasts five milliseconds on steel, but 25-30 milliseconds on softer surfaces. We are seeing concussions at much lower force levels which can only be explained by taking the time into account.

“There are a huge number of blood vessels in the brain, which are stronger and stiffer than neurons (brain cells), so when you are distorting the brain you are straining neurons through a matrix of blood vessels. In CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) studies, the damage is focused around the blood vessels due to the much, much higher local strains.

“The neurons have viscoelastic properties and if you stretch them over a short space of time they stiffen and resist stretching, but if you continue to pull, they start to stretch. It is the amount of stretch that causes the body to react. This is why we are particularly interested in the time interval of impact.”

Burek suggests that helmet development in the past, by not looking at the surface or impact time, may have failed in protecting the milder forms of brain injury that we are only starting to understand their importance. “Slowing the rate of energy transfer rate down is the normal thing we do, but at some point rather than protecting the brain we could actually be causing injury. Are we finding a ground and helmet combination that is making the impact last so long we’re causing injury?” he wonders.

“There is another area we need to consider in how the helmet works with the ground. Historically, helmet design has just focused on the exterior surface. However when the helmet hits the ground, it comes to an abrupt stop as there’s not much momentum due to its lightness. On the outside the helmet sticks to the ground, while the head slides within the helmet, which means we have two active surfaces. So now we have to design the inside of the helmet, which is very revolutionary.

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