Episode 17- Interview with Prof Ron Maughan, everything nutrition

Cycling Science Podcast

Ron Maughan obtained his BSc (Physiology) and PhD from the University of Aberdeen, and was based in the Medical School there for almost 25 years before moving to England. He is now semi-retired but is still a Visiting Professor in the School of Medicine at St Andrews University. He spent much of his career trying to understand the physiological and metabolic responses to exercise and the nature of fatigue, but has included many digressions along the way. He chairs the Nutrition Working Group of the Medical and Scientific Commission of the International Olympic Committee. He is a director of the IOC Diploma programs in Sports Nutrition, Sports Medicine, and Sports Physical Therapies. He organised the IOC Consensus Conferences on Nutrition in Sport in 2003 and 2010, the FIFA/F-MARC Consensus Conferences on Nutrition in Football in 2005 and 2011, and the IAAF Consensus Conference on Nutrition in Athletics in 2007. More recently, he organised the 2017 IOC Consensus conference on Dietary Supplements in Elite Sport. He has published extensively in the scientific literature and is author or editor of a number of books on sports nutrition and exercise biochemistry. Not only that he has inspired, educated and supported a large number of sport scientists throughout their career, myself included. In this episode we discuss a number of the core themes in sports nutrition and debunk a few myths. In particular we talk about one of his more recent publications. The 'IOC consensus statement: dietary supplements and the high-performance athlete'. In particular to emphasise on of the key findings that "Supplements claiming to directly or indirectly enhance performance are typically the largest group of products marketed to athletes, but only a few (including caffeine, creatine, specific buffering agents and nitrate) have good evidence of benefits."