My guest today is Mark Huston. Mark is a doctoral candidate at Loughborough University. Mark earned his Bachelors of Sport and Exercise Science at Liverpool John Moores University, where he also obtained his Master’s of science in sports nutrition.

I invited Mark to come on the podcast to talk about his current research into the effects of low energy availability on health and performance in humans. Specifically, we discuss low energy availability as it relates to bone health and the risk of bone stress injury in athletes. Mark has recently published a fantastic review article on the subject in the journal Sports Medicine, where he discusses the effects of low energy availability in weight-bearing endurance athletes as well as potential countermeasures to increase bone strength and bone health in these athletes.

Our discussion starts with some basic background into bone health and stress injuries, and then we dive in to defining low energy availability and how this condition affects bone health and other aspects of health in athletes. We then transition to talking about high-impact exercise as a novel countermeasure to increase bone health in athletes, and then end talking a bit about the role of nutrition and, specifically, protein and micronutrients, in bone health.

I really enjoyed this conversation with Mark and to be honest, my invite was a bit selfish in nature. I am all too familiar with bone stress injuries, actually having suffered multiple lower limb stress fractures, and even one hip fracture, over the course of the past few years. Whether this is due to low energy availability, a high amount of weight bearing exercise in the form of running, or a combination of both, I’m not quite sure, but a recent DEXA scan did reveal to me that my bone health was far from optimal and needed some intervention. This has been something on my mind for quite a while as I try to prevent further injury and set myself up for injury-free activity in the future. So I also wanted to pick Mark’s mind on some of my personal struggles with bone health and get some advice on tools that I might be able to implement to enhance my own bone health.

Links

- Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkJHutson

- Check out Mark’s research on Research Gate

- Read Mark’s review article: Effects of Low Energy Availability on Bone Health in Endurance Athletes and High-Impact Exercise as A Potential Countermeasure: A Narrative Review

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