A Cyclist Secret Weapon Against The Common Cold

As an athlete, your training availability is absolutely fundamental to your performance and your likelihood of success in a season. Any training time lost can result in significant setbacks to your performance development and might actually prevent you from reaching your performance goals. 

A study from Elite Australian track and field athletes over 7 years found that athletes able to complete >80% of their scheduled training had a staggering 7 times higher chance of achieving their performance goals.

During the winter, athletes are often more at risk of picking up illness and infection due to seasonal increases in viruses alongside training in cold weather and heavy training loads. In particular, upper respiratory tract infections. These infections can be a massive hindrance to an athlete's training as the rest required to allow an athlete to recover from this can slow their performance development. 

For years, there haven't been any effective strategies for managing the common cold beyond just trying to avoid picking it up in the first place, but we now have a simple strategy that might help reduce the duration of a cold.

A meta-analysis from 2017 (PMID: 28515951), which combined data from 7 previous trials, had some exciting conclusions which are highly relevant to any endurance athlete who's ever suffered the common cold. 

It showed that using zinc acetate lozenges (like these) dissolved slowly in the mouth multiple times a day, from the point of experiencing cold symptoms, could reduce the duration of a common cold by 33%. This could potentially equate to a must faster recovery time. Helping to limit the training time lost to a common cold and helping athletes get back to training much quicker. 

For a strategy that is relatively cheap to implement and safe, its a win-win on all fronts. So for any Cyclist serious about their training and performance, this is a key strategy to have to hand when you need it.

A note for athletes: if you're going to use any supplement, ensure it's been tested for banned substances under ISO 17025 methods for the presence of banned substances (see Informed Sport).

Coach Ben 

References 

Raysmith, B. P., & Drew, M. K. (2016). Performance success or failure is influenced by weeks lost to injury and illness in elite Australian track and field athletes: A 5-year prospective study. Journal of science and medicine in sport, 19(10), 778–783. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsams.2015.12.515

Hemilä H. (2017). Zinc lozenges and the common cold: a meta-analysis comparing zinc acetate and zinc gluconate, and the role of zinc dosage. JRSM open, 8(5), 2054270417694291. https://doi.org/10.1177/2054270417694291