Vergne Was Hospitalized After Starving Himself

[aterren]

They're also going to end up having some pretty significant health problems in later life if they have to keep up these practices for a long period of time, particularly increasing their lifetime risk of cancer and neuro-degenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Citation please?

[Rikhart]

They're also going to end up having some pretty significant health problems in later life if they have to keep up these practices for a long period of time, particularly increasing their lifetime risk of cancer and neuro-degenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Citation please?

Thats actually wrong, caloric deprivation diets increase lifespan and general health...

[FrukostScones]

I think he said he didn't drink enough... or something like this...

according to DM Vergne said:

' "I was in hospital between the Grand Prix in Australia and Malaysia because of a lack of water and a little bit of lack of everything. I was very weak."

If was trying to reduce his weight by reducing water in his body (Sauna before the race or qualifying )... one can only speculate, but this diet is not a diet ,but attempted suicide (if you combine it with starving)...
If you drink enough water there is no problem with a little bit of starving. Makes you grumpy as f*ck, but won't get you in the hospital.... especially if you are F1 with enough money to hire an expert nutritionist (but maybe his was/is a charlatan) .

[aral]

May I ask...are you a doctor or a nutritionist? Do you know what diet Vergne was on? How do you know what he was advised to do?

[WALL_ZACK]

Ok, here goes... A lot of this is fairly new science, so I can't just reference one paper because most of what I know of this is from conference presentations that are too recent to have been published and papers I've reviewed for colleagues or peer reviewed for journals.

The underlying issue with Verne or any other driver essentially starving themselves or maintaining persistent dehydration is that it increases a process called oxidative stress. There is a substantial and growing body of evidence that suggests that persistent oxidative stress is the underlying mechanism in the development of cancer and neurodegenerative diseases and that maintaining high levels of oxidative stress for long periods of time substantially increases your lifetime risk of these diseases.

In cancer, oxidative stress and inflammatory processes allow cancer cells to grow at a rate faster than they can be attacked by the immune system, allowing them to spread. In neurodegenerative diseases, these processes have been implicated in the cellular damage and death characteristic of these diseases.

While it's true that some level of caloric restriction is good for health (i.e. note eating too much is good for you), restricting it too much substantially increases oxidative stress due to malnutrition. Consistent dehydration also substantially increases this process, particularly if it happens in concert with high bodily stress like intense exercise.

Extremes like Verne starving himself or dehydrating to loose weight or drivers not using a drinks bottle during a race are similar to some of the examples I'm hearing about from the work of colleagues who work with people with eating or obsessive exercise disorders.

Just to clarify, I'm a medical researcher working with cancer and lifestyle diseases like diabetes and obesity. I'm lucky enough to work with some of the best researchers exploring these issues...

As far as citations go, here are a few for anyone who feels like nerding away an hour or 2 about some of the processes I'm talking about (the stuff on malnutrition is too new to be published and is still in the animal models stage)
- Reuter S et al 2010, Free Radic Biol Med 49(11)
- Gilgun-Sherki Y et al 2001 Neuropharmacology 40(8)
- Hillman AR et al 2011 Appl Physiol Nutrition Metab 36(5)

[countersteer]

Mark Webber has said he has put on 3-4kg since F1 and he still looks too thin! This is not a good situation, something has to be done.

I read over the weekend that Mark has really porked out... He went from 4% body fat to 5% body fat. I'm surprised more of these guys don't get sick. A round of stomach flu could get complicated.

[FrukostScones]

May I ask...are you a doctor or a nutritionist? Do you know what diet Vergne was on? How do you know what he was advised to do?

if his statement is true, he kind of that said he got dehydrated and low on a variety of nutrients...and for that reason was very weak and got hospiatlized.

and I speculated if he did the dehydration part on purpose than he or his advisers are dangerously stupid...
ask you physician.