Personalized Nutritional Assessment and Intervention for Athletes: A Network Physiology Approach

Area of Science:

• Sports Medicine
• Nutrition Science
• Physiology

Background:

• Precision nutrition individualizes athlete diets using genetics, microbiome, lifestyle, and health status.
• Current precision nutrition faces challenges integrating complex data and high omics technology costs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel nutritional assessment and intervention model for athletes.
• To ground this model in the Network Physiology of Exercise and complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory.
• To integrate social, environmental, behavioral, and psychobiological factors into athlete nutrition.

Main Methods:

• Utilizes semi-structured interviews based on CAS properties, replacing traditional dietary assessment tools.
• Employs open and guided interviews for co-constructing insights and extracting qualitative data.
• Applies reflexive thematic analysis to understand eating behavior dynamics.

Main Results:

• The proposed model integrates multidimensional, multi-timescale personal and environmental constraints on eating behavior.
• Interviews elicit dynamics of emotional contexts, behavioral patterns, and psychophysiological states.
• The model conceptualizes athletes as complex adaptive systems (CAS) within nested physiological levels.

Conclusions:

• The Network Physiology of Exercise offers a framework for understanding athletes as complex adaptive systems (CAS).
• Interviews serve as both a nutritional assessment and an intervention method.
• This approach provides a more holistic and integrated view of athlete nutrition.