NIU professor lobs nutritional advice to tennis stars

by Mark McGowan

Pete Sampras and Michael Chang walked away from professional tennis careers last month with more than their memories.

The tennis aces, along with many of their counterparts on the court, know how to eat well thanks to NIU professor Judith M. Lukaszuk.

Lukaszuk, who is director of the Didactic Program in Dietetics in the School of Family, Consumer and Nutrition Sciences, made her annual trip to the U.S. Open in late August to teach coaches how to feed their star athletes.

Sixty keynote speakers are chosen each year to help educate the coaches of high-performance athletes.

“This year’s theme – ‘Got Play?’ – focused on the many ways in which tennis coaches and teachers can shape the future of tennis through their lessons and clinics and the work they do each day to promote and develop the growth of tennis,” Lukaszuk said. “Seven hundred coaches from North America and around the world were in attendance.”

Lukaszuk typically uses the forum to recommend tennis players, like all athletes, stick to a high carbohydrate diet with proper amounts of fruits and vegetables, whole wheat breads, whole wheat pasta and high-fiber cereals, along with phytonutrients that help reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer.

But this year’s talk, “Follow Through with Nutritional Supplements,” concentrated on current regulation of the dietary supplement industry.

The Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act, passed by Congress in 1994, relaxed provisions on what supplement manufacturers can claim about their products and placed the burden on the Food and Drug Administration to prove that a supplement is harmful, Lukaszuk said. Only with hard evidence that a claim is false or misleading can the FDA take action.

“The coaches sitting in on my lecture were concerned because no tennis athletes are checked for illegal use of nutritional supplements, unless they are competing at the Olympic level,” she said. “In the latter case, they would have to undergo extensive testing.”

Lukaszuk discussed the safety, effectiveness and legality of numerous popular nutritional supplements on the market, including creatine, whey protein, HMB, glutamine, Ephedra, caffeine and androstenidione.

“Ephedra and androstenidione and definitely not safe supplements to take. Illinois has been the first state to ban the sale of Ephedra-based products because ingestion of this product has been linked to about 100 deaths,” she said.

“Other deleterious side effects which have been caused as a result of taking Ephedra-based products include heart attack, stroke, seizures, heart palpitations, psychiatric effects and upper gastrointestinal distress. Ingestion of androstenidione has been shown to increase estrogen levels which may contribute further to male pattern baldness, an enlarged prostrate gland, breast growth and pancreatic and prostate cancer.”

A tennis player herself, Lukaszuk was rewarded with tickets to the opening day matches at Flushing Meadows.

“The athletes are so fit, and have such great athleticism and agility,” said Lukaszuk, of NIU’s College of Health and Human Sciences. “It is really fun to watch.”

9-2-03