O USO DA DIETA CETOGÊNICA EM ATLETAS DE ALTA PERFORMANCE

Abstract

Objective: To understand whether the ketogenic diet (KD) is beneficial or not for high-performance athletes. Materials and methods: This is a descriptive and qualitative bibliographical review that selected articles from the PubMed and Medline research platforms, using the descriptors: “ketogenic diet”, “high-performance athletes”, “performance”. Results: A total of 13 articles from the PubMed platform and 14 articles from Medline were selected, however, when analyzing the selected articles, those that were repeated between platforms were excluded, so that in the end, 17 articles were selected in total for the preparation of this work. The articles were analyzed and described for a better understanding of the theme. Discussion: Although KD is an intelligent strategy when thinking about body fat loss and lean mass increase and there is evidence that KD modifies the cellular response, increasing the mobilization, transport, absorption and oxidation of fat during physical activities, decrease inflammatory cytokines and neurotrophic factor produced by the brain, being a valid tool for stress management and maintenance of motivation, it did not prove adequate for increasing strength or performance of athletes. Conclusion: The ketogenic diet is capable of improving body composition after a period of keto-adaptation, decreasing fat mass in athletes and consequently increasing the % of lean mass, in addition, it is widely used in patients with chronic disease, improving their clinical condition and decreasing cellular inflammation. However, through the analysis of the selected articles, few articles showed improvement in the athletes' performance. However, it must be taken into account that the ketogenic diet can act in different ways depending on the organism of each athlete and the physical activity that he/she is practicing, in addition, the selected articles have very short keto-adaptation studies, therefore, more studies should be performed to better understand the ketogenic diet. The findings turned out to be limited and heterogeneous, preventing a definitive conclusion about the effectiveness of the ketogenic diet in endurance athletes.

Keywords: ketogenic diet, high performance athletes, performance.