Does a low-carbohydrate diet impede endurance sports performance? No
Timothy D Noakes, Louise M Burke · 2026
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Description
Timothy Noakes and Louise Burke argue a side in a 2026 debate paper: low-carb diets do not impede endurance performance. The pair review a decade of trials where trained athletes ate low-carb, high-fat or the reverse for four to six weeks. Test after test came out even.
Max oxygen tests, short time trials, and interval sessions matched across diets. A long cycling test to exhaustion also matched. One interval session saw the highest fat-burning rates ever recorded in humans. A trickle of carbs during long rides boosted results by a fifth on both diets. Fatigue, they argue, comes from blood sugar dips in a small liver pool, not from empty muscle stores.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Timothy D Noakes, Louise M Burke |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 38 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |