Four Ways Overtraining Hurts You

1. Leads to loss of muscle mass and decreased strength.

Have you ever heard that you actually get stronger not during your workouts, but during the time afterwards, when you recover and sleep? Your muscle tissue can't repair quickly enough if you don't get enough rest between workouts.  techgeeksblogger

It can take days for muscle to repair and repair broken muscle tissue, so if you deplete already tired muscles before they're ready, you won't see any gains in strength or greater endurance. Since you will be working on low energy, your body may instead start burning its hard-won muscles for fuel.

2. Increases inflammation and lowers immunity.

Overtraining can exacerbate oxidative stress and damage, leading to aging and disease. When hormone levels fluctuate abnormally, and joints and muscle tissue become excessively tired, you run the risk of increased inflammation, leading to illness, swelling, and pain that doesn't seem to go away easily. Excessive fatigue can suppress the immune system to a large extent, as it raises cortisol levels and causes inflammation in the body. (5)

Your immune system stops working properly when it is in "fasting mode" and you are more likely to get sick and heal more slowly. Why is this happening? Basically, if your body has so much energy to circulate, it will prioritize and use that energy to support the things you depend on to survive, like your beating heart, your lungs breathing, your digestive organs and the thinking brain function. While all of these functions are impaired when you overtrain for an extended period of time, immunity (along with digestion and reproductive health) is one of the first things to fail.

Overtraining is associated with an increases risk of infections, including respiratory tract infections. Helper T lymphocytes are an important aspect of immune function. They are responsible for killing foreign pathogens and producing antibodies, but exercise-related immunosuppression due to tissue trauma suppresses the body's ability to produce these helpers and therefore increases the likelihood of disease. At the same time, higher levels of stress hormones (cortisol and catecholamines) make healing and energy recovery more difficult.

3. May damage the heart

While moderate exercise is important for the cardiovascular system, doing “too many good things” can harm heart health. Studies of overtraining athletes (such as some marathon runners) have found higher heart attack rates than moderate exercise and increased levels of scar tissue in the heart tissue. (6)

Long-term excessive endurance exercise (including marathons, ultra marathons, Ironman distance triathlons, and long distance cycling) can negatively affect the structure of the heart and arteries, especially when the athlete is not replenished with calories and sleep. High stress on the heart can cause volume overload of the atria and right ventricle of the heart, thickening of the heart valves (myocardial fibrosis), cardiac arrhythmias, calcification of the coronary arteries, changes in blood pressure (diastolic dysfunction), and hardening of the arteries. wall.

You may notice that overtraining can also lead to changes in resting heart rate as the body is overworked, just like during the emergency fight-or-flight response. A way to monitor if this happens? Check your morning heart rate after you get up and track how it changes based on your activity level this week.

 4. Violates the electrolyte balance.

To stay active and healthy, your muscles depend on a delicate balance of fluids (especially water) and electrolytes, including magnesium, sodium, and potassium. Even your heart, possibly the most important muscle in your body, cannot function properly when you have chronically low levels of potassium or other nutrients due to overexertion.

 As you exercise, your muscles consume additional carbohydrates, electrolytes, and fluids, and you often sweat at the same time, further reducing your stores. (7) Your magnesium stores are depleted during activity, which can cause anxiety, insomnia, depression, and a host of other disorders. (8) It is also a risk because many people are already magnesium deficient, so excessive exercise only makes the problem worse. That's why

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