In competitive sports where an extra breath or a millisecond quicker neural response can spell the difference between fame and mediocrity, a number of myths have persisted around the impact of what might be considered megadoses of various vitamins and trace elements. We do know that a growing body of research indicates that work capacity, oxygen consumption, and other measures of physical performance are affected by a deficiency or borderline deficiency in specific vitamins or essential trace elements. However, when it comes to providing larger doses, the research is conflicted

The second edition of Sports Nutrition: Vitamins and Trace Elements, edited by two of the most respected experts in sports nutrition, provides an updated critical review of these reports. The latest volume of this highly popular work includes a collection of chapters written by top researchers from several academic disciplines. Applying their expertise in specific vitamin or trace element nutrition as it relates to exercise and sports, they weigh in on the full alphabet of vitamins as well as a variety of trace elements, incorporating the most recent research. This edition adds chapters on choline and iodine. It also emphasizes new findings on vitamin and mineral metabolic reactions and provides in-depth discussion on the overuse of vitamins to toxic levels and its effect on physical performance.

Sports nutritionists, sports medicine and fitness professionals, researchers, exercise physiologists, students, health practitioners, as well as those lay-persons interested in optimal nutrition will find this book especially timely and highly helpful in sorting myth from truth.