Hey Athletes! Could your intensity be related to vomiting or nausea? Tune in to listen to this week’s AMA to find out!
Episode 46 of Ask Me Anything is up!
Ask Me Anything: Vomiting and Intensity
This week’s question is from Kylan. He gave us the low down on his high-intensity workouts and how it causes him to vomit. Jerred and Joe give their ideas on this and how high intensity could be the cause!
If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to the Garage Gym Athlete podcast either on Stitcher, iTunes, or Google Play by using the link below:
Related Resources at End of Three Fitness:
Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add it to the comments below!
To becoming better!
Jerred
Transcript:
Jerred Moon
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage a mathlete podcast Jerred Moon here with Joe Courtney What’s up, Joe?
Joe Courtney
no longer the sun.
Jerred Moon
No longer the sun.
Joe Courtney
Yeah, where I am at least sometimes up nighttime
Jerred Moon
for you. It’s very bright, bright shiny day here for me. Just getting started. Cool. So we are doing ama if you guys want to submit that ama just gonna keep saying it over and over again. Garage, gym athlete. COMM slash ama, garage, gym athlete comm slash ama
Joe Courtney
just go I’ll actually link it in YouTube. That’ll be the only place where the link is.
Jerred Moon
Maybe that is where we will hide the link.
Joe Courtney
Yes, you have to go to YouTube to find it. Let’s catch up.
Jerred Moon
But we love the questions that we’re getting. This one’s pretty interesting. From kylan. Ah, he said he, yeah,
Joe Courtney
go for it.
Jerred Moon
Hey, so I had a health question in reference to heart rate and performance. I wear a polar h 10. chest strap monitor. Not not a sponsor. That seems to be pretty accurate from my understanding. Something I’ve struggled with for several years is nausea and vomiting. When I really push my workouts with the monitor, I’ve noticed when my heart rate gets to about 87 ish percent, I start feeling that way. I can normally vomit and get back to work once my heart rate drops, and I perform normally again until it hits near the 90% mark. Then it repeats. Do you have any insights or ideas on what could be a cause and or solution? My initial thought thought is sugar intake or poor diet. But I haven’t seen any changes over a few years with different food intake. any insight I’m eager to perform at the highest level. That’s a big one. sounds serious.
Joe Courtney
Yeah. That would definitely stink up some workouts. So I will ask you a question first. Related I guess. Do you think this is a blood sugar thing?
Jerred Moon
I don’t think so. Because I had I struggled with that blood sugar issue after high intensity type workouts. And it wasn’t normally like a vomiting sensation. It was more of like a shakiness. I got real shaky. I mean, it could could be I know people react in different ways. But it doesn’t sound it doesn’t sound like a food thing. Unless I mean, he said he’s been struggling with for years. The other way, like more mechanical is like, are you eating a really big meal before every workout? Because if that’s like your go to have like, you know, chicken fried steak and gravy before you hit workouts, which I highly doubt is the case. I’m just saying like, if that were a thing, then maybe it could be food related from like, just when your food timing wise, your body’s getting rid of it. So I have a couple other things to say. But Joe, do you have any tips? Yeah, shins idea. Um,
Joe Courtney
I haven’t necessarily had this same issue. There’s definitely been times where I’ve gotten nauseous. And I noticed it when I was doing Murph a little bit more. And it was, I would always hit Like, when I would get to about three quarters of the way through the calisthenics, I would hit a point where I just start getting real nauseous. And with that workout, there’s a lot of up and down going on. So I thought I think that was a fuel thing. And that is that made me think of this. So maybe the fuel might be depleted. But also, which we talked about recently on the the Monday podcast is if it could be water as well, if you’re drinking too much water before or during, because some people might think they need to hydrate more and more. But it could just be sloshing things around. And then that’s giving more to your body to give to give up. And I mean, you should have work, you should be hydrated before you work out. But maybe leave the water bottle out of workouts if that’s something that it’s regularly doing drinking a whole bunch of water. Other than that is the only thing I can debate on. See what the macros are and maybe flip whatever your macros are doing, whether it’s fat, whatever you’re
Jerred Moon
doing, stop.
Joe Courtney
Do something else do turn around. Yeah, or the carbs or fat, you know, just swap them around, see what happens and you just have to experiment that way. But and then my last and final thought I’m just taking shots in the dark. You know,
Jerred Moon
I got a pretty pretty good guesses here. So I’ll let you
Joe Courtney
take some more. My last my last one is because he said that he specifically said when he gets harder he gets up to about 87% is maybe his max heart rate isn’t what you think it is. Maybe he’s actually like 94%
Jerred Moon
or 87 still high. Yeah, that’s pretty out there. But yeah, that is possible. Okay, two things your body does when you go incredibly high intensity, it will start shutting other shit down. For lack of science terms there. If I don’t know I it’s happened to me I’ve talked about on the podcast for notes about other people like heavy high rep back squats, I’ll lose my hearing, I won’t be able to hear for its very short amount of time, but your body is basically shutting down what is it is now it doesn’t know what the hell is going on. But whatever it is, it’s starting to shut down other process. So these that are fairly important because it needs to focus all of its time, effort and energy on what you’re doing in this high intensity. So that’s why that’s one reason people throw up during exercise is it’s typically like a blood flow thing, right? Like all this blood starts flowing to a different part of your body. And that could take it away from digestion, it could just take away from other critical things. So that’s one reason that people throw up. But I don’t think that there should be this trigger, where I get to this 87% and then boom, I throw up it because you should your fitness should increase right? Like you should get accustomed to it. Like, I know if I I’ve told this story before, it’s been a while. Just because it’s such an awesome, awesome story. My family came to visit for Christmas, several years ago. And this was like extended family and everything. And my brother in law wanted to do a hard workout. And so I was like, I don’t know, let’s just do 60 seconds all out on the airdyne. And he’s like a minute like whatever. And so it was my both my brother in law’s so my sister in law’s husband and Emily’s brother. So they both did the workout with me, I went first, and I probably gave it about an 85% effort. But to them it looks super intense, because they just don’t work out. They don’t really exercise. And brother in law one hops on goes all out, immediately walks outside, could not really compose himself, throws up everywhere. And then brother in law to thinks he’s not gonna happen to him. He goes all out 60 seconds on the airdyne as hard as he can, runs inside and apparently is vomiting and pooping at the same time. That’s so his body’s response to that level of intensity? Yeah, yeah, it just started getting rid of everything. So they don’t work out with me anymore. But that was just a fun story to tell about what your body can do when it’s not accustomed to intensity. And the main reason I tell that story is because that does not happen to me. And it probably wouldn’t happen to a lot of us who’ve been training for a long time. Not because we’re superior, but we’re just accustomed to seeing it. So if you don’t feel like that’s you, that’s option one, I’m like, maybe you’re just not accustomed to the training. And you need to ease into the intensity a little bit more. So that’s my first option for you. In. So what do you need to do, you’d need to ease into that intensity, don’t do full efforts like long duration 87 90%. Like, let’s just visit it for 20 seconds at a time. 10 seconds here. 20 seconds there. Let’s not go 347 minutes into these upper heart rate zones. So that’s thing one, thing, two other option. And I think this is a very possible is lactate, when your body is at lactate threshold, it gets pretty pissed off. This is what causes more advanced athletes, people who’ve been training for a while to throw up is you’ve just reached such a ridiculous lactate threshold. There’s so much lactate, that your body can’t buffer and turn it over as fast. And we could get into energy systems and everything else. But you know, your body can use lactate and reuse lactate for fuel back to like, like it could use carbohydrate. So it’s pretty cool process. But anyway, if you get too much your body can’t use it anymore. And so your lactate threshold This is normally when things are really crappy. And I would say this is most likely what’s happening to you. I think you’re hitting lactate threshold and your body has too much lactate and you’re throwing up because it can’t process or use at all. So how do we increase? How do we get better at that? The answer to that is zone two, zone two training. So a lot of zone two training lower intensity training. big benefit of that is it helps your body buffer lactate better. So that’s how doing a lot of zone two helps with this upper and higher intensity. Some people don’t see the translation like How’s this? how’s this gonna do it? And that’s one of the big reasons is it makes your body more efficient at you know, some of the processes are has specifically in this case lactate. It does a lot of other things to zone to train but that is what i think i think it’s probably a lactate issue and you need more zone to training. Even if that’s more zone to training them. We’re programming like let’s get some walks in there. Let’s get some more stuff in there. Maybe just throw it into your day. Or warm up cool down something try and get more zone two in there. And then ease into the intensity a little bit more. So those are my, my two guesses at what you have going on. Not a medical professional. And if this keeps going on, maybe you should see your medical doctor. There you go. So disclaimer, disclaimer.
Joe Courtney
Yeah, one last dark throw. And that is I’m just remembering, my brother actually has this issue. And I should probably ask him if he’s ever figured out what it was, but I don’t think he has. But I know that I worked out with him several times. And he vomits. And that’s just what happens when he gets a certain intensity, and then he bounces back. But I also know, connecting dots that he has acid reflux issues. So if you haven’t acid reflux issues, and you’re getting high intensity and moving around a lot, that can be starting up some acid. So look into acid reflux remedies, and maybe stop taking ibuprofen and stuff like that, because that can make it worse. So if you’re also taking a bunch of that, to where if you have sore joints or something, so you’re popping some of those before you go to work out. Could be it, maybe I don’t know, but just a thought.
Jerred Moon
Like guesses between the two of us there.
Joe Courtney
So I think we nailed it somewhere. You know, I think you take all the when
Jerred Moon
any of those, I just do them all. And I think you’ll be better. Yeah. And then if you try all those things from two coaches, and it doesn’t work, you might need to go to a medical professional,
Joe Courtney
honestly, take up yoga.
Jerred Moon
But they’re I mean, they’re not going to help you. I’m not gonna lie. I mean, you could go see a doctor if you have a cool Dr. Butler, they’re just going to be like it depends on your doctor.
Joe Courtney
It was military the opposite that give you motoring.
Jerred Moon
Well, yeah, but I feel like if if you go to a doctor and you’d be like, Hey, man, when I like lift my arm up, you know, that hurts. He’s like, well, don’t lift your arm anymore. Yeah, get out of here don’t want to be able to lift my arm up. And so I think that’s what a doctor who doesn’t who’s not an efficient fitness would tell you they’d be like, okay, so you get a 90% heart rate you throw up How about you don’t train a 90% rate anymore? Problems problems. Oh. Alright guys. Well, thank you for checking out the podcast you guys do you have a question? Go to garage gym athlete. COMM slash ama submit your question. If you’re listening, five star review positive comment really helps to show out and if you are watching us on the YouTube, subscribe to the channel because we have these awesome ama’s and other videos coming out now on a weekly basis. And give us thumbs up comment, let us know what you’d like don’t like. But that’s it for this one guys. Thanks for listening or watching