Evaluation of Dietary Supplement Usage, Dietary Intakes, and Nutrition Knowledge in Clinical and Athletic Populations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Nutrition is a broad scientific discipline under which dietary supplements fall. Dietary supplements can be defined as dietary ingredients intended to achieve a specific health and/or performance outcome. Utilization of dietary supplements differs between clinical and athletic populations; therefore, understanding the types, frequency, and reasons for use is pivotal to avoiding over- or under supplementing. Moreover, assessing dietary intakes and dietary patterns alongside dietary supplements helps ensure nutritional needs are being met. While the consumption of dietary supplements continues to increase, investigation of use, reasons for use, and evidence-based knowledge in support of these products, among many athletic and clinical populations, is lacking. Objective: This dissertation explores numerous nutritional concepts pertaining to para athletes, athletes with a spinal cord injury, and patients with mitochondrial disease. The specific objectives of this thesis are: 1) evaluate dietary intakes and supplement use in Canadian para athletes, 2) investigate dietary supplement use and reasons for use among Canadian wheelchair rugby athletes, 3) assess baseline sports nutrition knowledge levels of athletes with spinal cord injuries and coaches of para sport, and 4) explore dietary supplement use and dietary patterns followed in patients with mitochondrial disease. Methods: Four survey-based, cross-sectional studies were conducted to explore the above objectives. Specifically, 1) dietary intakes and supplement use were assessed in Canadian para athletes using three-day food records and a dietary supplement questionnaire; 2) dietary supplement use and reasons for use among Canadian wheelchair rugby athletes were collected via a dietary supplement questionnaire; 3) the Nutrition for Sport Knowledge Questionnaire was administered to assess knowledge levels among athletes with spinal cord injuries and coaches of para sport, and 4) dietary supplement use and dietary pattern information were evaluated among patients with mitochondrial disease using an electronic survey. Results: The primary findings from our study objectives were: 1) Canadian para athletes have several micronutrient inadequacies and uninformed use of specific supplements; 2) Canadian wheelchair rugby athletes highly utilize dietary supplements notably for medical and performance purposes; 3) athletes with spinal cord injuries and coaches of para sport demonstrated low-to-moderate sports nutrition knowledge across six nutrition categories, and 4) patients with mitochondrial disease relied heavily on a wide variety of dietary supplements while following specific dietary patterns for clinical symptom management.Conclusion: Our results provide evidence that dietary supplements are highly sought-after products across both clinical and athletic populations. Specifically, types and frequency of dietary supplements are implemented for a variety of reasons, depending on desired outcomes within each individual population. We also demonstrated the need for the development of dietary intake recommendations and evidence-based trials to better understand the effects of specific supplements on athletic performance and clinical disease management. Lastly, it is evident that nutrition knowledge is lacking in para athletic populations, highlighting the need for nutrition education.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".