To be like Cristiano Ronaldo. How to do it?

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Cristiano Ronaldo turned 37 in February. However, its metabolic age is several years below the record age. The Portuguese footballer obsessively cares for his body, adheres to a diet, does not drink alcohol, and cares for proper regeneration and sleep. What can we learn from him? What rules can we introduce to improve our health, immunity or metabolism?

1. Cristiano Ronaldo has been playing football at the highest level for over twenty years
2. Muscles account for almost 50 percent. his body, and adipose tissue is only 7 percent.
3. This is due to heavy and regular training, but Ronaldo is also obsessed with diet, sleep and regeneration. This affects his great figure and physical condition
4. Ronaldo has already played 184 times for the Portuguese national team
5. Portugal is playing a play-off match against Turkey for promotion to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar on Thursday
6. Can we also feel like Cristiano Ronaldo? Anna Plucik-Mrożek, an internist and sports medicine physician from Medicover Medical Center is answering
7. More information can be found on the Onet homepage

Adrian Dąbek, MedTvoiLokony: Let’s start with what became very loud last year. Cristiano Ronaldo hid the Coke bottles while encouraging them to drink water. What’s Wrong With Soda?

Play. Anna Plucik-Mrożek: Carbonated drinks are not bad in themselves, because even sparkling water is liked by a lot of people and there is nothing wrong with it. The main problem is the amount of sugar in the cola. We have an obesity epidemic because of this sugar in sweetened fizzy drinks. It is difficult for us to be moderate in the case of these drinks, we are thirsty, we reach for a glass of cola, and this glass has a lot of calories. This is often not included in the amount of sugar consumed during the day. A lot of people still drink such drinks and hence the scourge of overweight and obesity.

Are sweeteners replacing sugar, such as aspartame and xylitol, which have fewer calories, safe for our body?

These substances of natural origin, such as xylitol or stevia, because there are also cola sweetened with stevia, do not have any particularly unfavorable research, but here it is also about moderation. If we drink half a cup of cola sweetened with xylitol or stevia, nothing will happen to us. And if we drink three liters of a drink sweetened with aspartame, there is already some imbalance. Simply too much. I have read about studies which show that aspartame does not harm at all, and it is known that it is different with clinical trials. I don’t think that’s true.

So it is not about abandoning sweetened drinks altogether, but about the awareness that drinking a glass is like eating a sandwich or a piece of chocolate.

If someone drinks half a glass of Coke every now and then, it will be fine. But if he drinks a bottle of sweetened drink a day, it can already lead to overweight and obesity. The same is true of sweetened fruit drinks, which are mostly sugar. This all has to be considered in the overall balance that these drinks contain calories. Anyway, there is nothing good in a fruit drink sweetened with sugar, because there is only a little water and sugar there. There is no benefit.

Ronaldo doesn’t drink alcohol. He allowed himself a glass of champagne once, after winning the European Championship in 2016. Is it really necessary to completely exclude alcohol from our diet?

As with everything else, moderation is important. Beer, for example, is high in calories and it is very easy to drink a lot of beer. Too much alcohol leads to addiction and liver damage. Alcohol is for humans, but in very moderate amounts. Cardiologists say that you can drink a glass of red wine with dinner and it won’t hurt us. A safe amount of alcohol is about 200 ml of wine, but this does not apply to pregnant women, because any amount of alcohol is harmful to the baby. You have to talk about it out loud, because pregnant women sometimes drink wine or beer. This safe amount of pure alcohol contained in 200 ml of wine also applies to stronger drinks, everyone can recalculate.

1. Why do young, athletic footballers suffer a heart attack?

Another thing Ronaldo is avoided are tattoos. He doesn’t get tattooed because it would prevent him from donating blood regularly. What harm can a tattoo of our blood or the body do?

A tattoo is some kind of interference with our tissue and an increased risk of infection. But I haven’t heard that tattoos do any terrible harm and prevent you from donating blood forever. But there is a risk of blood borne infections, such as hepatitis B and C, which may be asymptomatic for many years and the liver may already be damaged. Fortunately, blood is tested on donation before being shipped away, so this risk is minimized.

Regarding diet, Ronaldo is not particularly restrictive – he allows himself red meat, although of course he eats mostly fish, but most of all he eats very regularly, six meals a day.

Regularity is crucial in your diet. It is still a question of evolution, we live too shortly for any changes in evolution to take place. This is because man has always lived with a shortage of food. If we take longer breaks, some fasts, then our body switches to saving energy and saving energy. Our metabolism slows down. And when we start to eat more often and a little more, it immediately causes weight gain. The regularity of meals means that our body knows that it will get to eat and therefore expends this energy differently, spends less of it on building tissues, and uses more. We have a higher metabolism, which protects against obesity.

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Of course, what we eat is also important. The most important thing is to eat vegetables and fruits, 500-600 grams a day, even more. In further places there are animal products, more often fish, less often meat. Such a diet best improves our health, reduces the risk of metabolic diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease. A variation of this diet is also the planetary diet, i.e. taking into account how what we eat affects the health of our planet. As little meat as possible, because the production of meat consumes a great deal of water, much more than is the case with plant production. It is a holistic approach to a topic where we think not only about ourselves but also about the planet we live on.

Let’s move on to the next thing Ronaldo puts a lot of emphasis on, which is sleep. He sleeps the prescribed number of hours a day, not “in one piece”, but taking five or six 90-minute naps a day. Is it better for regeneration?

There are no studies that confirm this. For adequate hours of sleep, research says it should be six to seven hours, with an indication of seven. If we do not sleep these seven hours, our health deteriorates. We have an increased level of stress hormones, we have problems with proper nutrition, because a sleepless night makes us more eager to eat fattier and more caloric dishes. So it leads to obesity again, and that’s the scourge of our time. Obesity causes a lot of other diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer that kill us most often. The amount of sleep must be adequate. Maybe there are some new studies, but I haven’t heard before that there is any evidence that these 90-minute naps are more effective. And the studies talking about the benefits of continuous sleep at night are.

1. Polyphasic sleep – what is it?

Of course, short naps during the day are important to regenerate our strength, but in general the night is for sleep. Our biological clock needs us to sleep at night. It also results from hormonal processes, for example, the male hormone testosterone is mainly secreted in the morning. There was a study some time ago that found that men who went to them after a sleepless night had lower testosterone levels. So in order for a man to have adequate testosterone levels, an adequate amount of sleep is needed.

Ronaldo used to use a cryochamber to regenerate and build up immunity. How can we take advantage of the benefits of low temperature?

It is important that we do not overheat the rooms in which we are staying, because our immune system works better at lower temperatures. Cool showers are also used to harden the body, but we must pay attention that this temperature difference is not too high – we do not go straight from the heat to the icy water. A cold shower stimulates the immune system so that it works better and we catch infections less often. The immune system is not only about protection against infections, it generally helps keep us healthy.

1. Find out more: Are footballers at higher risk of brain disease?

The cryogenic chamber can be compared to sea in winter. But you have to be healthy to sea. Some people do not know that they have heart disease, and entering the icy water increases the number of arrhythmias, which can even lead to sudden death. It is difficult to conduct some very large studies on people in the sea, but there is evidence that over a very long period of time, sea water promotes more heart attacks. Navigating is also not recommended for people with asthma or COPD, because when entering cold water we have reflex breathing and this may cause shortness of breath or heart rhythm disturbances, and when ventricular fibrillation occurs, it will be difficult to save such a person. So sea water is not safe for everyone, but a cool shower is unlikely to hurt anyone.

Ronaldo maniacally cares about his body and actually has effects, but is such an obsessive guardianship healthy?

No obsession is healthy. Balance is the best. Being obsessed with keeping an eye on certain things causes a higher level of stress. There is no slack, no smile, no joy, and we need these things. Things we enjoy trigger the release of dopamine in the central nervous system, which gives us strength to act and affects our mood. Obsessed people have no slack and often the circle of friends becomes narrow. Because I won’t go to these friends, because they eat pizza and I don’t eat pizza.

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Loneliness is not a recipe for longevity. One of the things that protects us best against dementia is socializing and changing our daily routine. If, for example, we choose a different route than usual on the way back home, it will force our brain to act, and when the brain works, it works better. Socializing requires thinking, acting, shining in company, but it also gives us a sense of belonging. If someone is like this from A to B, but without C, his circle of friends becomes smaller.

Finally, I will ask about Zlatan Ibrahimovic. He is still in great shape, and he will be 41 this year. It is not known that he presented such a philosophy as Ronaldo, he cared for everything so much. So how to explain its phenomenon?

The best recipe for longevity is choosing the right parents. So said the biologist professor Vetulani. This is how he emphasized the role of genes in longevity. Of course, we can influence it in some way, taking care of what we got, so we have a huge field to show off. We can support or hinder genetics.

This may interest you:

1. Why can a young footballer experience a heart attack? The cardiologist explains
2. How do footballers deal with losing? A sports psychologist explains
3. What is an adductor? Where is the soleus muscle located? [ANATOMICAL AND FOOTBALL QUIZ]