Occurrence and Impacts of Gastrointestinal Symptoms in Team-Sport Athletes: A Preliminary Survey

Abstract

Objectives: Although gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms are prevalent in endurance athletes, scant research has examined GI symptoms in team-sport athletes, their impacts, and explanatory factors. This study aimed to assess the prevalence and severity of GI symptoms in team-sport athletes and identify potential risk factors.

Design: An observational anonymous survey.

Setting: Online.

Participants: Hundred forty-three athletes (79 men and 64 women) from team-based sports, with soccer, rugby, and American football athletes comprising approximately 75% of the sample.

Assessments of risk factors: Age, gender, body mass index, competition experience, trait anxiety, and resting GI symptoms.

Main outcomes: Gastrointestinal symptoms during training and competition.

Results: Overall, past-month GI symptoms during training and competition were mild and relatively infrequent. However, 13.9% and 37.5% of men and women, respectively, reported that GI symptoms had ever impacted their performance. In comparison to men, women reported that nausea, bloating, and abdominal cramping were more likely to have affected performance ( P < 0.05). Women also had higher trait anxiety and higher scores for resting GI symptoms, during-training GI symptoms, and during-competition GI symptoms ( P < 0.001). Resting GI symptoms were the strongest predictor of training and competition GI symptoms (ρ = 0.46-0.67), although trait anxiety was also consistently correlated with competition GI symptoms (ρ = 0.29-0.38).

Conclusions: This study suggests that female team-sport athletes experience a higher burden of GI symptoms than males, and that resting symptoms and anxiety predict competition symptoms. Interventions targeting anxiety could theoretically reduce GI symptoms in some team-sport athletes, but this should be confirmed through experimental designs.