Personalised nutrition for health and performance in esports athletes 🎮
Let's start treating this group like proper athletes.
Personalized Nutrition, Lifestyle, and Supplementation Strategies to Support Cognitive Performance and Well-Being in Esports Athletes: A Narrative Review
Study Details
This new review summarised data from 52 studies to establish the best nutrition, lifestyle and supplementation strategies to support…
🧠 Cognitive performance
🫀 Wellbeing
…in esports athletes.
Here are the key recommendations ⬇️
Key Findings
Foundations first 🍽️
👉 Prioritise total energy intake and macronutrient balance
👉 Ensure micronutrient sufficiency before adding supplements
👉 Align nutrition with training load and competition demands
Lifestyle drives performance 💤
👉 Sleep, stress, and physical activity strongly influence outcomes
👉 Poor lifestyle habits can override good supplementation
👉 Recovery strategies are as important as fuelling
Supplements are situational tools 💊
👉 Use supplements to support specific needs, not replace basics
👉 Caffeine = strongest evidence for performance
👉 Others (e.g. creatine, amino acids) = emerging but context dependent
Personalisation is key 🎯
👉 Individual responses vary significantly
👉 Consider timing (training vs competition)
👉 Adapt to cultural, logistical, and schedule constraints
Evidence is still developing 📉
👉 Much research is short-term, small sample, or self-reported
👉 Limited esports-specific data
👉 Need for longitudinal, real-world studies
Monitoring & data integration 📊
👉 Use objective metrics (performance, physiology, biomarkers)
👉 Track trends over time rather than single data points
👉 Integrate nutrition with broader performance systems
Supplement safety & regulation ⚠️
👉 Lack of clear guidelines in esports
👉 Risk of contamination in commercial products
👉 Prioritise third-party tested supplements
Future direction 🚀
👉 Move toward multidisciplinary, health-first performance models
👉 Combine nutrition, sleep, training, and psychology
👉 Treat health as a performance advantage, not an afterthought
Reference
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41901156/
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