Hi Peter,

What an interesting question. As a former amateur wrestler, I am speaking from a purely anecdotal perspective, but I remember the days of massive dehydration for athletes in weight cutting sports. Forcing yourself to dehydrate was an absolutely awful thing to do right before having to get through a practice. I am very excited to read the discussion about this.

Rich Mendelson

My area of work is exercise endocrinology. Dehydration can result in "hemoconcentration" of the blood, hence making some hormone levels in the blood higher. However, we did studies years ago that with several days of chronic dehydration hormones levels (for some, such as testosterone) began to significant decrease and stay suppressed even into re-hydration. This could be a negative effect on anabolism activity within the body.

Thanks!

I read that there should not be less Kcal than 30-35 Kcal a KG bodyweight to influence the hormones. It could be claimed the same with chronic dehydration. It would be focused more on training in hypohydration for better sustaining this in a race. Furthermore some effect can be positive in for instance train one or two days dehydrated and then rehydrate...or would you claim 1-2 days would not really affect hormones and such?

Many thanks