Experts ensure Ireland have the stomach for the World Cup

The IRFU has enlisted the aid of a cutting-edge healthcare company based in Cork to ensure its players are in top physical shape for next month’s World Cup.

Alimentary Health, a world leader in the area of bacterial and pharmabiotic innovation, will supply the PrecisionBiotic Alflorex to the Irish rugby squad to maintain good gut health in the tournament.

IRFU medical officer Dr Eanna Falvey outlined the reasoning behind the partnership.

“We went on summer tours in 2009 and 2010 to New Zealand and Australia in the build-up to the World Cup (2011) and for a variety of reasons we had a lot of lower gastrointestinal upset — vomiting, diarrhoea and so forth.

“There are many potential factors for that — such as the travel, time zone differences, food variety, drinking water and so forth. Guys missed games, and obviously that’s not good, but you certainly don’t want any player missing a big game in the World Cup itself because of a preventable tummy bug. It was an issue we highlighted in advance of RWC 2011 that needed to be addressed.

“We looked into ways of preventing that, and obviously food hygiene, variety and selection is very important, and the IRFU nutritionist Ruth Wood-Martin looked after that, while we also brought our own chef who prepared meals exclusively for the team.

“But we also looked at the role of the gut microbiota, and whether manipulating this would potentially improve our players ability to avoid the infections we had seen on previous tours. Alimentary Health provided this for us in the form of a specifically manipulated strain of gut microbiota shown to improve gut function and we didn’t have a single episode of diarrhoea or vomiting at the Rugby World Cup afterwards.

“Therefore our plan for this World Cup is to use that again even though we’re only going to Britain rather than all the way to the southern hemisphere. Remember, you’re still going to eight different hotels, you’re moving every four or five days — so there are a lot of different foods and a lot of different exposures for the players which we’re trying to normalise.

“You’re talking about players who may have had an 11-week preparation, they’ve trained very hard and put on a couple of kilograms of lean muscle mass, they’ve lost body fat and are at the peak of their fitness.

“They have worked extremely hard to be selected for the RWC squad, they’re lucky enough to be selected to play and represent their country — then two days before a game, they get a bad bout of diarrhoea and lose 3kgs and can’t play.

“Early on in my time with the Irish team, a seasoned international back row with had bad diarrhoea the day before a game. It cleared up the day of the game and at the time we had no measures really for how he was, apart from the fact that he’d lost some weight. He was very keen to play, a very good player, so he lined out but he didn’t go well.”

Players are now routinely screened for good gut health, Falvey added.

Founded in 1999, Alimentary Health has 15 employees and is the foundation industry partner of the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC) based at UCC.

The APC is one of the top research centres in the world in the area of gut health, under the direction of Professor Fergus Shanahan and Professor Eamonn Quigley.