"If you keep this up, you'll be in a wheelchair at 30."

Так врачи сказали британскому бегуну на длинные дистанции Джейку Смиту четыре года назад. Со стороны его карьера выглядела блестяще. К 23 годам он подписал профессиональный контракт с компанией «Найк» и выступал за сборную Великобритании на международной арене. Но одновременно его организм деградировал, переживая бесконечный цикл: гонка, болезнь, травма, повторение.

Балансируя между интенсивными тренировками и расстройством пищевого поведения, 28-летний спортсмен вернулся из тренировочного лагеря в Уганде с весом всего 51 кг при росте 1,7 м. Его кости стали такими хрупкими, что врачи предупредили: карьера может закончиться. За четыре месяца Смит перенёс два стрессовых перелома. Тогда он обратился за профессиональной помощью и получил диагноз РЭДС — относительный дефицит энергии в спорте.

Это синдром, который может поражать любого человека. Если его не диагностировать или не лечить, он негативно влияет на спортивные результаты и вызывает серьёзные долгосрочные проблемы со здоровьем. Симптомы РЭДС лучше задокументированы у женщин. В прошлом месяце теннисистка Эмма Наварро сообщила о своём диагнозе и решении отказаться от соревнований до 2027 года.

Но мужчины также подвержены риску. Из-за стигмы и отсутствия очевидных предупреждающих признаков РЭДС у мужчин может оставаться незамеченным дольше. Многие, как Джейк Смит, страдают от этого в тишине. РЭДС может вызывать стрессовые повреждения костей, нарушение сна, усталость и низкое настроение. Без лечения состояние может привести к остеопорозу, сердечно-сосудистым заболеваниям и проблемам с фертильностью.

"Hormones go to every single bit in your body. So, if your hormones are not working well for you, you're going to feel it in all sorts of different areas,"

говорит доктор Ники Кей, эксперт по здоровью гормонов. "In order to have healthy hormones, they need to be fed regularly. If you're not doing that and there's an energy deficit, often some of those hormone systems will slow down or shut down completely."

Женщины имеют ежемесячный барометр их гормонального здоровья в виде менструального цикла, который Кей описывает как "free monthly medical check"

По словам Кей, женщина, страдающая от РЭДС, имеет свои периоды «выключенными» ". For men, it is more subtle – testosterone levels will drop, resulting in a reduced libido and fatigue. The impact on a woman's period is why the condition was first referred to in the early 1990s as the "женский атлетический триад».

Но в 2014 году Международный олимпийский комитет переименовал это состояние, чтобы признать более широкий спектр симптомов дефицита энергии у... ". But it was renamed by the International Olympic Committee in 2014 to acknowledge the broader range of symptoms of energy deficiency and that it also harms male athletes. "

"It's a strange situation because normally it's women's health that is the one being ignored but, in this situation, it's the men who weren't being recognised or represented."

"I believed it for years. I thought that was the way forward,"

"I started thinking 'how do I improve my half marathon by 10 seconds? Is it a drop in weight?'. And that's when my head completely went."

", the body will adjust to the energy deficit and cause a drop in performance and high risk of injuries. To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. This video can not be played The athletes affected by relative energy deficiency in sport Olympic and world champion Jonny Brownlee acknowledges under-fuelling mistakes he made in his triathlon career contributed to serious injuries. "

" he tells BBC Sport. "

" Brownlee, who recently announced his retirement, believes the culture of not fuelling on the bike has now changed but a stigma lingers around REDs and the perception that it is a "

"In females, there are more obvious signs but in males it can go under the radar a little bit and then it hits you by a really serious injury,"

"I think there's a stigma attached in there, or it's not looked at as the obvious answer to some of your problems, it's found later down the line. Men also don't like to talk about under-fuelling because it's just seen as 'you probably should feel better and you should be on top of that'."

"The group that I left to their own devices unfortunately went on the default and they lost even more bone mineral density, similar to an astronaut in space… And they performed OK, but relative to their functional threshold power, they didn't get the race results that you would have expected. "

"So, I had evidence that REDs definitely does exist quite extensively in my group of the male cyclists and you're going to underperform if you don't fuel sufficiently. The good news is that REDs is reversible. But if you don't take action, it's a decline."

"I think the men are maybe more reluctant than the women, or maybe they don't realise they've got it. Sometimes they might use a different word for it, they say burnout,"

"I don't mind that though because there is definitely a psychological aspect to REDs. Why are you doing this? Why are you not eating the carbohydrates?"

"I always felt like I was overweight. Everybody was under pressure regarding weight, but nobody really spoke about it,"

"I'm just under six foot and I've got large glutes and thigh muscles. As a road cyclist, I used to race at 68kg and for my height and build, that's quite skinny. I even got down to about 66kg and when I got down to that, I felt underpowered, I felt bad."

"It really is not healthy,"

"If you want to go to the highest levels of the sport, you will suffer later on in life. You're destroying your body. "

"I'm suffering now and I've so many regrets. I just wish I'd known more about this."

"One of the big things we've done in the past 10 years is try and turn this into a performance-related conversation,"

"Now, we couch the conversation with an athlete around 'if you under-fuel, you will not be able to perform at your best', whereas previously, conversations in power-to-weight ratio sports might have been 'you need to be lighter'. "

" of the move by World Climbing and believes other federations should follow suit. "

"Prevention is the best medicine you can give. We want athletes and coaches to understand that it's not about weight. It's about strength, it's about performance and fuelling the body and you pay a price if you lose weight in an unhealthy way."

"I'd never want to see an athlete go through the years I've had. I'm 10-15 kilos heavier than I've ever been and the biggest thing I can say is I've never been so happy. You need a healthy body to do everything else. "