Nutritional Supplement Knowledge of Athletes with

Nutritional supplements are a temptation for athletes with and without spinal cord injury (SCI) who are attempting to enhance their performance. However, many supplements do not possess convincing scientific merit to advise their use and some even have the potential to cause harm. This is of particular concern for athletes with SCI, who often need to manage secondary health complications for optimal performance. Currently, there is a paucity of research on the supplement knowledge of elite athletes and athletes with SCI, as the majority of research has investigated able-bodied (AB) athletes of junior to university level in countries other than New Zealand (NZ). This emphasises the importance to investigate the supplement knowledge and practices of NZ athletes to evaluate how the SCI population compare with the AB population, and how these groups compare to their overseas counterparts. Methods: The present study investigated the nutritional supplement knowledge, practices and reasons for use of 11 elite AB athletes and 15 athletes with SCI in NZ from an online questionnaire