Q: I am a 35 years old working woman and I have been taking training for marathon for the last couple of months. My dietician asked me to consume a lot of carbohydrates and I should increase my calories intake too. She has given me a diet chart. I have increased my food intake by twice and I don't take junk food. I have to get up early in the morning and can mange only a 6 hours or less sleep during the week. For the last 3 days, I have been having loose motions about twice a day, which is making me tired. I am worried if I can't digest what I eat then I won't be able to find the strength to run. Please advise.

A:The diet of high carbohydrate is right. As for as your diarrhoea is concerned, it may be just hyperactivity of the digestive tract causing rapid transit of the food through the digestive tract, which is true in most marathon runners and tends to settle down to a pattern after a while on the diet. However, there can be a physiological state when the body blood gets diverted to the legs in long distant runners and this happens by diverting the blood from the intestines to the active legs. This can lead to severe diarrhoea as it happened to Paula Ratcliffe at the Athens Olympics. In very rare instances there can even be bloody-diarrhoea aptly described as "marathon colitis". Consult a gastroenterologist if your symptom persists.