Runners, pull your socks up!

JOGGERS are familiar with ‘runner’s stomach’ – cramping, nausea and diarrhoea triggered by intense exercise. But could compression socks prevent it?

Known medically as exercise-induced gastrointestinal syndrome, it happens when blood is redirected from the gut to the leg muscles during running, depriving it of nutrients and oxygen.

Australian researchers recruited 46 competitors in a marathon and asked half to wear the socks, which help push blood up from the legs. Blood tests measuring a protein indicating gut inflammation, taken before and after the race, showed that those who didn’t wear the socks saw protein levels jump by an average of 107 per cent 24 hours after the race, compared to 38 per cent in the sock-wearing group.