All athlete should read this...or else just stick with what works, if it does

Good to Go:
What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery

by Christie Aschwanden

How about that "science of recovery"? Is it real, or is it just a collection of a lot of wishful thinking?

A lot--nay, a supermajority--of the recovery "cures" that we've sworn by for years are simple and plain bunk. I already knew that, but it was interesting to read his research on them.  Icing, for example--it helps with a pain of an sprain or an overuse, but it doesn't do squat to speed the body's white blood cells along to start repairing the injury. Do a quick search and you'll find study after study debunking the 'ice' part of RICE:

 a study published in 2014 by the European Society of Sports Traumatology, Knee Surgery and Arthroscopy found that putting ice on injured tissue shuts off the blood supply that brings in healing cells. “Ice doesn’t increase healing—it delays it”...

She reviews performance enhancers, too, such as overhydration, electrolyte replacement drinks, and energy bars. She points out a lot of the poor experiment design that is common in sports nutrition research, and she reminds you of the plethora of conflict-of-interest found in product reviews.  After all that, she pretty much leaves you to make your own conclusions. (Although titling one chapter "selling snake oil" is pretty cheeky)

Regarding blood tests and other metrics, she hit a sore nerve with me. (I had a similar result)  She used Blueprints for Athletes to get a blood test on herself.  After they ran 43 different tests, the result said that her estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) was low and her creatinine level too high.  These could signal a kidney problem, or could mean that she was eating more protein than her kidneys could easily process. She contacted her doctor in alarm, and heard this: don't panic; the numbers are only slightly off.

a human physiology expert noted that,
So-called incidental findings like these are common when you go looking for anomalies in healthy people.

Her creatinine is high because she's muscular. It's common in people who work out regularly. The eGFR rate is off because it's calculated based on creatinine level.
And she notes,

...if I'd brought the results to a doctor who was less aware of the problems that happen when you give medical tests to healthy people without symptoms, I might have been sent onto a spiral of escalating testing that woul dmake me anxious and suck up a bunch of my time and money without improving my health one iota.

It's all worth reading but especially the last chapter "Hurts so good," in which she analyzes the placebo effect and reminds us that however illogical it might seem, the effect is real.