Mónica Sousa is a researcher at CINTESIS – Center for Health Technology and Services Research, where she works mainly in Nutrition in Sports, with an emphasis on supplementation. She combines research, teaching, and clinical practice. She is a guest assistant professor at the NOVA Medical School – Medical Sciences Faculty, a consultant of the Medical and Anti-Doping Commission of European Athletics, the coordinator of Nutrition at the Portuguese Athletics Federation since 2019, and coordinator of the Nutrition department of Sporting Club de Portugal Modalities, which includes all sports except football 11, since 2021.

She was born on July 16, 1985, in Lisbon. She always wanted to combine nutrition and sports but didn’t even know it was possible to make a profession out of it. On the one hand, her parents gave and continue giving a lot of importance to healthy food.

“I’m lucky enough to come from a family that values food and gives priority to quality food, even though they’re not in the health area (my father was an engineer and my mother a lawyer). It was always natural for me to have this concern. I loved to go to the market with my father, ever since I was a little girl. I always had a special connection with food, in a very natural way,” she recalls.

On the other hand, she has practiced sports since she was a child. As a swimmer for the TAP Portugal Club and then for the CDUP, she was the national record holder in the modality medley relay, in juniors, and won several championships.

In 2003, she entered the Faculty of Nutrition and Food Sciences of the University of Porto (FCNAUP), then a major reference, and soon began to be noticed, when she received two awards (Merit Award for the best final grade in her study program and the U.Porto Incentive Award for the best final grade as freshperson). In 2007, she went back to Lisbon to do her curricular internship as a nutritionist in three different institutions: Hospital da Marinha, Portuguese Swimming Federation, and Portuguese Athletics Federation. This is where her connection to this Federation began. She completed the IOC Diploma in Sports Nutrition at the International Olympic Committee (IOC), from 2010 to  2011, and the Ph.D. Program in Sports Sciences at the Faculty of Sports at the University of Porto (FADEUP), from 2010 to 2015, with a scholarship from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).

For her Ph.D., “the goal was to compare the resilience of a supplement with a set of foods in a shake. Today, this is called the food first approach, but at the time it didn’t even have a name yet. It was an attempt to show that food can be an added value compared to supplements.

She returned to Lisbon to coordinate a team of nutritionists at a nutrition clinic (Nutribalance). She started teaching in 2016, at Universidade Lusófona in Lisbon and at Politécnico de Leiria, where she remained until 2018, combining teaching, clinical activity, and research.

In 2018, she joined Conceição Calhau’s team at CINTESIS and the NOVA Medical School. “The fact that we have researchers from various areas makes this network of contacts much easier. Working every day with the people who are part of the research group also facilitates this connection. CINTESIS is a large institution, which gives visibility, which allows us to successfully compete in major international calls,” she testifies.

In recent years, she has published several articles about women athletes. She has published a review article that includes, among other topics, the information we know so far about how to possibly adapt nutritional intervention according to the phases of the menstrual cycle. She endorses the motto “Women are not small men”, launched by Stacy Sims, and argues that further research is needed in this area.

“There is very little information, it’s too early to make these adjustments. The truth is that research is still mostly on men. It’s easier because they don’t have issues associated with the variations of the menstrual cycle. Research in women involves collecting data at the same phases of the cycle and training. But you can’t pretend it’s the same because, in fact, it’s not.” she highlights.

In 2022, she published two articles in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports about the elite female athlete, more specifically about the absence of changes in the gut microbiota after an international tournament, and another about nutritional supplementation in female soccer players from top teams from several countries.

On May of this year, she and a team of researchers from the NOVA Medical School and the Portuguese Football Federation won a World Anti-Doping Agency call to study supplementation and doping.  supported by the Olympic Committee of Portugal, the Paralympic Committee of Portugal, and the Portuguese Institute for Sport and Youth (IPDJ),

1-Year Ambition

I want to investigate supplementation and doping as part of the project funded by the World Anti-Doping Agency. The theme of the female athlete will also continue to be present, namely with a study on the reaction to heat and cooling strategies. We have more and more female athletes (in the last Olympic Games there was almost parity with men) and we have the issue of global warming due to climate change. It seems that the thermoregulation of women may be different from that of men. We will try to understand if there are differences and what are the best strategies.

Since I am in several institutions, I also want to promote the collection of data that can be translatable to clinical practice. In August, I will be at the European Athletics Championships in Munich to implement nutrition labels on the meals that will be served by the organization (the European Athletics) so that athletes can make more informed choices, based on the list of ingredients, nutritional information, and allergens, for example, and according to their competitive schedule.

10-Year Ambition

I would like to maintain this link between academia, research, and clinical practice to do applied science. I also want to increase this research on Sports Nutrition in Portugal. Right now, I don’t know of any specific research lines in Sports Nutrition, but we have started to have consortiums. For example, we have been researching with the Portuguese Football Federation and we are going to bring together the Committees and the IPDJ. It is important to bring these institutions together so that research in this area has continuity. It is very difficult to reach elite athletes. That is why we need the support of these institutions and the clubs.

Life Beyond Research, Teaching and Clinical Practice

My free time is mostly dedicated to my family, boyfriend, and dog. I do sports almost daily, namely yoga, clinical Pilates, strength training, swimming, and surfing. I also usually dance Latin American and African dances. I have taken classes for many years and used to go dancing very often. Now I just swim recreationally to kill the nostalgia.