Michael Gleeson

Michael Gleeson is Emeritus Professor of Exercise Biochemistry at Loughborough University. He retired in 2016 after 40 years of research and teaching mostly related to the diet, metabolism, health and performance of athletes. He had a particular interest in the effects of diet and exercise on the function of the immune system and is a Past-President of the International Society of Exercise and Immunology (ISEI).

He has co-authored several books on exercise biochemistry, sport nutrition and exercise immunology and published over 250 research papers in scientific and medical journals. He is still an active science writer and in the past few years has contributed to international expert consensus reviews sponsored by the IOC (training load and illness risk), ISEI (immuno-nutrition), ISSN (probiotics and the athlete gut microbiota) and UEFA (nutrition in elite football) as well as completing the 4th edition of his highly popular textbook Sport Nutrition co-authored with Professor Asker Jeukendrup, published in 2024.

In 2020 he released his first solo books: Eat, Move, Sleep, Repeat and Beating Type 2 Diabetes and followed these in 2021 with The Pick’n’Mix Diet. These are a series of healthy lifestyle guidebooks that have been written for the benefit of public health. They are not academic books and the intended audience is any reasonably intelligent person with an interest in nutrition, exercise, fitness, weight loss or health. His latest solo book is Nutrition For Top Performance In Football (for the UK/EU market) or Nutrition For Top Performance In Soccer (for the American market) published in 2022.

Gleeson is considered a world authority on exercise biochemistry, immunology, and nutrition, and he has worked with numerous world-class athletes and professional football clubs. He has taught sport nutrition and exercise physiology at the university level (BSc and MSc) and has supervised 17 PhD students, at least five of whom have become professors. Gleeson is a fellow of the the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences and the European College of Sport Science and a member of the American College of Sports Medicine, and the Physiological Society. He enjoys playing tennis, hill walking, and watching football and films.