By Dr Kunle Odetoyinbo
Innovations in nutritional science, continue to make significant contributions to enhancing human health, wellbeing, and sporting performance. Central to these scientific advances is a recognition of the importance of recovery via the refuelling, repair, and remodelling (R-trio) of skeletal muscle. Enhanced Recovery™ utilises these important knowledge gains by providing both macro and micronutrients that are central to recovery processes. Without appropriate consideration of the nutritional requirements during recovery, resulting health outcomes and or sporting performance can be compromised in both elite athletes and health-conscious exercising individuals.
An individual’s capacity to recover dictates potential performance in the next exercise bout, exercise session or competition. This becomes particularly important when competition or exercise/training sessions are completed in close succession. In professional sport competition schedules are often congested (1) and similarly for health-conscious individuals exercise is often sandwiched between occupational demands. The ensuing fatigue that is mainly linked to a combination of glycogen depletion, muscle damage, and mental fatigue has a role to play in the recovery processes. For this reason, the training paradigm dictates that inappropriate recovery between exercise or training can lead to sub-optimal training induced adaptations and potentially ill health and or injury (1). Therefore, in order to achieve favourable outcomes following training and exercise both elite athletes and individuals who embark on health-related programmes should consider the nutritional requirements that underpin the R-trio during these intervals. The available evidence supports the nutrient composition of Enhanced Recovery™ as critical to the R-trio i.e. refuelling, repair, and remodelling of muscle, based upon its uniquely engineered ingredients.
The combined ingestion of carbohydrate and protein contained within Enhanced Recovery™ accelerates the R-trio process in two distinct areas. Firstly, it supports post-exercise muscle glycogen synthesis (refuelling) particularly after prolonged (endurance running and cycling) or high intensity exercise (e.g. football and rugby training or matches) when muscle glycogen stores can become depleted (2). This important relationship between recovery and carbohydrate consumption post-exercise has been shown in both cycling and running related activities (3, 4). Secondly, the synergistic effect of protein (ER contains; whey, collagen, leucine, and carnitine) and carbohydrate (Apple, Pear and Blackcurrant) consumption, particularly when consumed immediatelypost-exercise, attenuates the physiological processes that favour repair and functional remodelling within skeletal muscle (5, 6). This remains an important nutritional behaviour choice, given that exercise, training, and competition leads to differing degrees of muscle fibre damage to the sarcolemma, contractile proteins, and connective tissue (7). Such disturbances equate to a reduced capacity for muscle to generate forces because glucose transport within the muscle is impaired and the existence of a decreased capacity to store glycogen (8). Until these disturbances are remedied, the muscle cells will not be fully functional leaving the capacity to recover incomplete.
Consistent uninterrupted training due to effective and appropriate nutritional intakes during recovery, have a strong causal relationship with exercise related health gains and high-level sporting performance (9). For these reasons and because Enhanced Recovery™ contains other important nutrients including Omega-3, vitamins D, E and additional antioxidants, there is sufficient efficacy to support its consumption in a wide variety of sporting and exercise settings during recovery.
References
- Kathryn L Beck, Jasmine S Thomson, Richard J Swift, and Pamela R von Hurst (2015). Role of nutrition in performance enhancement and post-exercise recovery. Open Access J Sports Med. 2015; 6: 259–267.
- Jensen L, Gejl KD, Ørtenblad N, et al. Carbohydrate restricted recovery from long term endurance exercise does not affect gene responses involved in mitochondrial biogenesis in highly trained athletes. Physiol Rep. 2015;3(2): e12184
- Odetoyinbo K. (1992) Dietary Manipulation and Recovery from High Intensity Intermittent Cycling. MSc
- Thesis: Loughborough University
- Bishop, P.A., Jones, E. & Woods, A.K. (2008). Recovery from training: A brief review. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 22, 1015–1024. 7
- Beelen, M., Burke LM, Gibala MJ, van Loon L JC. (2010). Nutritional strategies to promote post-exercise recovery. International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, 20, 515–532. 11.
- Howarth, K.R., Krista R. Howarth, Natalie A. Moreau, Stuart M. Phillips, and Martin J. Gibala (2009). Co-ingestion of protein with carbohydrate during recovery from endurance exercise stimulates skeletal muscle protein synthesis in humans. Journal of Applied Physiology, 106, 1394–1402.
- Thomas, C., Bishop DJ, Lambert K, Mercier J, Brooks GA. (2012). Effects of acute and chronic exercise on sarcolemmal MCT1 and MCT4 contents in human skeletal muscles: Current status. American Journal of Physiology. Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, 302, R1–R14.
- Ivy, J.L. (2004). Regulation of muscle glycogen repletion, muscle protein synthesis and repair following exercise. Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, 3, 131–138.
- Ristow. M. et al. (2009). Antioxidants prevent health-promoting effects of physical exercise in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106, 8665–8670.