The Real Story Behind Antioxidants Part 2
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Lighting a fire under you.
Working out, we consume up to 20 times more oxygen for energy production than at rest². So more exercise = more energy production = more free radicals. This can contribute to an inflammatory response, muscle damage, and prolonged recovery, especially from high intensity or endurance exercise³.
But most exercise is good for you, so how is it possible that the “dangerous” free radicals aren’t causing so much damage that it isn’t worth it? It turns out, the body has its own antioxidant systems. And these antioxidant systems adapt to training just like your muscles — they get stronger when you use them more. In other words, even if you’re producing more free radicals, the body gets better at managing and clearing them the more we exercise! This is a process called hormesis — where damage causes the system to rebuild in a stronger or better fashion.
But wouldn’t it be better to help this system along by consuming antioxidants? In the early 2000s, this was the theory: offset the negatives of free radicals by supplementing antioxidants before exercise. This would help athletes recover faster and allow their muscles to rebuild more quickly with less damage⁴. And indeed antioxidant supplements can lower oxidative stress, but at a cost.
As researchers looked into it, studies began to show that supplemental antioxidants blunted training effects. In one study, subjects supplemented with Vitamin C lost over 50% of VO2 Max improvements compared to the control group⁵. Other research has shown that Vitamins C and E can reduce maximal speed gains and inhibit the creation of new mitochondria after exercise⁶.
So what did we learn? It turns out that free radicals are important signals to the body. Like almost every system, too many is bad, but so is too little. You need to stress the cells to prime the machinery inside to adapt, and free radicals are one signal to do this.
You can think of supplemental antioxidants like an overprotective parent. If they constantly swoop in when there’s the smallest amount of risk to their child, the kid will never grow up. If antioxidants interfere before your body can respond to oxidative stress, it won’t adapt.
TL;DR When might we want to use antioxidants? For training, it depends on where we are in our performance cycle. You mostly want to avoid them when you’re in the training phase, but when you’re in a competition, they may let you go a little longer. If you’re really sick and need to prevent the body from too much damage, they may help especially when you’re getting past the infection and handling self-inflicted damage from your immune system. But if you intervene too early, they may also blunt the effects of the immune system’s attacks on viruses, bacteria, or other invaders. And talk to your doctor about using these with chemotherapy because antioxidants can protect cancer cells from the damage that is required to kill them. Then there are some niche applications — in a future article, we’ll also talk about their interesting role when you travel or scuba dive!
Finally, what about the fact that fruits and vegetables have antioxidants and are clearly good for us? Stay tuned for a deep dive into this question in our next post!
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Further Reading:
Antioxidant supplements in exercise: worse than useless? Mari Carmen Gomez-Cabrera, Michael Ristow, and Jose Viña American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism 2012 302:4, E476-E477 https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajpendo.00567.2011
Donizete C.X. de Oliveira, Flavia Troncon Rosa, Lívia Simões-Ambrósio, Alceu Afonso Jordao, Rafael Deminice, Antioxidant vitamin supplementation prevents oxidative stress but does not enhance performance in young football athletes, Nutrition, Volumes 63–64, 2019, Pages 29–35, ISSN 0899–9007, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nut.2019.01.007
Mari-Carmen Gomez-Cabrera, Elena Domenech, Marco Romagnoli, Alessandro Arduini, Consuelo Borras, Federico V Pallardo, Juan Sastre, Jose Viña, Oral administration of vitamin C decreases muscle mitochondrial biogenesis and hampers training-induced adaptations in endurance performance, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 87, Issue 1, January 2008, Pages 142–149, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/87.1.142
Maurilio T. Dutra, Sávio Alex, Marcio Rabelo Mota, Nathalia B. Sales, Lee E. Brown, and Martim Bottaro. Effect of strength training combined with antioxidant supplementation on muscular performance.
Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. 43(8): 775–781. https://doi.org/10.1139/apnm-2017-0866
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH). Antioxidants: In Depth. https://nccih.nih.gov/health/antioxidants/introduction.htm
Peternelj, TT., Coombes, J.S. Antioxidant Supplementation during Exercise Training. Sports Med 41, 1043–1069 (2011). https://doi.org/10.2165/11594400-000000000-00000
Shaun A. Mason, Adam J. Trewin, Lewan Parker, Glenn D. Wadley, Antioxidant supplements and endurance exercise: Current evidence and mechanistic insights, Redox Biology, Volume 35, 2020, 101471, ISSN 2213–2317, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.redox.2020.101471.
