With fall races on the horizon, you may have already begun tapering, but there’s one thing you should be amping up: Your vitamin C and E intake, the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sportsreports.
In the study, nine runners popped 500 mg of vitamin C and 100 IU of vitamin E per day for 2 weeks, then ran a 5-mile time trial in a hot, humid, and ozone-polluted chamber.
Compared to another trial where the runners took placebo pills, the vitamins increased concentrations of antioxidants in the runners’ blood before and after their race. Why is this important? Runners who experienced the greatest boost in antioxidant concentrations clocked the biggest time improvements, explains study co-author Geraint Florida-James, Ph.D., of Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland.
Exercising in a polluted environment creates additional oxidative stress in the body, which can cause the body to churn out inflammation-causing compounds, Florida-James explains. But antioxidants can mop op those free radicals, reducing oxidative stress and putting the kibosh on airway inflammation. (Inflammation can injure the lungs and cause them to become less efficient during your runs.)
0 Comments:
Post a Comment