Scientific review finds that this stuff leads to superior recovery and muscle performance.
Everyone is taking curcumin these days, but for different reasons. Some take it to boost mood. Some take it for erection insurance. (It keeps blood vessels healthy and boosts nitric oxide.) Lifters take it to deal with aches and pains, and it helps keeps them lean.
Whatever the goal, they all take curcumin ➔ Buy at Biotest. And now, a recent study adds to that list of benefits. This study looked at all the curcumin science related to working out.
The study
In this systematic review, researchers reviewed curcumin's effects on human performance. Here's what they found:
- Post-exercise soreness: Excess oxidative stress leads to excessive and debilitating muscle soreness (DOMS) and screws up progress. Curcumin mitigates excess soreness, allowing for quicker recovery.
- Post-exercise muscle damage: Elevated CK (creatine kinase) indicates muscle damage from intense exercise. Curcumin subjects had lower CK values 24 and 48 hours post-lifting.
- Recovery and performance: Curcumin improved jump performance after resistance exercise, reduced power lost between sprints, and improved range of motion 3-4 days after exercise.
- Oxidative stress: Curcumin reduces biomarkers of aging and degenerative processes, along with higher values of antioxidant potential after aerobic exercise.
- Training strain and stress: Curcumin users have a lower body temperature while training, lower heart rate, and ranked lower on the physiological-strain index during aerobic exercise.
- Heat stress: Curcumin users have lower exercise-induced heat stress markers.
Bioavailable curcumin: How to get it in you
As cool as these findings are, not every curcumin study shows positive benefits. Why? It's usually because the researchers didn't use enough of it, or the right kind. Regular curcumin has a problem – poor bioavailability. Adding piperine to curcumin helped a little, but now we have something better: micellar curcumin.
By using solid lipid curcumin particles invented by neuroscientists at UCLA, micellar curcumin produces 95 times more free curcumin in the bloodstream than plain curcumin. In short, it's the kind you absorb.
This form of lipidized curcumin is found in Biotest Micellar Curcumin ➔ Buy at Biotest. Each capsule contains 400 mg of solid lipid curcumin particles.
For more info, check out: Micellar Curcumin: What to expect.
Reference
- Suhett LG et al. Effects of Curcumin Supplementation on Sport and Physical Exercise: A Systematic Review. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2021;61(6):946-958. PubMed: 32282223.