After looking at a lot of information about stroke research and general strength and balance training recently I thought we could look instead at something completely different today: Antioxidants and their use in promoting recovery after exercise. In general as physiotherapists we don’t really talk about what supplements to use and what might be best as this is mostly the role of nutritionists but here at ThreeSpires Physiotherapy we commonly see patients who are very active and sporting and are wanting to find ways to improve their recovery. So, they often ask about our opinion as physiotherapists and as this bit of research cropped up in our professional magazine recently I thought it could be interesting to bring it to your attention.

There is a commonly held belief that using antioxidants such as Vitamin C or E (or having foods enriched with anti-oxidants) will help recovery and help ward off muscle soreness. Many of my patients who are doing a large amount of sport or are trying to train hard take antioxidant supplements.  Certainly, I have tried doing this myself and in the past have spent copious amounts on various supplements to help with recovery. My own experience both as a person doing a lot of sport and a physio was that taking these supplements made no difference to my recovery or performance and instead just gave me some very expensive urine!. Now obviously this was not hard science and was just my own experience and it could well be that they work for other people. However a recent systematic review has pooled a number of studies (approx. 1000 participants) which looked at the results of using antioxidants to reduce muscle soreness. This review concluded that although taking the antioxidants did improve recovery a bit the actual effect was minimal and was not likely to be very noticeable. More details about the study can be found https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2018/07/27/bjsports-2018-099599

So, it looks like according to the most recent research that you would be better off spending your money on other things rather than taking expensive supplements to help with recovery post exercise.

I hope that you have found this blog helpful: just to remind you we are a home visit physiotherapy service based in Lichfield and serving surrounding areas such as Sutton Coldfield, Cannock, Tamworth, Rugeley and Walsall.