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Definition: "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance "
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24.09.2015 |
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Clove of garlic boosts athletes' endurance capacity
If endurance athletes ingest a clove of garlic - or the equivalent in garlic powder - five hours before cycling or running, their maximal oxygen uptake and therefore also their endurance capacity increase as a result. Turkish sports scientists discovered this twenty years ago and a more recent American study confirms the Turkish findings.
Garlic for endurance athletes
Does garlic protect against heart attacks?
Womack got his subjects to cycle to the point of exhaustion on two different occasions. On one occasion the subjects had taken a placebo three hours before the trial; on the other occasion they took a supplement containing 900 mg garlic powder. This amount of garlic powder is the equivalent of one garlic clove.
The results were inconclusive. Womack looked at the activity of tissue plasminogen activator [tPA], an enzyme that clears up blood clots, and had to admit that the garlic supplement had no effect.
Garlic boosts VO2max
Despite the increase in the subjects VO2max their endurance capacity did not increase. But, wrote Womack, in 2000 the Turkish sports scientist Deniz Unal Ince of Hacettepe Unal in Ankara published the results of a study in which garlic supplementation not only boosted VO2max, but also led to an increase in endurance capacity. [Turk J Med Sci. 2000;30:557-61.]
We lifted the table above out of that publication.
Ince also gave his subjects 900 mg garlic powder before getting them to run on a treadmill. But unlike Womack, Ince gave his subjects the supplement not 3 but 5 hours before getting them to run to the point of exhaustion. This was the amount of time the components in the garlic needed to reach the circulatory system.
Possible mechanism
Supplements
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