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14.05.2015

Curcumin supplementation: more glycogen, less lactic acid, more stamina, more strength

Curcumin supplementation may be of interest to endurance athletes. This is suggested by a Taiwanese animal study in which a relatively low dose of curcumin led to a big increase in the endurance capacity of lab mice.

Curcumin
Curcumin [structural formula shown below] has been the subject of heated interest from molecular nutritionists in recent years. That's not surprising if you look at the long list of the benefits of curcumin: it inhibits muscle breakdown, enhances the positive effects of exercise on the blood vessels, boosts testosterone levels, inhibits estradiol, strengthen bones – and makes you, just like Superman, able to fly.

Okay, okay, maybe not fly, but the rest is true. Hence the interest in the animal study that researchers at the National Taiwan Sport University published in Nutrients.

Study
The researchers gave male mice different doses of fluid curcumin for 28 days. The human equivalent of the lowest dose [CCM 1X] was 11-15 mg; the human equivalent of the highest dose was 55-75 mg.

Mice in a control group were given no curcumin.

Results
After 28 days of supplementation the mice that had been given curcumin had developed more muscle strength in their claws than the mice in the control group. The higher the dose, the higher the muscle strength.

The increase in muscle strength may have been due to the anticatabolic effect of curcumin, the researchers suggest. Another possibility is that curcumin stimulates the development of the nerve pathways that the brain uses to send signals to the muscles. [Neurotox Res. 2006 Jan;9(1):29-37.]

When the researchers got the mice to run in a treadmill they observed that the animals that had been given curcumin could keep going for longer, as you can see in the figures above.

The researchers discovered that curcumin increased the concentration of glycogen in the muscles [see above], and reduced the concentration of ammonia [NH3], urea [BUN] and lactate in the blood [see below].

The researchers think that the curcumin supplementation enhanced the growth of small blood vessels, which provide the muscles with nutrients and oxygen. As a result metabolic processes improved and the mice's endurance capacity increased.

Conclusion
The curcumin dose used was pretty low for a study of this kind. We wonder what kind of fluid the Taiwanese used. Was it a nano-application?

Source:
Nutrients. 2015 Jan 30;7(2):905-21.

More:
Fifty times more effective than ordinary curcumin 19.05.2014
Piperine makes curcumin more effective 29.04.2014