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Definition: "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance "
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19.04.2021 |
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Spinach fights stress, inhibits stress hormone
Spinach reduces the harmful psychological and hormonal effects of chronic stress. Korean anti-aging researchers at Gyeongsang National University School of Medicine come to this conclusion in an animal study published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine.
Study
Corticosterone plays the same role in mice as cortisol in humans.
Some of the mice were fed standard chow without additives [ND]. This was the control group. Other groups of mice were given spinach extracts. The Taiwanese experiments with freeze-dried spinach powder [FP], an alcohol extract of spinach [EE] and a water-based spinach extract [WE].
In this post, we will mainly focus on the effects of the freeze-dried spinach powder. They were the most interesting. Moreover, this powder is available as a superfood supplement. If the mice in the spinach powder group had been adult humans, they would have consumed 6-9 grams of spinach powder daily.
Results
During the experiment, the researchers hung the mice on their tails for 6 minutes, and measured how long the animals dangled inactive [immobile duration]. When mice are depressed - in this case due to an excess of stress stimuli - they don't move and just hang. If not, they swing back and forth trying to escape.
You can see in the figure below left that spinach powder shortened the immobile duration.
CTL = mice that did not receive stress stimuli; STR = mice that the researchers had put in a tube.
In another experiment, the researchers determined whether the mice could appreciate sugar water [sucrose preference]. Depressed mice lose their sweet tooth, mentally healthy mice do not. You can see above that spinach also mitigated this aspect of depression.
Mechanism
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