The Science Behind Curcumin: A Natural Solution for Muscle Damage
In training athletes are often pushing their bodies to the absolute limit. Although this is crucial for growth, and muscle damage is a key factor in hypertrophy, too much muscle damage can lead to soreness, stiffness, reduced range of motion and reduced power output. There’s a number of things that can help reduce this and manage inflammation, allowing you to recover faster and train hard. One of these is Curcumin! In this blog we’re reviewing a recent research article on Curcumin highlighting it’s impact on muscle damage. Read on to find out what Curcumin is, If it’s beneficial, how it works, and how you should be taking it.
Introduction to Curcumin and Its Health Benefits
Before we dive into the study, we first need to introduce Curcumin itself. it’s found in turmeric and is a Curcuminoid, it’s actually the compound that gives turmeric it’s yellow colour and has been studied a fair bit with regards to inflammation as it’s been shown to have strong anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory properties. Often it’s studied in the context of chronic inflammation or auto inflammatory conditions such as arthritis for which there’s a pretty solid evidence base for! But the article we’re looking at looks at it in the context of muscle damage.
Meta-analysis of the effect of curcumin supplementation on skeletal muscle damage status
This is the study we’re going to be looking at carried out by Xiaoyang Liu, Lihan LinID, and Guopeng Hu. It’s a meta analysis designed to evaluate the effects of curcumin supplementation on skeletal muscle damage. The markers they were looking at in particular were subjective measures of muscle soreness, along with creatine kinase levels, interleukin-6 concentrations and range of motion. These are all markers of muscle damage
What They Did
As it’s a meta analysis the researchers systematically reviewed 14 randomised controlled trials (RCTs) that were investigating curcumin and muscle damage. Across these trials, a total of 349 participants were included.
What They Found
They found that curcumin supplementation significantly reduced muscle soreness, CK levels and IL-6 concentrations all while improving ROM. They found that taking the supplement immediately after exercise reduced CK levels and IL-6 the greatest, which makes sense as post exercise is often where muscle damage is at it’s highest. They also found that it was more beneficial for improving ROM and muscle soreness when used pre emptively or over a longer period. They found it had a greater impact on untrained individuals.
How Curcumin Helps Alleviate Muscle Soreness
Whenever we’re looking at supplements or research, I always like to make sure that results agree with the mechanistic theory which we do see in this case! The proposed mechanism of action of curcumin is it’s antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects which are well known and would contribute to the results found.
Applications To Training
It’s worth discussing these results with regards to training as we saw the greatest impact on CK levels and IL-6 levels was taking the supplement post training, but this does not mean we should take curcumin post training! As mentioned training creates an inflammatory response which provides the stimuli for growth. If we minimise this response post training using anti-oxidants then it may blunt the adaptations to training. This is not to say we shouldn’t be using curcumin as it has many benefits. Instead we should be using it away from training to help reduce muscle soreness and improve range of motion.
Dosage wise we should be looking at doses of between 200mg-500mg daily over a prolonged period. This is something that I recommend athletes do during intense training phases or particularly stressful periods of their lives. It’s not necessarily something you need to be doing daily but planning like this can be an incredibly useful tool to add to your toolbox!
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