PLoS ONE (Jan 2016)

Pomegranate Supplementation Accelerates Recovery of Muscle Damage and Soreness and Inflammatory Markers after a Weightlifting Training Session.

  • Achraf Ammar,
  • Mouna Turki,
  • Hamdi Chtourou,
  • Omar Hammouda,
  • Khaled Trabelsi,
  • Choumous Kallel,
  • Osama Abdelkarim,
  • Anita Hoekelmann,
  • Mohamed Bouaziz,
  • Fatma Ayadi,
  • Tarak Driss,
  • Nizar Souissi

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0160305
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 10
p. e0160305

Abstract

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The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of natural Pomegranate juice supplementation on performance and acute and delayed responses of muscle soreness and biomarkers of muscle damage after a weightlifting training session.Nine elite weightlifters (21±0.5 years) performed two Olympic-Weightlifting-sessions after either placebo (PLA) or natural pomegranate juice (POMj) supplementations. Heart rate, blood pressure and blood samples (hematological parameters, muscle damage and C-reactive protein (CRP)) were collected at rest, 3min and 48h after each session. Weightlifting performance, RPE, and DOMS were also assessed after each training session.T-test showed higher performance (+8.30%) and lower RPE values (-4.37%) using POMj supplementation (p0.05). Additionally, during the 48h following the training session, POMj improved the recovery kinetic of SBP (p<0.01, 7.97%), CK (p<0.001, 11.34%), LDH (p<0.05, 7.30%) and ASAT (p<0.05, 6.77%). Indeed, the present study showed that 48h of recovery associated to natural POMj supplementation was sufficient to reach the resting values of the selected muscle damage markers after intensive training session.Natural POMj seems to ameliorate the capacity to adhere to an intensive training program. Therefore, elite weightlifters are advised to use natural POMj during intensive training program and competition to accelerate muscle recovery.ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02697903.