If athletes take a dose of about 1000 units of vitamin D3 daily, they recover a lot more swiftly from training sessions and may also build up muscle mass and strength a lot more quickly. At least, that’s what you’d expect after reading the animal study that Korean nutritionists at Sungshin Women’s university published in Cytokine. Vitamin D supplementation inhibits the first step in the process of muscle breakdown after heavy exertion.
If athletes take a dose of about 1000 units of vitamin D3 daily, they recover a lot more swiftly from training sessions and may also build up muscle mass and strength a lot more quickly. At least, that’s what you’d expect after reading the animal study that Korean nutritionists at Sungshin Women’s university published in Cytokine. Vitamin D supplementation inhibits the first step in the process of muscle breakdown after heavy exertion.
Does a vitamin D deficiency – which is found a lot more typically than not in the inhabitants of northern climes – have negative consequences for athletes? yes it does, sports scientists at the university of Wyoming conclude after studying 19 well-trained endurance athletes. [Open access J sports Med 2012;3:35–42.] The a lot more vitamin D3 in the athletes’ blood, the less TNF-alpha the researchers found.
TNF-alpha is an inflammatory protein. In small quantities it plays a important role in muscle recovery; in high concentrations it inhibits the effect of anabolic aspects in muscle cells and stimulates muscle breakdown.
These and similar findings gave the Koreans the idea of studying the effect of vitamin D supplementation by doing fundamental research in an animal study. For a period of eight weeks the researchers trained a group of rats: they ran for 30-minute sessions on a treadmill five days a week. The researchers gradually boosted the intensity of the animals’ exertions. and a control group did not run.
Half of the rats that did training had 25 micrograms vitamin D3 injected into their small intestine daily [HED]. The human equivalent of this dose would be about 1000 IE per day. The other half were not given any vitamins [HE].
In the rats that were given vitamin D3 the concentration of the enzymes LDH and CK in blood of the HED rats rose by less than in the HE rats. LDH and CK are indicators of muscle breakdown.
Vitamin D administration inhibited the rise in production of the inflammatory proteins TNF-alpha and interleukin-6 in the HED rats in relation to the animals in the HE group. The Koreans discovered that vitamin D3 supplementation minimized the action of the transcription aspect NF-kB. NF-kB activity is the very first sign of muscle breakdown.
“Therefore, supplementation with vitamin D3 may be useful in the rapid recovery or in protecting muscle damage from consistent training”, the Koreans conclude.
Vitamin D3 supplementation modulates inflammatory actions from the muscle damage induced by high-intensity exercise in SD rats.
Choi M, Park H, Cho S, Lee M.
Source
Dept. of Food and Nutrition and research Institute of Obesity Sciences, Sungshin Women’s University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Abstract
Vitamin D is an crucial aspect for calcium and phosphorus homeostasis. A negative relationship has been observed between vitamin D status and diseases such as cancer, arthritis, diabetes, and muscle fiber atrophy. However, the relationship between vitamin D and prevention of skeletal muscle damage has not been clearly elucidated. The purpose of this study was to check out the effects of vitamin D on exercise-induced muscle changes. Rats were divided into 3 groups: (1) sedentary control (C: n=10), (2) high-intensity exercise (HE: n=10), and (3) high-intensity exercise with vitamin D supplementation (HED: n=10; i.p. 1000 IU/kg body weight). Rats were trained for 30 min/day on treadmills (5 days/week for 8 weeks) with the running speed gradually boosted up to 30 m/min at a 3° incline. At the end of the training period, the running speed was 38 m/min at a 5° incline. The high-intensity exercise substantially boosted plasma creatine kinase (CK) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) activity. In addition, IL-6 and TNF-? levels as well as phosphorylation of AMPK, p38, ERK1/2, IKK, and I?B were substantially increased. Vitamin D-treated rats showed a significant decrease in plasma CK level, phosphorylation of AMPK, p38, ERK1/2, IKK, and I?B, and gene expression of IL-6 and TNF-?. Furthermore, the protein expression of vitamin D receptor (VDR) was highly boosted in the muscles of HED-treated rats, respectively. Therefore, we concluded that vitamin D may play a essential role in exercise-induced muscle damage and inflammation through the modulation of MAPK and NF-?B involved with VDR.
Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
PMID: 23669253 [PubMed – in process]
Source: