Enhancing Muscle Performance with Mouth Rinsing

Most sport physios know that carbohydrates are vitally important for sports performance and recovery. But did you know that just simply rinsing the mouth with carbohydrates can actually boost athletic performance? We explore this and more in our video with the full transcript below.

Transcript:

Hi, it's Dr. Wells from Nutritional Physical Therapy and I wanted to give a quick research (0:04) update. I found a really cool article that I think a lot of sports PTs would love to hear about (0:09) and some of our strength coach colleagues and friends too. This one is by Sung Jang Jung, (0:16) Nutrients 2024.

It's titled, Carb Mouth Rinsing Before Exercises Increases RDL Performance. RDL (0:23) meaning Roman Deadlifts. So effectively with a small study, they took 20 male athletes, (0:30) had them rinse their mouth with a 6.6% multidextrin solution, kind of a real sweet solution.

 (0:36) They rinsed for 20 seconds and then spit the substance out and then they performed five sets (0:46) of six repetitions of RDLs. RDLs were attached to a flywheel and they were able to look at peak (0:52) power and total work and effectively that's what they found is that eccentric peak power and their (0:58) total work was significantly increased. Interestingly, the rated perceived exertion (1:04) was not altered at all, which I find fascinating.

But similar to some other studies that we've seen (1:10) where people take in mouth rinsing and it's enhanced performance, particularly muscle (1:17) performance and endurance. We don't usually see this with like 1RM maxes and that sort of thing. (1:23) Usually it's like marathoners or endurance athletes.

So this kind of mirrors some of those (1:28) studies. And it's really interesting because it shows the psychology of how our brain is tied (1:34) in with our movement systems. So just by rinsing the mouth or stimulating the reward pathways, (1:40) which allows us to keep on chugging.

So very interesting study. Hope you enjoy it. And (1:45) there's more content that we have on sports and sports physical therapy and our board-approved (1:50) continuing ed courses.

If you haven't signed up, sign up today. If you've already signed up, (1:54) send it on to a friend and subscribe and like and comment below. Thanks.

Keywords: physical therapy, sports physical therapy, strength and conditioning, exercise, fitness, nutrition, sports performance, continuing education, carb loading, RDL, mouth rinsing

Disclaimer: The above article is written as an opinion piece and does not convey specific legal, medical, and/or practice act advice.

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