Can Turmeric or Curcumin Help Athletes Recover Faster?

The TLDR:

• Sport physios, Strength Coaches, and Athletic Trainers are always looking for ways to get their athletes to recover faster.

• We have covered the positive effects of turmeric, which contains curcurmin, in our courses, especially for those with osteoarthritis.

• A new systematic review shows some promising data that curcumin dosed at 1-4 grams per day may accelerate athletic recovery. More research is needed on timing, Dosing, and what athletes reap the best gains.

Transcript:

Good afternoon everyone, Dr. Wells here from Nutritional Physical Therapy. Hope you're having a great day, beautiful day here in St. Augustine Beach. I have another cool research update for everyone. This one is by Papascu Radu et al. This is from the University of Catalonia, so Catalonia in southern Spain, Spain near Barcelona. It's in the Journal of International Society of Sports Nutrition 2024.

Now it's an open access journal, you should be able to find this article. If not, I'll put in the link in the description below. The title was Evaluation of Curcumin Intake in Reducing Exercise-Induced Muscle Damage in Athletes. This was a systematic review. I love systematic reviews, they can give us a good slice on what to guide our patients on. They're obviously not completely definitive, but they definitely can carry some weight. Overall, what the authors found was about 1 to 4 grams of curcumin can have a positive effect on muscle damage. What they found was most of the studies showed reductions in inflammations, reductions in muscle damage. Now, the issue was curcumin is based off of turmeric, so you have to really isolate the curcumin from the turmeric.

Just adding turmeric to your food, for instance, probably won't get you high enough. These doses typically are supplemental doses. That doesn't mean you can't add turmeric into your foods and not see a benefit. You certainly can, but most of these studies were focused on the curcumin, which is the active component of turmeric. Now, the other thing that they highlighted was the dose matters, particularly the dose with what else you're eating. We know that when you combine turmeric with piperine, for instance, which is from black pepper, the bioavailability goes way up and you can absorb that turmeric much better.

The other factors are like what else you're eating, the timing of that, and also the timing relationship to your exercise. Because if you've been through some of our courses, you know that we'd like turmeric for some conditions like osteoarthritis of the knee, but we also are starting to see some emerging results from some sports journals that turmeric too early on after exercise can actually blunt the pro-inflammatory, if you will, effects of exercise. We know that exercise causes some tissue damage and things.

We might need some of that to grow muscles. Regardless, I think the data's still out. It might help athletes recover.

I think it depends on how much and when they implement it and also what type of exercises. If we're looking at power-based athletes, there may be a bigger impact on them versus aerobic athletes. Stay tuned.

We've got more research to come. In the meantime, check out our course below and earn your CNPT Credential!

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