 Hey, what's up guys? My name's Dylan and I'm a cycling coach at Carmichael Training Systems in Brevard, North Carolina. Today, we're going to be talking about antioxidants and whether or not they'll hurt or improve your cycling performance. For those of you who don't know, antioxidants are found in food and supplements and help fight free radicals that cause cell damage. The most common antioxidant you probably know about is vitamin C, but could vitamin C supplements be hurting your performance? In this video, I'll go into the science behind antioxidants and sports performance and talk about food versus supplements when it comes to antioxidant intake. I'll also give my advice on how to consume antioxidants to maximize your recovery and fitness gains. Antioxidants are nutrients in food and supplements that reduce oxidation, which causes the production of free radicals. Free radicals cause damage to the cells, so antioxidant intake is usually seen as a healthy thing. Common antioxidants are vitamin C, vitamin E, and beta carotene. When it comes to antioxidants and sports performance, there are two trains of thought. One is that antioxidants will reduce inflammation and help boost recovery, and the other is that the body needs these free radicals in order to adapt to the training stimulus, so antioxidants would reduce this adaption and therefore lead to less fitness gains. It's important to remember that exercise itself doesn't make you fitter. It's actually the recovery after exercise where you gain fitness. Free radicals build up in the body after exercise, and your body reacts to these free radicals and grows stronger. So could antioxidant intake be undermining your fitness by reducing these free radicals? Antioxidants fight free radicals, which is great for health and overall well-being, but could you be undermining your fitness gains by not letting your body fully adapt to these free radicals that are produced during exercise? Is there cause for alarm here? Should you stop eating fruits and vegetables and taking vitamin supplements in the pursuit of getting faster? Let's jump into the science and find out. A review article on exercise-induced oxidative stress started off by saying that there is sufficient evidence that exercise is accompanied by an increased generation of free radicals, which is normally a cause for concern, potentially leading to negative health outcomes. They go on to explain that some may see this as a paradox. Is an exercise supposed to be healthy? Well it's not actually exercise that's healthy, but the recovery after exercise. The review concludes that it may be time to shift our thinking of exercise-induced oxidative stress from a negative to a positive effect. Another review on free radicals in skin and muscles reiterated this, stating that there is increasing evidence that free radicals act as signals for cell adaption. So free radicals, once seen as bad, are actually looking to be necessary after exercise to signal adaptions to what we've just put our body through, making us stronger. This is where the concern over antioxidants comes into play. Antioxidants fight free radicals by stopping the reaction before the damage occurs, but do we need this damage in order to make adaptions and grow stronger? Could antioxidants be undermining our fitness gains? Let's start with supplemental antioxidants like supplemental vitamin C and E. In a review on vitamin C supplements' effects on performance, the authors found that vitamin C supplements actually impair performance in three human studies. The authors went on to say that large doses of vitamin C appear to reduce training-induced adaptation, which is exactly the concern that people have with antioxidants. They also stated that vitamin C from five servings of daily fruit and vegetables would be sufficient to supply vitamin C needs without undermining training adaptation. This is pretty scary. I definitely used to take vitamin C supplements and I know a lot of athletes who do. For most of us, it's just an insurance, as our diet probably provides all the vitamin C we need. However, the thought that vitamin C supplements could actually be hurting our performance is definitely cause for concern. However, most studies on antioxidant supplementation are more mixed. A review on the impact of dietary antioxidants on sports performance found that vitamin E may improve altitude performance, but impair sea level performance. The review concluded that acute antioxidant intake is probably beneficial, while chronic intake likely impairs performance. Most studies on antioxidants and performance aren't as scary, however, and they usually come to the conclusion that antioxidants don't influence performance either way good or bad. A review on vitamin supplementation and athletic performance stated that deficiency will impair performance and correcting the deficiency will show benefits, but in athletes that are already meeting their antioxidant needs, there doesn't seem to be any improvements with supplementation. This conclusion is echoed in multiple reviews, all coming to the conclusion that vitamin and antioxidant supplementation will not improve performance and is unnecessary. The science for antioxidant supplementation is pretty clear. There is no benefit of supplements to performance. Some studies even show that they could be negative, leading to the conclusion that we've all heard before, which is eat a well-balanced diet to meet your nutrient needs. Speaking of diet, though, will antioxidants from real food have the same effect or lack of effect as supplements? A study looking at the effect of tomato juice on oxidative stress took 50 male track athletes and divided them into two groups, a control group and an experimental group that drank tomato juice after their workouts. They tested both groups in a 12-minute time trial before and after and found that those drinking tomato juice ran significantly farther than they previously had while the control group saw no improvement. The tomato juice drinkers also showed a reduction in markers of oxidative stress, leading to the conclusion that the antioxidant lycopene in tomatoes reduced oxidative stress and improved performance. These sorts of findings are all over the scientific literature. A study on lemon juice and exercise-induced oxidative stress found the same thing concluding that lemons did not block the cellular adaptive response, but also reduced cellular oxidative damage. So in a way it's the best of both worlds. You're getting a reduction in oxidative stress, which is increasing your recovery and you're getting the maximum fitness gains from that recovery period. And this isn't just for lemons and tomatoes. Any fruit or vegetable hind in antioxidants shows the same effect. Cherry juice has been shown to increase antioxidant capacity after a marathon leading to aided recovery and in another study reduced symptoms of exercise-induced muscle damage. That study showed that strength loss after eccentric exercise was 22% with a placebo, but only 4% when subjects consume cherry juice. Blueberries are another rich source of antioxidants and have been shown to reduce inflammation after two and a half hours of running. Alright, let's sum up the research on antioxidants and then I'll talk about what I do and what I recommend to maximize recovery using antioxidants. First, there's some research to suggest that antioxidant supplementation in large doses, like with vitamin C, may impair performance by reducing the adaptation after exercise. Many multivitamins will have the normal RDA for most vitamins. However, some will go way overboard, especially with vitamin C. It's not uncommon to find vitamin supplements with 10 to 20 times the RDA of vitamin C in them. Overall, the research on antioxidant supplementation leads to the conclusion that they have no effect on performance. The research on antioxidants from actual food, like fruits and vegetables however, is the exact opposite. Antioxidants from food will reduce oxidative stress leading to enhanced recovery without undermining adaptation. For these reasons, I don't take supplemental antioxidants and I rely on fruits, vegetables, and other whole food plants for my antioxidant needs. My post-ride recovery meal usually includes a high antioxidant fruit like berries in order to maximize the antioxidants that I'm getting after a workout. This is also why I rely on actual food after a workout instead of a recovery drink or supplement. I could go on about what the perfect post-workout recovery meal is, but I'll save that for another video. Thanks for watching and if you liked this video and found the information helpful, be sure to give it a like, share it with a friend, and subscribe for more. If you want to see more coaching content and cycling fitness tips, follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. If you're looking for a coach, shoot me an email at djohnsonatrainright.com.