How to Soothe Sore Muscles With Food and Drink
Posted: October 2, 2015
If you’ve exercised with any type of intensity during your lifetime, you’ve likely experienced muscle soreness. For exercisers, sore muscles come with the territory. Sometimes mild, sometimes severe, the feeling is at best annoying and at worst debilitating.
Contrary to what others claim, ice baths and ibuprofen aren’t the only ways to soothe sore muscles. There are also nutritional measures that can address muscle soreness in a few distinct ways.
Although you can’t avoid muscle soreness completely, there are things you can do to lessen it. It pays to do whatever you can to overcome the effects: Surveys indicate that muscle soreness is one of the major reasons people don’t exercise.
One of the simplest things you can do is consume a sports drink during and immediately after an intense workout. When muscle glycogen stores fall below a certain level, the muscles rely increasingly on breaking down their own proteins to provide an alternative fuel source to keep going.
This is bad, for the obvious reason that you don’t want your muscles to cannibalize themselves in order to keep going. In addition, the time it takes the body to break down protein for fuel is far longer than it takes to uptake glycogen, so if you continually push past this state your muscles will be taxed and damaged to a much greater degree — meaning the soreness you feel afterward will undoubtedly be much more acute.
A second effective way to reduce muscle damage and alleviate its corresponding soreness is to consume enough protein or amino acids before and after exercise. A moderate intake of protein pre-exercise increases blood amino acid levels, which research shows appears to serve as a kind of biochemical signal that tells the muscles not to break down protein for fuel. Consuming protein within the first two hours of your workout will aid the body in distributing it to the necessary areas that are damaged, speeding recovery and growth, and diminishing the level of soreness that you will feel.
If you have committed to exercising, soreness is an inevitable outcome. But you can help your body recover quickly by also making the commitment to proper nutrition and hydration practices.
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Disclaimer: This article is made available for general, entertainment and educational purposes only. The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of Low T Center. You should always seek the advice of a licensed healthcare professional.