Vitamins and Muscle Damage

ALONG with their training regimen and carbohydrate loading, participants in the forthcoming New York City Marathon might consider taking vitamin E, a new study suggests.

For all its many benefits, vigorous exercise does have some drawbacks, and one is the damage done to muscle tissue as oxygen flows rapidly through it. But now nutrition researchers affiliated with the Federal Department of Agriculture have shown that vitamin E taken before exercise can minimize muscle damage and reduce inflammation and soreness that so often follow a demanding exercise routine.

The damage is caused by oxygen radicals, highly reactive oxygen molecules, generated by the body. Among other things, these radicals attack the fats in muscle cell membranes, which leaves the cells open to injury by other cellular insults.

Vitamin E, a well-established antioxidant, can prevent much of the free-radical injury that normally results from exercise, according to a study by Mohsen Meydani and Simin Nikbin Meydani at the Department of Agriculture's Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. The researchers studied the effects of taking 800 International Units of vitamin E a day for seven days before running downhill on a treadmill for 45 minutes; half took the vitamin, half a look-alike dummy capsule.

The researchers found that the group taking vitamin E produced far fewer byproducts of fat oxidation than did those who took the dummy capsules. A benefit was noted in men over 55 as well as in those in their 20's. The vitamin also reduced blood levels of two chemical messengers that promote inflammation, which in turn should reduce post-exercise inflammation and soreness, the researchers said.