More strength, less pain, in muscles.

A paper has just been published about the positive effects of drinking cherry juice on exercise. The details are very succinctly explained by the authors:

Fourteen male college students drank 12 fl oz of a cherry juice blend, or a placebo, twice per day for eight consecutive days. A bout of eccentric elbow flexion contractions (2 x 20 maximum contractions) was performed on the fourth day of supplementation. Isometric elbow flexion strength, pain, muscle tenderness and relaxed elbow angle were recorded prior to, and for four days following the eccentric exercise. The protocol was repeated two weeks later with subjects who took the placebo initially, now taking the cherry juice (and vice versa). The opposite arm performed the eccentric exercise for the second bout to avoid the repeated bout protective effect.

They nicely sum up the results for us too:

[The] data show efficacy for this cherry juice in decreasing some of the symptoms of exercise-induced muscle damage. Most notably, strength loss averaged over the four days after eccentric exercise was 22% with the placebo but only 4% with the cherry juice.

Now, if only we knew how cherry juice exerts these effects...

Technorati Tags: cherry, juice, exercise, pain, muscles, science