Hey friends, since I’m still recouping, and not yet back to blogging and promoting all the other fun stuff that happens at InterPlay Health, I was happy to be contacted by Doctors Health Press asking if I’d share some of their latest articles on my blog.
Doctors Health Press is the leading authentic source for natural health breakthroughs and news written by experts having prominent authorities in their respective fields.
So….as always I’m happy to pass along information and this one about fatigue caught my eye…..enjoy!
PS That’s me and Pina before our workout so we’re definitely not
fatigued — yet!
Exercise Induced Fatigue by Dr. Richard Foxx
Everyone struggles with the effects of fatigue during and after exercise. While exercising can still offer up huge benefits in terms of your health, feeling fatigued can help to reduce the enjoyment of exercise. And once you don’t enjoy something—well, you know the rest—your motivation goes out the window too.
If you often feel tired after exercising, then this article is for you. Here’s some recent health news that offers up some advice about how to stave off exercise-induced fatigue. Two recent studies have looked at the different forms of fatigue and how they affect both individual muscles and your whole body.
One study conducted by researchers at Nottingham Trent University in the U.K. involved a series of exercise activities. Participants were asked to perform 10 minutes of vigorous motion with the arms, after which they were told to rest for a few minutes. Then they were told to get on a bicycle and ride at maximum intensity for 10 minutes. The researchers wanted to determine how the arm exercises would affect the participants’ performances on their bicycles. To do this, they separated two important consequences of exercising: the role of metabolites that accumulate in the blood during intense exercise and the effects of fatigue in the muscles.
Metabolites get accumulated when you exercise at a high level of intensity. These chemical by-products show up in the form of hydrogen ions, potassium, and lactate. When you exercise at maximum levels, these by-products accumulate in your blood stream where they are circulated throughout your body. Many of these metabolites could affect different muscle groups as they move through your body.
For their study, the U.K. research team hoped to change the amount of metabolites circulating in the blood of the study participants by having them perform the arm exercise before cycling.
The researchers found that the amount of intense exercise the participants could perform during the cycling portion of the study was directly determined by the level of metabolites in their blood when they first jumped on the bikes. The more metabolites the participants had, the lower their capacity for intense exercise. The researchers suggested that metabolites directly interfere with muscle function. Elevated levels of potassium, for example, may disrupt how muscle fibers function.
Another theory posed by the researchers suggests that the brain monitors metabolite levels. When it senses that levels are too high, it reduces the signals it sends to muscles throughout the body, making them less able to perform.
All of this may lead you to ask the questions: “What if I could get rid of the metabolites in my blood? Could I speed my recovery from exercise?” While it’s true that metabolites will return to normal levels after an intense workout (this could take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour) there may be a way to accelerate this process. And believe it or not, the solution has to do with performing more exercise!
In a second study, researchers had volunteers perform two rounds of intense cycling. One round was followed by an “active recovery” phase, meaning the cyclists continued to cycle lightly while the other round was followed by passive recovery (or resting). Then both groups performed a second bout of intense cycling. The research team found some interesting results.
At first, the active recovery group did light cycling for 45 seconds. This wasn’t enough time to get rid of metabolites that had accumulated in the blood during the first round of intense cycling. This translated into a better performance in the second round of cycling from those who just rested and did nothing. However, when the recovery period was lengthened to over two minutes, metabolite levels in the active recovery group began to drop. This time the light cycling cleared the metabolites and ushered in a stronger performance for the active recovery group in the second round of cycling compared to the group who rested.
You can use these findings to better recover from your own workouts. When doing intense exercise, try doing some light exercise in between intense bursts to lower the amount of metabolites circulating in your muscles. Resist the temptation to sit down and rest completely. Hopefully you’ll find that you recover faster and perform better.
One other tip: a surprising amount of studies have found that chocolate milk may make the ideal recovery beverage after an intense workout for those of you who aren’t lactose-intolerant. That can definitely be a fun incentive to complete your workout!
Source(s) for Today’s Article:
Hutchinson, A., “What you need to know to fight exercise fatigue,” The Globe and Mail web site, Oct. 6, 2013; http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/fitness/clues-to-fighting-exercise-fatigue/article14699123/, last accessed Oct. 9, 2013.
Pritchett, K., et al., “Chocolate milk: a post-exercise recovery beverage for endurance sports.” Med Sport Sci 2012; 59: 127-34.
Pritchett, K., “Acute effects of chocolate milk and a commercial recovery beverage on postexercise recovery indices and endurance cycling performance.” Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. Dec 2009; 34(6): 1,017-22.
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