Cherry Juice to Relieve Muscle Pain
WLR dietitian Juliette Kellow reports on a new study which
may have found a way to relieve sore muscles.
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A Fruity Way to Relieve Muscle Pain
By WLR Dietitian
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Starting a new fitness plan after being inactive for a long
period of time might help to boost weight loss, but as most new
exercisers know, you can usually expect several aches and pains
after your first few sessions.
A small new study published in the British Journal of Sports
Medicine has found a potentially natural – and tasty – way to
relieve sore muscles. And that’s to drink cherry juice!
In the study, 14 volunteers were asked to drink either fresh
cherry juice blended with apple juice for three days before
exercising and for four days after, or to drink a ‘dummy’ drink
that didn’t contain cherry juice. The exercise involved flexing
and tensing one arm 20 times.
The researchers measured muscle tenderness and strength and
volunteers rated their own muscle soreness on a scale of 1 to 10
on each of the days before and after the exercise. The whole
process was repeated two weeks later, with those who had taken
the cherry juice previously now taking the dummy drink and vice
versa.
Amazingly, the loss in muscle strength dropped by 22 percent
in the group taking the dummy drink, but by only 4 percent in
those having the cherry juice. The cherry juice drinkers also
reported significantly less pain than the dummy drinkers.
Furthermore, pain peaked at 24 hours after exercising in those
drinking the cherry juice, but continued to increase for 48
hours in the dummy drinkers.
WLR says:
This is certainly an interesting piece of research on the
possible benefits of consuming cherry juice, but the results
need to be interpreted carefully.
Firstly, this is only a very small study and more research
needs to be carried out on a larger number of volunteers before
these findings can be confirmed.
Secondly, it’s unclear whether it was actually the cherry
juice alone that resulted in these findings – the apple juice it
was mixed with could in fact, have some impact on the findings.
It would also be interesting to carry out more research to
identify whether different juices such as orange juice,
cranberry juice, grape juice or grapefruit juice give similar
results.
Ready-prepared cherry juice isn’t widely available in the UK,
so you’ll need to make your own by juicing fresh cherries if you
want to test this theory. Alternatively, you could try eating
them rather than juicing them – or even try a different fruit
juice. Cranberries contain many similar antioxidants to cherries
and so may be worth trying.
Whatever you decide to try, remember to count the calories.
After all, you don’t want to replace all those calories you’ve
burnt off through exercise by drinking vast quantities of juice! |
