Muscle Recovery

Research summary

• Beyond protein and creatine (covered elsewhere), several other nutritional interventions have meta-analytic support for easing exercise-induced muscle damage: dietary flavonoid-containing polyphenols and nitrate-rich beetroot juice both show modest benefit for muscle-damage markers in meta-analysis, as does curcumin supplementation for delayed-onset muscle soreness.
• Branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) supplementation shows a similar modest effect on muscle-damage markers, and beta-hydroxy-beta-methylbutyrate (HMB) has meta-analytic support for aiding recovery following muscle-damaging exercise.
• Across this literature, effect sizes tend to be small to moderate and are often measured via blood biomarkers (creatine kinase, inflammatory markers) rather than functional performance outcomes, so while the direction of evidence is consistently positive, the practical magnitude of benefit for any single intervention is modest.