A Guide to Montmorency Tart Cherry Extract

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What are Montmorency Tart Cherries?

These light coloured red fruits grow on Montmorency trees mainly in the USA. They have previously been researched for argobiological studies but more recently for their health benefits and interesting link to sports nutrition.

What do they do?

Recovery:

As you know, recovery is critical to sports performance and needs just as much attention as your training. Rest days are important for various reasons, physiological and psychological. Physically the body needs to rest, this allows the muscles to repair, rebuild and strengthen. Psychologically it is important to relax, be this taking a trip out with family or friends or spending some quiet time by yourself, it is not to be neglected.

In relation to your training, these cherries are an ideal solution to reducing oxidative stress on your body which exercise causes. Various scientific studies have covered their positive link to recovery, reducing muscle damage, inflammation and impressively, tart cherries have shown better anti-inflammatory activity than aspirin!

‘One study showed the effectiveness of tart cherries in preventing symptoms of exercise induced muscle damage. Eccentric elbow flexion contractions were performed for 8 days, supplementing on the 4th day. Results showed a strength loss of 22% with the placebo, in comparison to 4% with tart cherries.’

Antioxidant:

One of the many benefits of these cherries is that they are a very potent antioxidant. They have a very high Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) value; the ORAC scale is a method of measuring antioxidant capacities. Thus showing these cherries are at the higher end of the ORAC scale for superfoods and have also been linked to helping health condition such as gout, arthritis, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases.

Quantity and timing:

We recommend taking 2g with 50ml water and consume immediately post-exercise. The window immediately after exercise (30 minutes post-exercise) shows the greatest increases in cellular structure. Consuming Montmorency cherry extract will help promote muscle recovery and growth, and by combining this with a BULK POWDERS™ carb-pro supplementation would help prevent muscle damage and be an ideal recovery supplementation.

Summary:

Montmorency cherry extract can be used as part of your very important recovery process. Not only extremely high in antioxidants combating the oxidative stress but it has been proven to reduce delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). Great on its own or it can be enjoyed with other BULK POWDERS™ carb-pro products, such as Vitargo, Dextrose, Waxy Maize Starch and Whey Protein Concentrate.

References:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1082898/

http://bjsportmed.com/content/40/8/679.abstract

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