Muscle damage develops delayed onset muscle soreness: a syndrome that occurs h after intensive physical activity that can inhibit athletic performance. Other recent works indicate that BCAA supplementation recovers peripheral blood mononuclear cell proliferation in response to mitogens after a long distance intense exercise, as well as plasma glutamine concentration.

The BCAA also modifies the pattern of exercise-related cytokine production, leading to a diversion of the lymphocyte immune response towards a Th1 type. According to these findings, it is possible to consider the BCAA as a useful supplement for muscle recovery and immune regulation for sports events.

The overall effects of BCAA on DOMS after a single session of exercise were considered useful for improving muscle recovery by reducing DOMS in trained subjects, at low doses, in mild to moderate EIMD, and should not be administered only after the EIMD protocol.

Keywords: Leucine; Pain; Physical exercise; Skeletal muscle. The Author s , under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature. Abstract Branched-chain amino acids BCAA are used as a recovery method after exercise-induced muscle damage EIMD. L -1 , respectively , which equated to a 3 to 4-fold increase above baseline.

The initial aim of the present study was to examine the effects of BCAA supplementation on indices of muscle damage in resistance-trained volunteers. The principle findings show BCAA can reduce the negative effects of damaging exercise by attenuating CK efflux, reducing residual muscle soreness and improving recovery of muscle function to a greater extent than a placebo control.

The protocol successfully induced muscle damage, which was evident from the significant time effects for all dependent variables. This supports the efficacy of the protocol as a model to induce muscle damage in a sport specific manner [ 27 , 28 ].

Additionally, the data presented here support previous literature suggesting BCAA as an effective intervention to reduce the negative effects of damaging exercise [ 15 — 18 ] and more specifically from damaging resistance exercise [ 14 , 20 , 21 ].

The novel information offered by these data demonstrate that BCAA can be used as an effective intervention to ameliorate the negative effects EIMD precipitated from a sport specific damaging bout of resistance exercise in trained participants.

However, the cell membrane is likely to have undergone some degree of lipolysis as a result of an imbalance in calcium homeostasis [ 4 ], almost certainly from the exercise insult. The damage literature often shows a high degree of inter-subject variability in CK and other cytosolic markers of EIMD, however, variability in the current study was relatively small, partly attributable to the trained status of the volunteers.

The greater conditioning of these participants has almost certainly led to a repeated bout effect [ 31 ], whereby, a conditioning bout of exercise in this case prior training leads to a decrease in damage indices on subsequent bouts [ 4 , 31 , 32 ]. This is further supported by the low CK response seen in both groups following the exercise, when compared to the damage responses seen in untrained volunteers [ 19 , 20 ].

Despite this relative homogeneity, the CK response was less in the BCAA group suggesting the membrane integrity was maintained to greater extent than the placebo group. The damage response is known to be bi-phasic in nature; a primary response caused by the mechanical stress of the exercise, followed by a secondary, transient inflammatory response over the following hours and days [ 4 ].

Although we cannot definitively support this postulate, it seems plausible that the greater bioavailability provided by BCAA facilitated this response and thereby decreased secondary damage to the muscle.

Furthermore, the group effects support previous data [ 20 , 21 , 34 ] showing a reduction in muscle soreness following a damaging bout of exercise with BCAA supplementation.

Although the mechanism surrounding muscle soreness following a damaging bout of exercise is not well understood, it seems likely to be related to inflammation, particularly to the connective tissue elements [ 35 ] that sensitise nociceptors in muscle and hence increase sensations of pain [ 36 ].

However, previous work [ 20 ] demonstrating a reduction in soreness following BCAA supplementation also measured the acute inflammatory response interleukin-6, a pro-inflammatory cytokine and showed no difference between the BCAA and placebo groups.

Jackman et al. Although this idea is somewhat speculative and has no supporting evidence or proposed mechanism, we show similar trends in our data, but it is not possible to support or refute this theory. Based on the reductions in CK, it makes the expectation tenable that the secondary damage phase is reduced by the aforementioned uptake of BCAA for protein synthesis, thus, limiting the extent of damage and hence reducing the precipitation of soreness.

Whilst there was no difference in vertical jump performance and limb girth, the most notable finding is that reductions in MVC were attenuated and recovery of MVC was accelerated following BCAA supplementation. This study demonstrated an effect on function and is in contrast to other work [ 20 ] that used untrained participants in a similar experimental design showing no benefits in the recovery of force production with BCAA.

Interestingly, other studies [ 21 , 37 ] using non-resistance-trained student populations have shown some benefit in the recovery of muscle function.

These data should be treated with caution however, as both studies [ 21 , 37 ] used a cross-over design which suffers the limitation of the repeated bout effect RBE. The RBE refers to a protective effect or attenuation of damage indices when the exercise is repeated [4,31,32].

It would seem that differences between our findings and those of Jackman et al. The other obvious difference between the current investigation and previous literature is the amount of BCAA administered. Interestingly, Jackman et al. Previous work [ 39 ] has shown that timing of a protein based recovery strategy is important and immediately following a damaging bout of exercise can be most beneficial in accelerating recovery.

Whist Jackman et al. This is somewhat conjectural and would serve as an interesting question for future research to ascertain the optimal strategy for BCAA supplementation.

Regardless of whether the loading phase and timing of the supplementation post-exercise was effective in increasing the bioavailability of BCAA, there is still a stark difference in the total supplementation volume 88 vs. The larger quantity of BCAA we provided might partly account for the difference between studies in damage indices MVC and CK.

We based our supplementation regimen on previous work that showed a positive effect [ 16 , 26 ] and propose that positive effects beyond attenuation of muscle soreness i.

There are two limitations from the study, which need to be acknowledged. Firstly the lack of specific dietary control might have led to discrepancies in caloric and, more specifically, protein ingestion between the groups. Although we attempted to control this by asking participants to record food intake during the loading phase and replicate this following the damaging exercise, an approach that has been previous used [ 11 , 21 ], there was no specific control between groups.

Conceivably discrepancies in protein intake can affect the bioavailability of the substrate and hence affect protein turnover and ultimately influence the outcome of these data. Although the current investigation has a good degree of external validity, future research might like to consider more rigorous dietary control measures such as; 1 asking participants to weigh food and accurately log food intake; or 2 providing a pre-determined menu for the participants to ensure no discrepancies between and within groups, although this still relies on participant adherence outside the laboratory.

Finally, 3 although difficult to facilitate, participants could be housed in an environment where dietary behavior can be imposed and thereby strictly controlled.

In summary, these data offer novel information on the application of BCAA supplementation. Most importantly, BCAA attenuated reductions in muscle function and accelerated recovery post-exercise in a resistance-trained population.

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