Pomegranates: why they're the winning ingredient

There’s been a surge in research in the recent years into antioxidant (polyphenol) supplementation for endurance athletes to see if it can enhance performance in numerous ways.

Polyphenols are natural occurring compounds that represent one of the most numerous & widely distributed groups of substances in the plant kingdom. They are sub classed into 4 groups some I’m sure you would have herd about before (phenolic acid, lignans, flavonoids & stilbenes). They are found in my foods, most common would be you fruit and veg, other sources of growing popularity are match, dark chocolate and tart cherry juice.

There is two thoughts on the whole topic of supplementing with antioxidants developing with the research. One side of the argument is against the use of antioxidant supplementation as antioxidants reduce oxidative stress, which is one of the mechanisms that triggers the body to adapt to whatever training session is causing that oxidative stress. Hence reducing the oxidative stress created by your training will blunt the training adaptation response, resulting in reduced performance out comes. However, there is growing trend is the specific use of antioxidants in certain stages training block, due to evidence showing its significant ability to improve recovery.

On the other hand polyphenols have been reported to stimulate mitochondrial biogenesis (cells increase mitochondrial mass) more mitochondria means more energy production (think of the mitochondria as the power plant of the cell), in short the more energy we can produce for a given length of time the better our performance will be.

So today were focusing in the performance boosting effects pomegranate has been show give us.

So now it’s time to get into the nitty gritty of this study and see what they actually did.

Supplementation Protocol

The protocol used was a chronic dosing strategy (each capsule contested of 375 mg of POMANOX® P30 with 30% punicalagins; total amount of punicalagins per capsule: 112.5 mg) The participants prescribed dosage was 2 capsules (total dosage of 225mg punicalagins/day) for 15 days or placebo. With a 14 day wash out between groups when they swapped from test group vs control group. They were to take the extract after breakfast each morning.

Exercise Tests

The exercise testing each participant went through was 90min of cycling @ 70% of V02max, immediately followed by incremental cycling test starting with an initial load: 60% of VO2max with the workload increased by 35 watts every 3 minutes until exhaustion. After a 5min rest period each participant performed barbell step ups (6 sets of 15 reps), with the aim to induce muscle damage.

2 hours later a strength test on their dominant leg was used to measure recovery, 1- and 2-days post testing as well.

Post-trial one, there was a washout period of 15 days, where no supplements were taken, the groups swapped over, and the trials were conducted again. (the cyclist who started with the pomegranate extract were now taking the placebo.

What they found

Now on to the most important bit, what did they actually find.

Well the main discovery was the supplementing with pomegranate extract for 14 days did have a significant impact on time to exhaustion (meaning in took longer to reach fatigue) on average by 94 seconds. They also found that there was an increased time taken to reach second ventilatory threshold (point at which breathing becomes laboured, due to the rapid accumulation of blood lactate) on average by 55 seconds.

Hence in a race situation, these prolonged times to exhaustion would be a significant advantage as you would be able to work harder for longer or being able to push harder in the final stages of a race.

Practical suggestions

From these finding we can now add pomegranate extract to the list of supplements to start considering. But like any time dealing with supplements there are few things we must ask ourselves, is it safe, is it effective, has it been batched tested. If it passes these initial steps next, we need to make sure we know what we’re buying into.

Be sure to use a product with a standardised punicalagin content (aiming for 225mg of punicalagin per day), supplement used in this recent study was POMANOX® P30.

Need to start supplementing 2 weeks before your race/event to see effects. However I do suggestion that you work on your race day nutrition strategy months in advance, therefore ideally you should be trying out this supplement in your training and practice comps along the way.

Avoid taking additional high dosage antioxidants (vit C,E, curcumin) as this can blunt your training response & negatively impact your performance. Typical only recommend additional antioxidants into you diet once fitness levels are where they need to be but maybe recovery is an issue for you.

Eat the rainbow, make sure to get plenty of verity when it comes to your veg intake (green, white, orange, red, purple) aiming for 5 portions a day. More likely to derive greater benefits from a fruit extract supplement if your dietary antioxidant intake is high & varied.

Take home message

1. Supplementing with pomegranate extract was shown to increase time to exhaustion & ventilatory threshold.

2. Need to supplement with high dosage (225mg of punicalagin per day) for 15 days to see effects.

3. Don’t consume other high dosage antioxidants (vit C,E, Curcumin, Tart cherry juice) in conjunction with pomegranate extract as this may blunt your training effect.

4. Eat the rain bow of veg as this will drive greater benefits when supplementing with pomegranate extract.

5. At the end of the day if you can work harder for longer (produce more power for a set period of time) you’ll get faster race times, and well al want that 😉

My door is always open (metaphorically speaking of course) so please do reach out if you would like some advice form a insured accredited Performance Nutritionist.

Reference

• Torregrosa-García, A., Ávila-Gandía, V., Luque-Rubia, A., Abellán-Ruiz, M., Querol-Calderón, M. and López-Román, F., 2019. Pomegranate Extract Improves Maximal Performance of Trained Cyclists after an Exhausting Endurance Trial: A Randomised Controlled Trial. Nutrients, 11(4), p.721.

• Urbaniak, A. and Skarpańska-Stejnborn, A., 2019. Effect of pomegranate fruit supplementation on performance and various markers in athletes and active subjects: a systematic review. International Journal for Vitamin and Nutrition Research, pp.1-15.

Kashi, D., Shabir, A., Da Boit, M., Bailey, S. and Higgins, M., 2019. The Efficacy of Administering Fruit-Derived Polyphenols to Improve Health Biomarkers, Exercise Performance and Related Physiological Responses. Nutrients, 11(10), p.2389.