Pomegranate provides a natural way to boost athletic performance, increasing the time to exhaustion by more than 1.5 minutes among a group of amateur cyclists. Could pomegranate give you a similar athletic improvement?
Pomegranate, the “jewel of winter,” is one fruit you should have on your radar if you’re interested in boosting your physical performance. This applies not only to athletes but also to anyone who’s an avid exerciser — or wishes they were. By enjoying pomegranate, it’s possible that you could gain more stamina for your weekend jog or morning aerobics session, leading to body-wide benefits.
While pomegranate is perhaps most well-known for its antioxidant properties, impressive as they are, this leathery-skinned berry is also a rich source of dietary nitrates — and therein lies their performance-enhancing potential.
Pomegranate Increases Time to Exhaustion, Heavy Breathing
Writing in the journal Nutrients, researchers conducted a study involving 26 amateur cyclists, who received either pomegranate or a placebo daily for 14 days.
They then engaged in an exercise session similar to a long-distance cycling race, such that they cycled for 90 minutes at moderate intensity, followed by a more intense stint, in which they increased their intensity every three minutes to the point of exhaustion, as you would in the final leg of a race.
After a five-minute recovery period, they then did six sets up barbell step ups (stepping up and down on a bench) to induce muscle damage, markers of which were subsequently measured, as was their eventual recovery.
For the next phase of the study, the cyclists repeated the test 15 days later but swapped the pomegranate for placebo, and vice versa, so that each participant carried out the exercise tests while taking pomegranate and again while taking a placebo. The results?
Pomegranate significantly increased the cyclists’ time to exhaustion — by an average of 94 seconds. It also led to improvements in what’s known as the second ventilatory threshold, or VT2, putting it off by an average of 55 seconds.
Your VT2 is the point during exercise when lactate has accumulated in your blood, you need to breathe heavily, and you can no longer carry out a conversation. By staving off these two markers, pomegranate could easily mean the difference between winning or losing a race — or in the case of your personal exercising, help you work out a little bit longer and faster.
The study also found that pomegranate could help to restore force in damaged muscles, bolstering a number of studies that have hinted at pomegranate’s benefits to muscle recovery.
Pomegranate Power
There are 335 abstracts related to pomegranate research — a signal of just how powerful an ally this fruit can be for your health. In terms of exercise alone, consuming pomegranate makes sense and can:
- Decrease oxidative damage caused by exercise
- Accelerate healing of exercise-related muscle damage and muscle soreness
- Improve whole-body strength and feelings of vitality
- Enhance blood flow, increasing the delivery of oxygen and thereby likely boosting performance
Pomegranate has been prized since ancient times as both a symbol of love and a powerful medicinal tonic, traditionally used for treating everything from parasites and snake bites to bronchitis and diabetes. If you’re willing to put in the effort to remove the arils — the juicy casings that enclose the seeds – you’ll be rewarded with multiple health benefits, not to mention a tasty treat.
Pomegranate may favorably influence hundreds of diseases, particularly oxidative stress, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and prostate cancer. Pomegranate may offset oxidative stress by enhancing your body’s antioxidant responses – another way it’s useful for athletic performance.
If you’re looking for an easy way to enjoy this powerhouse fruit, wash it well and slice it horizontally. While holding it firmly over a bowl (cut side down), simply hit the back with a wooden spoon until the arils fall out.
If you don’t plan to eat them all right away, pomegranate arils can be refrigerated in an airtight container or frozen for several months. They make a great addition to smoothies and salads, or eat them plain as a healthy snack.
Be sure to pick up some delicious juicy Organic Pomegranates from our produce section on your next visit to Whitaker’s Natural Market.
