Antioxidants with Exercise: Should You Take Them?

Antioxidants are good for you. Right? Well yes, however there are a lot of “buts” when it comes to taking antioxidants with exercise.

You heard that free radicals (molecules that are missing an electron) go “out” in the body to find their missing electron. And in the process, they damage cells. The analogy has been made that free radicals are “rusting” your body.

So you go out, and buy a bunch of antioxidants — vitamin C, vitamin E, turmeric/curcumin, maybe glutathione, and some kind of exotic berry extract. After all, you don’t want to “rust.”

And you also heard that exercise produces free radicals (which, Harvard confirmed that it does). So you start taking your antioxidants after workouts (like immediately after a workout).

Too bad that you can actually be doing more damage than good.

ANTIOXIDANTS WITH EXERCISE

What’s the short-term (in a sense of 1–2 hours) goal of exercise? To damage muscles. When you’re strength training, you’re creating tiny little tears in the muscles. Along with it, you produce free radicals, which cause muscle cells to “burst open”, and the inner contents of the cell to “ooze out.”

But wait — antioxidants can prevent or at least minimize the contents of the cell from “oozing out.” Seems like a good, sensible thing to do.

Too bad it isn’t.