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CoQ10 and Royal Jelly Supplementation May Improve High Intensity Exercise

A study on 20 elite swimmers linked the supplement combination with exercise performance improvements and reduced muscle damage.

A supplement containing a combination of the bee product royal jelly and CoQ10 was linked to improvements in athletic performance and reductions in markers of oxidative stress and muscle damage in a study involving 20 elite swimmers.
 
Published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, the 10-day placebo-matched study investigated whether daily supplementation with these ingredients would have an association with a high-intensity exercise protocol developed and approved by the International Swimming Federation, along with blood plasma and saliva concentrations of diene conjugates (DC), Schiff bases (SB), and creatine kinase (CK), makers of oxidative stress and muscle damage.
 
According to the authors, high-intensity exercise performance significantly improved in the treatment group compared to the placebo group. Additionally, exercise-induced increases in DC, SB, and CK compared to baseline were only diminished in the supplementation group, with no changes observed among the placebo group members.
 
Based on the analysis of the biomarkers, the authors concluded that the improvements in the exercise performance observed among swimmers who received the treatment were likely in most part due to a reduced lipid peroxidation and muscle damage in response to exercise, and that supplementing with a combination of royal jelly and CoQ10 could achieve clinically-significant benefits for exercise performance and oxidative stress. They note that some components of royal jelly and CoQ10 are known to have antioxidant activity, and CoQ10 can activate AMPK, an enzyme which increases antioxidant capacity and cell survival.
 
“Excessive production of free radicals caused by many types of exercise results in oxidative stress, which leads to muscle damage, fatigue, and impaired performance,” the authors of the study wrote. “We demonstrated that [royal jelly and CoQ10] induced reduction in lipid peroxidation and muscle damage in swimmers under HIIE conditions improves their exercise performance.”

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