[40] who showed that both acute and long-term blueberry feeding prior to exercise causes an increase in anti-inflammatory cytokines, such as IL-10 and facilitates recovery. In this study we observed a rapid decline in oxidative stress blood indices that coincided with the increase in plasma antioxidant selleck capacity in the blueberry condition supporting the notion that an increase in plasma antioxidant capacity may be involved in the reduced exercise-induced

oxidative stress observed. However, it is currently unclear whether an increase in plasma antioxidant capacity facilitates [41] or hinders the activation of muscle adaptive events aiding muscle recovery. The efficacy of dietary antioxidant supplementation in facilitating recovery following strenuous muscle damaging exercise is under debate. Recent reports indicate that dietary supplements rich this website in antioxidants, attenuate oxidative stress [42, 43], RGFP966 whilst other reports either

show that antioxidants have no action [44] or have the ability to induce pro-oxidant effects [45, 46]. Moreover, although elevated plasma antioxidant capacity post antioxidant supplementation consumption has been found in many studies [47] have failed to demonstrate an effect or relationship to muscle function recovery following an eccentric exercise-induced damage. Goldfarb et al.[11] recently showed that ingestion of whole fruit and/or vegetable extracts may attenuate

blood oxidative stress induced by eccentric exercise but no significant effect on functional changes relating to pain and muscle damage were observed. Our findings here concur as all correlations of indices of muscle performance with plasma antioxidant capacity were insignificant; 0.09 and 0.190. Several studies report the effectiveness of plant-derived phytochemicals at accelerating the recovery from exercise-induced muscle function after damage DOK2 [30, 31]. The health promoting properties of plant-derived phytochemicals are being debated and evidence is building that any benefits are likely independent of their inherent antioxidant capacity [17–20]. Hence it is feasible that polyphenolic compounds derived from blueberries may support muscle repair and recovery through a similar process that is unrelated to the fruit’s antioxidant capacity. Preliminary results from another study we have conducted show that blueberry-derived anthocyanins induce an up-regulation of phase II antioxidant enzymes (unpublished observation) supporting others that report plant-derived anthocyanins activate redox-sensitive transcription factors that lead to the up-regulation of phase II antioxidant enzyme systems [20, 48, 49].