Supplements for Injuries
How to use dietary supplements to aid the recovery process for athletic injuries
Link to the Original Article
Dietary supplements come in a wide variety of flavors, and one such flavor includes dietary supplements for injury recovery. When it comes to injury recovery, we get desperate. In such circumstances, we strive to exhaust all possible means to the ultimate end of getting better. If there is a supplement that might help with an injury or be a better alternative to traditional treatment, that is a supplement that many people would be willing to take.
I recently spoke to Kurtis Frank, who is quite the authority on scientific research regarding supplements. He is currently the director of research for Legion Athletics, a heavily science-based supplement company, and was the co-founder of examine.com, which is essentially the scientific database for supplement research. Hence, he has sifted through endless scientific studies on supplementation. Given his research experience, he is likely one of the leading experts on supplementation currently. We spoke about the relationship between supplementation and injury recovery, which are promising, which are not, and should be avoided.
An Interview With Dietary Supplement Expert Kurtis Frank
Daniel: How much can — if at all — dietary or herbal supplements help with the process of injury recovery?
Kurtis: When it comes to supplements, it is mostly the prevention of injuries that make certain supplements of some amount of utility. To clarify, when it comes to being injured or preventing injuries, supplements are probably the least important factor of the trinity that consists of diet, exercise, and supplementation.
If you already have joint pain, say, and you attempt to push through this pain, that can lead to further injury. If you can mitigate that joint pain, however, that will prevent injuries. Supplements would be in the same vein in being to this process as taking an Aleve or ibuprofen.
Daniel: What are some examples of these preventative supplements?
Kurtis: In the vein of supplements that do a comparable job to Aleve or ibuprofen (i.e., reducing inflammation), curcumin is the main one. The body very poorly absorbs it, but the body much more easily absorbs it if it is taken with Meriva or black pepper extract. When curcumin is absorbed well, it is basically an NSAID because it is a COX inhibitor (i.e. an anti-inflammatory). It is a herbal alternative to NSAIDs. Curcumin is much easier on the stomach than NSAIDs as well. This is high praise for a supplement, as NSAIDs are not easy to replicate. Another is Boswellia serrata, which is both a COX and a LOX inhibitor. Standard over-the-counter NSAIDs do not inhibit LOX; they only inhibit LOX. Boswellia can be paired nicely with curcumin, as they work synergistically.
There have been studies done, however, showing that if you take any anti-inflammatories, including fish oil. At the same time, you are sick, you can delay recovery from being sick because you need the inflammation to recover. For example, if you have 2–3 grams of DHA combined with EHA per day, that can suppress the immune system despite its anti-inflammatory benefits.
Fish oil has been used anecdotally as an equivalent to NSAIDs by athletes at the top of their respective sports, to their reported great success.
For Rheumatism, the only supplement that I know of that actually helps with it is Collagen type II peptides.
Daniel: Are there any supplements that are overly touted as being effective for injuries?
Kurtis Frank: Cissus quadrangularis. It doesn’t have too many studies on it. It is traditional medicine, which, on the one hand, is antidotal but, on the other hand, has lasted generations. It is traditionally recommended for joint pain and bone regrowth. There is maybe one study where they rubbed cissus on teeth, and it showed a higher rate of bone growth, but it was not a very well-controlled study. It was a study from the East, and most dietary studies that come from the East are not as reliable as those from the west.
Another one is collagen peptides. This has been becoming very popular recently, and I suspect that it is primarily due to finances. If you go to a slaughterhouse, you take the scraps of meat that are not used for consumption and repurpose them for something useful. Some chefs use the bone broth, but, generally speaking, the cartilage is thrown out. To take this cartilage, dehydrate it and turn it into a supplement is profoundly cheap to do. It is analogous to selling what is worth 40 cents for 50 dollars. Likewise, how it is marketed is tiered towards purporting specific benefits due to its containing a matrix of type I, II, and III collagen. Type I will not help your joints, as all it contains is glycine. Type II peptides, when unprocessed — which is not common to collagen supplements — can help with rheumatism. Type III does nothing essentially. In short, collagen supplements for joints and injuries is beyond overhyped.
Daniel: Are there any supplements that should be avoided when you are recovering from an injury?
Kurtis: The best advice on this is not to take too many anti-inflammatories, as you do need some of the inflammation to heal.
When it comes to supplements that are intrinsically counter-productive to recovery, there are not many. Arachidonic acid comes to mind, but that is not a very common supplement anymore. It was thought to increase muscle protein synthesis by augmenting the inflammatory process, and it might actually do this. Still, it makes delayed onset muscle soreness flare-up to such an extent that people hated taking it. The only hazardous supplements on this particular topic have been banned.
If you’d like to read some of Kurtis’s work, I would highly recommend checking out his articles. They are highly informative and practical. I personally have found them of great utility as an athlete and as someone who has a general interest in health/well-being.
