“Eating Almonds Can Help Relieve Pain and Fatigue After Exercise, Study Finds”

Follow-up – Zahraa Khalifa

Eating regular snacks may help relieve pain and stiffness after intense exercise if your body is not used to such an effort. Researchers found that people who ate almonds every day for a month had more recovery-promoting fats in their blood after a single session of strenuous exercise compared to a control group. I ate a cereal bar with the same number of calories.

What’s more, “they also reported feeling less fatigue and tension, improved leg posture, and reduced muscle damage after exercise.”

The 64 study participants (38 men and 26 women) were between the ages of 30 and 65 and did not do weight training on a regular basis. The study was a randomized controlled trial, which means that people were randomly placed into one of two groups: 2 ounces of almonds each day, and a control group that ate a piece of the grain daily contained the same number of calories.

The researchers took blood and urine samples immediately after the exercise session and every day for four days afterward, each participant rated delayed onset muscle soreness (often shortened to DOMS), or the pain and stiffness felt after a hard workout that they weren’t conditioned to do. .

The subjects who ate the almonds reported less fatigue and jitters after exercise. As expected, an hour and a half of exercise resulted in an increase in all of the self-reported volunteers feeling muscle soreness, as well as decreased energy and increased fatigue.

At the same time, people who ate almonds had 40 percent lower levels of toxic fats in their blood than those in the control group, and the study authors note that these fats have negative effects on overall health and recovery from exercise.

Almonds are full of anti-inflammatory nutrients and antioxidants

Overall, the group that ate the almonds experienced less post-workout fatigue and muscle damage. By reducing inflammation and oxidative stress caused by strenuous exercise, the nuts seemed to help people recover more quickly.