The Importance Of Vitamin C In Post-Workout Muscle Recovery.

It’s not a simple chemical reaction but a sequence of biochemical processes occurring within the body.

Not everyone likes the idea of having to work out. Many of us do engage in sports to keep fit, while others do have to drag themselves to the gym to stay active.

As I’ve become busier these days, I find it more of a challenge to get my body moving while my brain is so heavily engaged by all the work that is flying around.

Even after that, when we do get over that inertia to go to the gym or join our friends for a regular round of intense sports, we will all dread the next day, when the soreness kicks. It consistently reminds me that I’m getting older.

This soreness is commonly termed as Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, or DOMS. It can be rather annoying have to experience it after every workout.

But why does that happen, though?

This article may provide a little more insight into muscle soreness:

Exercise-induced muscle damage is frequently reported in healthy adolescents and adults following habitual and/or strenuous exercise, such as in military training, weight lifting, long distance running and in particular following short exercises that involve intense eccentric contractions. In contrast, exercise-induced muscle damage occurs very rarely following swimming.

Lifting weights, long-distance running, and “following short exercises that involve intense eccentric contractions” (otherwise known as high-intensity interval training, or HIIT) can contribute to exercise-induced muscle damage.

This muscle damage is more pronounced on new exercises that we aren’t really used to, as is echoed by this article:

However, unaccustomed and repeated eccentric muscle actions may result in muscle damage, inflammation, and oxidative stress. These events often are accompanied by loss of muscle strength and a set of symptoms referred as delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS). After the so-called eccentric exercise-induced muscle damage (EEIMD), muscle weakness and DOMS may last a few days (typically 5–7 d) and their magnitude is not exacerbated by effort repetition.

The problem of soreness exists as we end up causing these little bits of muscle damage as we work those muscles out. They then have to get repaired and become stronger.

The development of DOMS starts with microtrauma to the muscle fibres. As we work out those muscles, we tend to cause small pockets of damage to the fibres that have to be healed.

The healing of the muscle fibres, though, is dependent on macrophage activity. At the initial stages of DOMS, the damage causes the immune system to raise a pro-inflammatory signal in the form of pro-inflammatory cytokines. The muscle aches then appear as a result of that signal.

That’s why we experience acute pains on an accidental injury, such as a twisted ankle. However, the main difference between a twisted ankle and DOMS is that the pro-inflammatory signalling is more intense on a twisted ankle than it is in DOMS:

Whenever an injury occurs, there are 2 main processes at work to deal with the injury. The first process is the clearing up of all the injured or dead debris, while the second process focuses on rebuilding whatever that was damaged and eliminated.

It’s the same principle behind rebuilding or renovating an old home. Whatever that is damaged and worthless has to be first removed before something new can be applied over it to make it look newer.

So of course, if we were to rebuild muscle fibres or joints, we need to be synthesising collagen proteins internally for that structural support.

That means that we need the fibroblast cells in our body to produce collagen proteins. Adjacent collagen proteins then have to cross-link properly via the aldol condensation reaction, so we would do better with less dietary carbohydrates for sure:

But we also do need the collagen to fold into appropriate 3D conformations for maximal structural support before the cross-link and cement their positions, and that is where Vitamin C comes in.

An accidental injury is much more severe and may take weeks to months for proper recovery.

However, workout-induced DOMS can clear within a few days because they are just pockets of microtrauma among muscle fibres, and a good daily dosage of Vitamin C should help with the recovery rates, provided that it is consumed in the right form, of course!

Do feel free to check out the link below for a good source of Vitamin C supplementation:

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