If you’re like many people, particularly if you’re on a weight loss diet, you’ve been reducing or perhaps even eliminating dairy products from your diet altogether.
While there is plenty of evidence out there that dairy products can actually help promote the process of weight loss, there’s also plenty of sources that are advising you should avoid dairy at all costs.
This leads to highly misleading information and sadly, far too many people are falling for this myth.
To examine the role that dairy can play further, let’s look briefly at a research study that was conducted to look at the role that milk based proteins can play in the muscle damage effects after a hard workout.
Study Design
It already is widely recognized that every time you subject your muscles to an overloading stress, as you likely are doing every time you hit the gym, you’re going to damage the muscles slightly, creating tiny tears in the muscle fibers.
It is this process that allows you to grow back stronger though, which is the whole point of weight lifting activity in the first place.
When this muscle damage takes place, there is a degradation of the protein structures within the muscle tissue, which is what leads to the decreases in performance that are seen if you try to workout again too soon after a hard workout.
Furthermore, it is this degradation to the protein structures that can also cause that post-workout soreness you often experience, sometimes referred to as DOMS (delayed onset of muscle soreness).
This study was designed so that four independent groups of six healthy males were to either consume water (acting as the control group), carbohydrate based sports drink, a milk protein-based carbohydrate drink, or plain milk.
The variables that were assessed immediately before and then at 24 and 48 hours after the exercise session took place included DOMS, isokinetic muscular performance, creatine kinase, and myoglobin levels.
The Results
The results of the study indicated that DOMS was not significantly different between any of the groups, however peak torque was significantly higher during the 48 hour post-exercise reading for the milk protein and carbohydrate drink compared with the carbohydrate alone drink or the water.
Further, the total work of the set was significantly higher 48 hours after the milk protein and carbohydrate drink as well as just the plain milk drink in comparison to the carbohydrate drink or water.
Creatine kinase and myoglobin levels were also lowest after the milk-protein carbohydrate and plain milk drink.
Conclusion
Therefore, the take home message here is that supplementing your post-workout period with a milk based protein drink or milk alone will help to decrease the amount of muscle tissue damage that is seen after the exercise has been completed and will help you recover faster before your next exercise session.
Reference:
Cockburn, E. et al. (2008) Acute milk-based protein-CHO supplementation attenuates exercise-induced muscle damage. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. Aug; 33(3):775-83.
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