• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

New Sports Nutrition Research Shows Eight Percent Boost in Athletic Performance

Posted on: Tuesday, 12 February 2008, 18:00 CST

A new study published in the February 2008 issue of Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise, the official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, shows that consuming a specific blend of glucose and fructose carbohydrates improved endurance performance by an average of eight percent in trained athletes compared to consuming the same amount of glucose alone1. These findings, discovered by Dr. Asker Jeukendrup and his research team at the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at the University of Birmingham, are the culmination of years of sports science research indicating that this optimized carbohydrate blend allows athletes to perform better, increase fluid delivery and experience less perceived exertion following exercise.

The study has sports scientists rethinking more than twenty years of data that shows the body can only burn up to 60 grams of carbohydrates per hour. The research reveals that by consuming sources of the carbohydrates glucose and fructose, the body uses dual transport mechanisms to absorb and utilize carbohydrates and can burn up to 105 grams per hour. The importance: even the best athletes can store only a limited amount of carbohydrates in their bodies, which are depleted during endurance exercise. A faster and sustained energy delivery to athletes' muscles helps preserve these precious carbohydrate stores to delay fatigue.

Based on this emerging data from Dr. Jeukendrup's team, energy bar creator PowerBar recently reformulated its sports nutrition line to include PowerBar C2 MAX carbohydrate blend, the same optimized ratio of glucose and fructose shown in the research to deliver more energy to athletes' working muscles. PowerBar recently began a multi-year collaboration with Dr. Jeukendrup and his lab to further this field of inquiry.

To read the rest of this article and view our video and image library with print quality downloads, click here:

http://mnr.onthescene.com/acsm/msse.html

Editor's Note: Dr. Asker Jeukendrup available for interviews upon request.

Source:

1 Currell K, Jeukendrup A. Superior endurance performance with ingestion of multiple transportable carbohydrates. Med Sci Sports Exerc 2008;40:275-81.

Hard Copy B Roll Available Upon Request

Source: Business Wire

More News in this Category