Sports nutrition food refers to a class of food that can provide special nutritional requirements for the sports body, adjust the metabolic state and help improve physical performance and fitness.

With the vigorous development of competitive sports and national fitness movement, the use of sports nutrition food supplementation to ensure health and achieve the best fitness effect both for athletes and fitness people, has become an urgent problem, and has received more and more people’s attention. What are the functional factors of sports nutrition food?

Functional Factors for Joint Cartilage Protection

Joint damage is the most common sports injury. Maintaining joint health and reducing joint damage are the main functions of these foods, and their main functional factors include essential fatty acids, pantothenic acid, vitamins, calcium, hydrolyzed protease, glucosamine, chondroitin, methylsulfonylmethane, S-adenosylmethionine, collagen and soy isoflavones.

Since collagen is the main component of articular cartilage tissue, it is responsible for constructing the framework of the cartilage tissue and setting it into shape. Therefore, supplementation with the right amount of high quality hydrolyzed collagen can maintain the function of the body’s own cartilage tissue and protect joints from damage. Studies have shown that a daily intake of about 10 grams of hydrolyzed collagen can reduce pain in patients with knee or medullary osteoarthropathy, and that products with a molecular weight of about 3,000 daltons are better absorbed by the body.

Chondroitin Sulfate has the function of lubrication and support in joints, and its products are mainly composed of Chondroitin Sulfate or Glucosamine and Chondroitin Sulfate, such as Chondroitin Sulfate, Osteo Joint Care, More Free, Nutrajoint, ARTHx, etc., which can be used as dietary supplements to protect the joints, and the recommended intake of Chondroitin Sulfate is 1500mg per day. The recommended intake of chondroitin sulfate is 1500mg/d.

Functional factors to improve muscle mass

There are two main groups of substances used to increase muscle size and contractility:
(1) High quality proteins and amino acids with high biological activity, which are the raw materials for muscle protein synthesis;
(2) Substances that promote muscle synthesis and improve muscle contraction, such as creatine, herbal preparations for kidney tonic and aphrodisiac, chromium, boron, vitamins and zinc.

Taurine is a very rich amino acid in normal human muscle, is a kind of sports nutrition supplements to promote rapid muscle growth, can inhibit the decomposition of myosin, so that the muscles become bigger and stronger. Taurine is usually added to fruit juices containing calcium, magnesium, potassium and other minerals and nutrients to make sports drinks.

Studies have shown that short-term supplementation of creatine can increase phosphocreatine stores, and the increase in creatine and phosphocreatine stores can maintain ATP levels during high-intensity exercise and promote the re-synthesis of phosphocreatine during the intervals between repeated high-intensity exercise.

Therefore, short-term supplementation of creatine can increase muscle contractility and one-repetition sprint capacity. In addition, prolonged creatine supplementation can significantly increase strength, sprinting ability and fat-free body weight. Creatine at a dose of 20~25g/d for 5~7d and then continued at 3~5g/d can improve the body’s ability to maintain short distance output feats in cycling, sprinting, swimming, high jumping and wrestling.

Ribose supplementation can increase the average and maximum power of repetitive all-out exercise, and make the skeletal muscle cells utilize the stored energy more effectively during exercise. Ribose is used in different doses at different intensities and for different durations of exercise and recovery; Witter suggests 30g of ribose for high intensity exercise and post-exercise recovery, while in Antonio’s study ribose was used as 10g taken daily.

Einjnde studied the effects of oral ribose on the ability to perform repetitive high-intensity exercise and on the rate of ATP de novo synthesis, using 16 g of ribose per day, divided into four doses of 4 g. According to the recommended use of ribose product inserts, it is recommended that athletes should take about 2.2 g of ribose per day during training, which is a sufficient dosage to maintain the remediation of the body’s purine nucleotide needs and the de novo synthesis of ATP. This dosage can maintain the body’s need for purine nucleotide remediation and synthesis from scratch.

Endocrine Functional Factors

Testosterone is an important anabolic hormone for athletes. Attempts have been made to use testosterone and anabolic steroids to regulate neuroendocrine function in athletes, but their use is illegal because they are doping agents. In recent years, attempts have been made to use herbs to stimulate the body’s own secretion of testosterone to restore endocrine function in athletes to a virtuous cycle.

Weight Reduction and Control Functional Factors

L-carnitine, or carnitine, is a safe and effective nutritional supplement that promotes the oxidative decomposition of fatty acids, which can promote the oxidative decomposition of fatty acids into the mitochondria, and is a carrier for the transfer of fatty acids. During prolonged and intense exercise, L-carnitine increases the rate of fat oxidation, reduces glycogen depletion, and delays fatigue.

L-carnitine has been used in mass weight loss, fat loss and anti-fatigue in competitive athletes, and many nutritional supplement manufacturers use L-carnitine as the main ingredient in diet foods.

Glucose, the main substance supplying cellular energy, is degraded by the body to produce pyruvate, and an increase in pyruvate increases cellular energy production, which in turn leads to weight loss. Pyruvate increases metabolism, resulting in up to 48% more fat consumption.

Pyruvate has the ability to help burn fat in the body. Pyruvate is a product of the metabolism of sugar or starch in the body to produce energy. Pyruvate is chemically unstable and can cause nausea and gastrointestinal discomfort in those who consume it, so manufacturers use sodium, calcium, potassium or magnesium to stabilize it by making it into the salt pyruvate. Studies have found that the effective dose of pyruvate is about 5 grams per day, and that the effect of higher doses remains the same as 5 grams.

Functional Factors for the Prevention of Sports Anemia

Athletes with decreased iron stores or low hematocrit can be treated with a combination of preventive and curative measures, including (1) herbal medicine for blood production, (2) iron supplementation, (3) oxygen radical antagonism, and (4) erythrocyte protection.

During exercise training, the factors destroying erythrocytes are beyond our ability to overcome, but it is possible to protect erythrocytes and reduce the destruction of erythrocytes by exercise by taking more antioxidant substances, such as increasing the intake of vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin B12 and selenium, and other nutrients. After exercise, adequate protein should be replenished in time to prepare sufficient raw materials for the accelerated synthesis of erythrocytes.

Increase energy reserves and utilization of functional factors

The main function of this kind of food is to replenish limited energy for athletes for a short period of time before and during exercise, usually in the form of beverage, and its main functional factors include glucose, adenosine triphosphate, bicarbonate, creatine and carnitine.

Malt oligosaccharide is a new type of sugar source, mainly composed of maltose, maltotriose, maltotetraose to malt octasaccharide, no ambiguous essence, it is a new type of nutritional sweetener obtained by the action of specific malt oligosaccharide enzyme on starch, it has the effect of prolonging the human body’s energy supply, strengthening the body’s endurance and work capacity.