Home » Gain »

Chocolate Milk Beats Sports Drinks for Muscle Recovery

June 2, 2009 6:39 am 8 comments

Share This:

Subscribe:

Author:

Two years ago, in a study funded in part by the dairy industry, researchers at the University of Illinois determined that chocolate milk did as much or more as most "sports drinks" to help athletes maintain peak performance. Now comes another study, this one conducted at James Madison University, suggesting that chocolate milk
"provides equal or superior muscle recovery compared to a
high-carbohydrate recovery beverage with the same amount of calories."
The new study put 13 college soccer players through "normal"
training for one week, and gave them either lowfat chocolate milk orChocolate_Milk a
high-carbohydrate recovery beverage daily after intense training for
four days. After a two week break, the athletes went through a second
round of "normal" training, followed by four-day intensified training
to compare their recovery experiences following each beverage. The researchers found no differences between the two beverages in effects on,
soccer-specific performance tests, subjective ratings of muscle
soreness, mental and physical fatigue and other measures of muscle
strength. But when they looked at muscle recovery, the researchers found that chocolate milk drinkers had
significantly lower levels of creatine kinase – an indicator of muscle
damage – than the drinkers of a  carbohydrate beverage.

Read more from PR Newswire.

8 Comments

  • Gary C
    June 2, 2009
    11:23 am

    Since the beginning, companies have made up good things to advertise regarding their product. This is old news. What is new is that more and more people are beginning to understand this simple fact. It’s the way we have allowed Advertisers to work. If we stop allowing them to tell these lies we will be in worse shape I’m afraid. An entire industry thrives on these deceptions.

    Reply
  • Stephanie
    June 2, 2009
    2:33 pm

    Gary C, What is James Madison University advertising? I don’t understand your point. Yes I would be skeptical of the dairy funded study but the University?

    Reply
  • Gary C
    June 3, 2009
    8:06 am

    I was refering to “Sport Drink” Mfg.( and almost all other Advertisers Products)claims to be helpful when in reality Chocolate Milk is even more benificial. Advertisers take great liberties in their pitch to get one to buy their products. The University Study is simply giving us the facts.

    Reply
  • Jim
    June 3, 2009
    11:40 am

    Some one help this feeble minded old man. What does the last sentence acually mean? “But when…”

    Reply
  • Andrea Daily
    June 7, 2009
    12:07 am

    Jim, basically the last sentence explains why milk drinkers were superior to “carbohydrate” drinkers: Lower is better when the concern is creatine kinase levels and that was where milk had the advantage. What they call carbohydrate drinks are the beverages we call sports drinks. I can see why it is hard to understand if you are not a science or health expert.
    I would get very excited about this report if they were female swimmers in their thirties, but am forced to ask myself what would happen if they studied people like me because I am not a man, in college, or a soccer player. Should I try doing my own experiment?

    Reply
  • tom
    June 9, 2009
    12:48 pm

    people have been drinking milk from the beginning of time.everyday people,athelets,everyone..i see how a cold sports drink may be refreshing,but how good for you is it?/

    Reply
  • muscle recovery
    July 6, 2011
    2:22 am

    hmmm yummy and nutritious one.
    I heard this one of my friend he is an athletes and its the one he’s using during the his events.

    Reply

Leave a Reply


Recent Posts

  • Pain

    Bad News About Good Cholesterol

    Remember good cholesterol? You know, HDL cholesterol, the kind that was associated with reduced risk of stroke? Forget it. Now comes a study from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute suggesting that people with genes that boost HDL levels  do not, in fact, have a lower risk of heart attacks. Strange. The Boston Globe reports that the scientists in looked at a gene variation that raises HDL levels, and should consequently give people a 13 percent decreased [...]

    Read more →
  • Gear

    Sports That Don’t Break Your Bones Make Them Stronger

    What doesn’t break your bones makes them stronger. Especially if what doesn’t break your bones is a load-bearing sport like basketball or volleyball. How to we know? Because when researchers at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden measured the bone mass of more than 800 young men and studied their exercise habits, they found that after five years, the men who did a lot of load-bearing activities at the start of the study and those who increased their amounts of [...]

    Read more →
  • Pain Camel Jumping Strengthens Core

    Camel Jumping Strengthens Core

    Sports physiologists have yet to analyze the muscle groups that benefit most from the popular Yemenite entertainment plainly named “camel jumping,” but we’re guessing it’s good for the core, and not so good for the ankles. The New York Times’ Lens gives us an enlightening photo essay, shot, admittedly, by a photographer in Yemen who got bored waiting around for actual news. Anyone up for an over-50 team?

    Read more →
  • Attitude Pain

    Email Dependence Is Bad For Your Health

    Don’t have time to read SportsGeezer because you just got an email? That’s a bad sign, according to researchers at the University of California at Irvine. Researchers at the school attached heart rate sensors to workers in a suburban office, and divided the users into two groups; one with email, one deprived. A university news release reports that people who read email were found to work in a steady “high alert” state, with more constant heart rates. Those removed from [...]

    Read more →
  • Gear Pain

    “Workout Boosters” Boost Blood Pressure Too

    The names of the products—Jacked3D, Oxy Elite Pro, Code Red, and Nitric Blast, should offer some clues to the kind of science behind their sales; the science of marketing. Now comes the science of medicine, brought to bear on these “workout boosters” by the Food and Drug Administration, which determined that the active ingredient in the supplements, dimethylamylamine or DMAA, said in marketing materials to increase energy, concentration and metabolism, actually increases blood pressure. The FDA has sent letters to [...]

    Read more →
  • Attitude Pain

    Latest Treatment For Chronic Pain: Don’t Think About It

    Researchers in the psychiatry and behavioral science department of Johns Hopkins Medical School have some radical advice for sufferers of chronic pain: don’t think about it. Isn’t that what my mother used to say? Futurity reports that researchers at the school surveyed 214 people with myofascial temporomandibular disorder, or TMD, serious facial and jaw pain, about their sleep quality, depression, pain levels, and emotional responses to pain, including whether they ruminate on it or exaggerate it. Guess what? The scientists [...]

    Read more →
  • Uncategorized

    For Heart Health, Coffee Not Soda

    Why is is unsurprising that soda has been associated with a higher risk of stroke? Perhaps because it has long been associated with weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and coronary artery disease. Hmmm. Now, finally, comes a study from the Cleveland Clinic’s Wellness Institute and Harvard University, showing not only that sugar-sweetened and low-calorie sodas is associated with a higher risk of stroke, but that coffee, either caffeinated or decaffeinated, is associated with a lower risk. A [...]

    Read more →
  • Pain

    Would You Give Up Your Arms And Legs To Live?

    Would you give up your arms and legs to live? Will Lautzenheiser, a 36-year-old instructor at the Montana State University, made that choice after his body was invaded by a flesh eating bacteria. Now Lautzenheiser is in the sites of the limb transplant team and Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who would like to replace some of his sacrificed limbs. Read the whole story here.

    Read more →