Boost Your Athletic Performance and Recovery with Aronia
If you're an athlete, or involved in sustained sport or endurance training, and you are looking for a natural way to enhance your performance and recovery, aronia berries may be the natural functional food you've been searching for.
Aronia, also known as chokeberry, is a dark purple berry packed with powerful plant compounds called polyphenols. Polyphenols have been widely recognised for their benefits to human metabolic health. Now a growing body of research suggests that supplementing with aronia berry extracts could give you a competitive edge by reducing inflammation, fighting oxidative stress, and accelerating muscle recovery after intense exercise.
How Does Aronia Boost Your Antioxidants?
Aronia berries work their magic by supercharging your body’s own antioxidant defence system. In a recent clinical trial with young football players, those who took a concentrated aronia extract for 90 days experienced a 50% increase in their body’s antioxidant power (measured as plasma total antioxidant capacity, or TAC) compared to a placebo group.(1); This means their bodies were much better equipped to neutralize harmful free radicals - molecules that can damage cells during intense physical activity.
Interestingly, this boost in antioxidant capacity isn’t just because of the polyphenols in aronia acting as antioxidants themselves, as the limited bioavailability of polyphenols means that even with high oral doses, blood levels of polyphenols remain low and could never be high enough to explain the dramatic increases in TAC seen in this study. Instead, aronia seems to activate your body’s natural defences through a mechanism called hormesis, or the Hormetic Effect. (2)
What is the Hormetic Effect?
Hormesis is like a workout for your cells: a mild stressor, such as exercise or plant polyphenols, triggers your body to respond by becoming stronger and more resilient. In the case of aronia, when its polyphenols neutralize free radicals, they are transformed into mild stress signals themselves. This prompts your body to produce more of its own powerful antioxidants, like glutathione and superoxide dismutase (SOD), creating a robust defence system. It’s similar to how lifting weights tears down muscle fibres temporarily, only to rebuild them stronger than before.
This hormetic effect has been documented in athletes across different sports, including rowers;(3) footballers (1), professional handball players(4), and even in healthy women (5). What makes this so important is that it helps you adapt better to exercise, improving recovery and performance over time..
In contrast, taking high doses of more traditional antioxidants like vitamin C can blunt these adaptations by overly suppressing free radicals, which your body needs in moderation for signalling and growth. Aronia, however, strikes the perfect balance: its polyphenols not only help detoxify harmful free radicals and prevent the damage associated with heavy exercise but they also stimulate your body’s own systems to adapt and thrive during training.
In addition to boosting antioxidants, the anti-inflammatory effects of aronia polyphenols may also aid recovery by reducing exercise-induced muscle damage. The study by Stankiewicz et al. found athletes taking aronia extract had significantly lower levels of the pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-6 and higher levels of the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10 and suffered significantly lower levels of DNA damage compared to the control group (1).
The combination of free radical detoxification, anti-inflammatory activity and hormesis is a win-win for athletes looking to perform at their peak, reducing muscle soreness, speeding recovery between workouts, and gradually helping the body to adapt to higher levels of performance (7).
What Does this Mean for Athletic Performance?
While more research is needed, early human studies are very promising and we already have some good data showing that:
- Young footballers covered 13% more distance in a 20-meter shuttle run test (a proxy for V02 max) and had higher post-exercise lactate levels (a marker of increased exercise capacity) after 90 days of supplementing with aronia extract. Those supplemented with aronia also had large increases in TAC and anti-inflammatory cytokines, decreases in proinflammatory cytokines and decrease levels of markers of DNA damage. (1)
- Supplementation in Olympic rowers significantly decreased post-exercise levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines and significantly increased TACs and iron levels (3)
- 12 weeks of aronia supplementation in professional handball players during the season significantly decreased the markers of oxidative damage and increased the levels of catalyse an antioxidant enzyme (4)
Recreational runners had lower markers of muscle damage, platelet activation, and inflammation after completing a half-marathon race when they took a 200 mL dose of aronia juice beforehand.(8)
Aronia supplementation reduced exercise-induced oxidative damage to red blood cells in trained rowers, which could potentially lower the risk of sports anaemia and help maintain aerobic capacity.(3,9)
In conclusion, aronia with the highest polyphenol content of any fruit or vegetable (10) is a very promising supplement to support athletic recovery and performance. By enhancing your body's own antioxidant defences, controlling inflammation, and protecting against muscle damage, aronia supplements may help you to not only hit your workouts harder and come back faster, but also help to increase your endurance in sport.
PhyterBerry Aronia Organic Sport powder has been tested and accredited by INFORMED SPORT and is fully organically certified.
Of course, no supplement is a replacement for proper training, nutrition, and rest. But if you're looking for an extra edge from a natural source, aronia berries are worth serious consideration.
By Dr. Steve Collins MD, January 2025
References:
- Stankiewicz B, Cieślicka M, Mieszkowski J, Kochanowicz A, Niespodziński B, Szwarc A, et al. Effect of Supplementation with Black Chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) Extract on Inflammatory Status and Selected Markers of Iron Metabolism in Young Football Players: A Randomized Double-Blind Trial. Nutrients 2023, Vol 15, Page 975. 2023 Feb 15 [cited 2023 Mar 13];15(4):975. Available from: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/15/4/975/htm
- Moskaug JØ, Carlsen H, Myhrstad MC, Blomhoff R. Polyphenols and glutathione synthesis regulation 1-4. AJCN. 2005;81(Suppl):277S-283S. Available from: https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/81/1/277S/460756
- Skarpańska-Stejnborn A, Basta P, Sadowska J, Pilaczyńska-Szcześniak Ł. Effect of supplementation with chokeberry juice on the inflammatory status and markers of iron metabolism in rowers. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2014 Oct 1;11(1):1–10.
- Cikiriz N, Isidora M, Biljana J, Stefani B, Jovana J, Turnic Tamara N, et al. The influences of chokeberry extract supplementation on redox status and body composition in handball players during competition phase. Canada J Physiol Pharmacol. 2020; Available from: www.nrcresearchpress.com;
- Kardum N, Takić M, Šavikin K, Zec M, Zdunić G, Spasić S, et al. Effects of polyphenol-rich chokeberry juice on cellular antioxidant enzymes and membrane lipid status in healthy women. J Funct Foods. 2014;9(1):89–97.
- Pingitore A, Lima GPP, Mastorci F, Quinones A, Iervasi G, Vassalle C. Exercise and oxidative stress: Potential effects of antioxidant dietary strategies in sports. Vol. 31, Nutrition. Elsevier Inc.; 2015. p. 916–22;
- Bongiovanni T, Genovesi F, Nemmer M, Carling C, Alberti G, Howatson G. Nutritional interventions for reducing the signs and symptoms of exercise-induced muscle damage and accelerate recovery in athletes: current knowledge, practical application and future perspectives. Vol. 120, European Journal of Applied Physiology. Springer; 2020. p. 1965–96.
- Stevanović V, Ana P, Krga I, Milica Z, Ivana Š, Maria G, et al. Aronia juice consumption prior to half-marathon race can acutely affect platelet activation in recreational runners. Applied Physiology Nutrition and Metabolism. 2020;(45):393–400. Available from;www.nrcresearchpress.com;
- Pilaczynska-Szczesniak L, Skarpanska-Steinborn A, Deskur E, Basta P, Horoszkiewicz-Hassan M. The influence of chokeberry juice supplementation on the reduction of oxidative stress resulting from an incremental rowing ergometer exercise. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2005;15(1):48–58;
- Pérez-Jiménez J, Neveu V, Vos F, Scalbert A. Identification of the 100 richest dietary sources of polyphenols: An application of the Phenol-Explorer database. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2010;64:S112–20.