Antioxidants + Exercise: Better Together for Older Adults?

Antioxidants + Exercise: Better Together for Older Adults?

A meta-analysis pooling 39 studies and over 1,700 older adults found that taking antioxidants alongside exercise led to bigger improvements in strength and walking ability than exercise alone.

What they looked at

Participants took various antioxidants—things like vitamin C, vitamin E, creatine, or resveratrol—either with or without an exercise program (usually resistance training). The studies ranged from 1 to 52 weeks.

What they found

Exercise by itself beats antioxidants alone when it came to walking distance. But when people combined antioxidants with exercise, they saw better results for leg strength, grip strength, and walking distance compared to just exercising.

The catch

Because the studies used so many different antioxidants and exercise programs, it’s hard to say which specific combo works best.

There’s also an interesting wrinkle here: oxidative stress is actually part of how your body adapts to exercise. Some research in younger people has shown that taking antioxidants around workouts can blunt those adaptations. The benefits seen in this study might be because older adults have more oxidative stress to begin with, so reducing it helps rather than hurts. This may not translate to younger people.

Photo by Karolina Kołodziejczak on Unsplash