For a professional athlete, proper nutrition is essential for peak physical performance. The right diet optimizes athlete’s energy levels and helps the body to recover more effectively. Sports nutrition is basically the quality and quantity of food and fluid that athlete takes. Carbohydrates and proteins are essential for athletes to enhance their energy and performance. As their body consumes more energy, additional nutrients are required to recover from deep physical activity. Nutrition is essential for building strong muscles, maintaining healthy bones, repairing tissues and to provide sufficient energy for maximum performance.
Nitric Oxide
Nitric oxide is a vasodilator that relaxes the inner muscles of blood vessels and causes the vessels to widen. Wider blood vessels play an important role in delivering oxygen and nutrients to muscles during exercise. The extra nutrients provided by wider vessels boost the performance of athletes.The flow of blood in the body increases tremendously and helps to lower blood pressure.
A recent study on Shilajit cardiovascular effect (research not published), was performed on 16 men and 4 women by using two doses of 250mg of Shilajit per day for 12 weeks. One amazing result was 30% increase in Nitric oxide level (P<0.001). The increased level of Nitric oxide due to Shilajit relaxes the walls of arteries, widens the blood vessel and reinforces the heart, lungs, and nerves for maximum performance. This result verified cardiovascular benefits related with Shilajit. Athletes can take Shilajit on the daily or weekly basis for enhancing their performance.
Energy and Physical Performance Enhancer
Shilajit is very rich in minerals and vitamins that make it a good choice for enhancing the energy and physical performance. In a study, a 200mg of Shilajit was given to volunteers, engaging them in aerobic exercise for 15 days. The results showed that the level of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) increased by 14 percent and fitness level increased by 15 percent. Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is a carrier of energy within cells and increased levels of ATP improves energy levels in the body. CoQ10 is a nutrient that plays an important role in the creation of ATP. Shilajit can boost CoQ10 efficiency and can elevate the level of ATP in the body.
Another study on Shilajit showed that 500mg/d of Shilajit can increase the exercise time from 9 to 13 percent. The experiment was performed on sport persons and recreational athletes. The results also showed that Shilajit can also increase metabolic equivalent (METs) value in the body. METs defines the amount of oxygen consumed by the body during physical activity. During physical activity or exercise, amount of oxygen used by body increases, thus METs level also increases. The researcher concluded that Shilajit increases the METs value and thus increases the exercise timing.
Supporting Collagen Growth in Skeletal Muscle
Collagen is a type of glue that holds the joint, bones and muscles together and plays an important role in the health of muscle and joint. Type 1 and type 3 collagen are in tendons and bones, while type 2 is mainly for joints. In a study on Shilajit, a 500mg of Shilajit was given to 16 peoples for eight weeks with exercise. The results showed that Shilajit was able to increase collagen-related genes and other proteins that make healthy muscles and strong joints. Research also revealed that Shilajit can also upregulate the ECM-related genes that are important in elasticity and repair of muscles. Vitamin c in Shilajit helps in the production of collagen for maintaining healthy bones and joints.
Shilajit is a natural supplement that can increase the level of collagen, adenosine triphosphate, METs and nitric oxide for optimum performance during physical activities. Most of sport injuries are associated with muscles and tissues. On can use Shilajit during injuries to repair body muscles and tissues, thus helps athletes to quickly recover from injury.
