Effect of an herbal/botanical supplement on recovery from delayed onset muscle soreness: a randomized placebo-controlled trial

Abstract

Background

We examined the effects of a proprietary herbal/botanical supplement (StemSport, Stemtech, San Clemente, CA.) suggested to increase circulating stem cells, decrease inflammation, and attenuate exercise induced muscle damage on recovery from delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS).

Methods

Sixteen subjects (male = 7, female = 9; age 23.8 ± 10 years; height 171.9 ± 10 cm, mass 72.2 ± 15 kg) were randomized in a crossover, double-blind, placebo controlled trial to receive a placebo or StemSport supplement (6150 mg/day) for 14 days. DOMS was induced on day 7 for both placebo and active conditions in the non-dominant elbow flexor group with repeated eccentric repetitions. Muscle swelling (biceps girth), elbow flexor isometric strength (hand held dynamometer), muscle pain/tenderness (visual analog scale), range of motion (active elbow flexion and extension), and inflammation (hsCRP, IL6, and TNF-α) were measured at baseline and at 24 h, 48 h, 72 h, and 168 h (1 week) post eccentric exercise. The crossover washout period was ≥14 days.

Results

No significant condition-by-time interactions between placebo and StemSport supplementation were observed with regard to measures of pain (p = 0.59), tenderness (p = 0.71), isometric strength (p = 0.32), elbow flexion (p = 0.45), muscle swelling (p = 0.90), or inflammation (p > 0.90). Decrements in elbow extension range of motion 48 h post-exercise were less after StemSport supplementation (Δ elbow extension 48 h post; StemSport, −2.0 deg; placebo, −10 deg; p = 0.003).

Conclusions

These data suggest that compared to placebo, StemSport supplementation does not improve outcome measures related to muscle recovery after acute upper-arm induced DOMS.

Keywords:

• DOMS
• Blue-green algae
• Eccentric exercise

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1550-2783-11-27) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Copyright comment

This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1550-2783-11-27) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Copyright comment

This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the subjects for their participation and the nursing staff of the UVA Clinical Research Center for assistance with the blood draws. We would also like to thank Noelle Selkow, PhD for her assistance with data collection.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests. The study was funded in part by an urestricted gift to the Curry School of Education Exercise Physiology Fund from StemTech International, Inc. San Clemente, CA. FIK, JH, and AW served as scientific consultants for StemTech International.

Authors’ contributions

CAR, JH, FIK, and AW contributed to the study conception and design, SDR and JM screened the subjects and provided medical oversight, CAR, JYW acquired the data, JP performed the data analysis, CAR, JH, FIK, and AW interpreted the data; All authors were involved in drafting the manuscript and have given final approval of the published version.