Quell Illness with Quercetin

by: Pm - September 20th, 2007

Sick and tired of being sick and tired? Try adding some quercetin to your routine. Quercetin is a phytochemical, more specifically, a flavonoid, compound with powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activities.

Much as we athletes are aware of the dangers of overtraining, our passion for what we do often drives us to push ourselves too far too fast. The immediate effects are fatigue, lethargy, disinterest, and undesirable changes in body weight, heart rate, and sleep patterns. When continued attempts are made to push-on through the body’s early warning signs, injury and illness often result.

It’s always best to avoid the catabolic overtraining state by allowing sufficient rest time between workouts and by getting at average of at least 7-8 hours of sleep every night. But, the realities are that life doesn’t always conform so nicely to the ideal body building schedule. This is where more attention to dietary modifications like adding more protein, EAAs (especially BCAAs), glutamine, and, apparently, more quercetin can come in handy.

According to a recent write-up published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, supplementation with quercetin reduces the incidence of upper respiratory tract infections. After 3 consecutive days of exercise at maximum intensity for 3 hours/day, the incidence of respiratory infections differed significantly between the athletes who used and did not use quercetin in the two week follow-up period.

Even though the athletes observed in this particular study were endurance, athletes (cyclists), overtraining is overtraining, so it’s not unreasonable to assume that quercetin (and possibly related flavonoids like quercitrin and rutin) will exert similar protection to strength (or strength & endurance) athletes too. In fact, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is also currently investigating quercetin supplementation in active soldiers, where stress-induced illness is high …and is often as serious to the success of a mission as being free of injury. Previous research has showed that quercetin reduces oxidative stress (possibly by “recharging” vitamin C), inhibits the formation of histamine (not to be confused with the amino acid, histamine), and may even impart protection against certain types of cancer.

Quercetin can be found in a wide variety of foods including apples, tea, red onions, red grapes, citrus fruits, green vegetables, cherries, berries, and tomatoes. The problem is, you’d have to eat A LOT of food to get the amount of quercetin used in the studies – about 100 apples worth. Even if you are an mega-ectomorph, that’s a lot of carbs and calories… and then there’s all that fiber. Realistically, to get the pharmacological benefits observed in this study, you’ll need to supplement your diet. I’m not personally aware of any companies who sell isolated quercetin supplements, but I’m sure if they’re not already out there, they will be, as the science for this and other novel antioxidants is certainly building.

…till next time.

Happy Heaving,

PM

Nieman, D., Henson, D., Gross, S., et. al., Quercetin Reduces Illness but Not Immune Perturbations after Intensive Exercise., Medicine and Science in Sports Exercise. 2007 Sep;39(9):1561-9

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