Acute pre-exercise oral intake of cacao polyphenols attenuates central fatigue development during sustained low-intensity ankle dorsiflexion exercise in healthy young male adults
Study Details
This new study tested whether 500 mg cacao polyphenols taken before exercise could reduce neuromuscular fatigue in 19 healthy young men 🔍
Participants consumed cacao polyphenols or placebo 45 minutes before a sustained ankle dorsiflexion task 🍫
The task involved holding an isometric contraction at 25% of maximal voluntary contraction until failure 🦵
Key Findings
⏱️ Time to task failure was virtually identical between conditions: 515 vs 519 seconds
❌ Cacao polyphenols therefore did not improve exercise performance
🧠 Voluntary activation, a marker of central motor drive, fell after exercise in both conditions
📈 However, voluntary activation was significantly higher with cacao polyphenols immediately after exercise and 1 minute into recovery
💡 The between-condition difference in voluntary activation was ~14.7% immediately post-exercise and ~8.8% after 1 minute
🎯 This suggests cacao polyphenols attenuated the development of central fatigue
🧠 EMG responses did not differ between conditions, so the central-fatigue finding was specific to voluntary activation
💧 Salivary chromogranin A, a marker of sympathetic stress, increased after exercise with placebo but not with cacao polyphenols
Conclusion
Acute cacao polyphenol intake may therefore preserve central motor drive and blunt autonomic stress ✅
But may not result in improved performance ❌
Possible mechanisms involving the gut–brain axis, noradrenergic signalling or cerebral blood flow were proposed but not directly measured ☝️
Reference
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42706654/
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