Echinancea: What runners should know about Echinancea
today we are talking echinacea and in
particular does echinacea help increase
vo2 max especially in the context of
running and where this topic came from
is a good buddy of mine at work smart
guy successful guy he recent started
taking echinacea in order to increase
his vo2 max have better running
performance well that seems kind of
interesting to me so I spent the past
few days researching as we do the
chemistry of it to understand how
effective is echinacea increasing vo2
max but first what exactly is echinacea
well echinacea is a plant native to
North America and the medicinal parts of
it are really the whole plan itself from
the purple flowers to the leaves to the
stems and even the root which exists
below ground and where echinacea really
rose to fame is as an immune boosting
substance so big body of scientific
research out there generally accepted
that echinacea has good immune boosting
properties the mechanism and action is
by boosting your white blood cell
production your t-cell production to
help fight off infections into the body
good body and research around there but
where all the chatter is is echinacea
actually able to increase your view to
max and real quick about what exactly is
vo2 max before we get into does it do it
or not so vo2 max is defined as the
amount of oxygen milliliters of oxygen
per kilograms of body weight per minute
of exercise and it's a measure of how
much oxygen your body is able to consume
and use in your muscles for energy and
in general the higher your vo2 max the
more oxygen that's available which means
the more ATP you can produce which means
the more energy your body can do per
minute and that's going to help you run
faster or do different type of things
longer it's different than lactate
threshold lat
threshold and that's the point where
your body goes from aerobic using oxygen
to anaerobic and when your anaerobic is
when you start producing like the gases
you get the muscle fatigue eventually
shut down your lactic threshold can be
trained more specific workouts
high-intensity type work getting better
with your running the economy you can
delay the point at which you go
anaerobic I mean you can run faster
speeds before you go in a little bit
longer with work your vo2 max is
generally genetically based and there
isn't a lot you can do to raise that and
it's not always necessarily that
important if you really work on this
component of it so that's the difference
between this two now where all the
chatter started back in Asia was back in
the mid 2000s and it started with a
research buddy study which are linked
down below and the mechanism action was
that in clinical studies people who took
eight thousand grams of echinacea per
day for a period of weeks saw an
increase in the production of EPO now
EPO is the molecule in the body that
produced by the kidney that tells that
regulates how much red blood cells your
body produces and that's why it is the
the drug you also see a lot in doping in
endurance athletes because it's
particularly effective at increasing the
amount of red blood cells available the
more red blood cells you have the more
oxygen you're going to be able to carry
to your cells the higher to your muscles
effectively has to give you a high
review to max so the study start around
echinacea helped increase the amount of
EPO available more EPO necessarily
should have more vo2 max and subsequent
studies all at the 2012 by the same
group showed that this dose of echinacea
increased FB EPO increases vo2 max and
if you look out there today all the
different supplements that are really
- max focus that contained these maximum
doses of echinacea 8,000 grams in a
survey or 2014-15 research now in all my
research the last few days or so I came
across this body of research pretty
interesting but pretty much every single
clinical study since then all than
through thousand two thousand seventeen
can't replicate these findings so you
have one research team producing a body
of research over five years and you have
pretty much every other research
community out there trying to replicate
these findings and finding the exact
opposite that echinacea didn't increase
EPO didn't increase vo2 max so in
general what I like to see in my studies
is that you're able to replicate these
findings I don't have a measure of
confidence I could go to work so what I
do think is happening though is if you
look at a lot of vo2 max supplements on
the market
echinacea isn't the lead ingredient
instead echinacea
is at the same clinical dosage you had
in that body of research but they're
also adding things that actually do
improve vo2 max minerals such as iron as
well as vitamins such as vitamin b6 and
b12 and these three things are
clinically shown scientist shown to
improve your red blood cell production
in fact you need vitamin b6 and vitamin
b12 to make of red blood cells so
effectively if your body is producing
healthy red blood cells by having the
right amount of vitamins there rather
than an iron from a diet supplementation
etc that is going to help your view to
back to the sensor you're going to be
healthy and operating much closer your
vo2 max potential I don't know if it's
going to raise your vo2 max above your
genetic potential but will if you are
deficient in those areas certainly help
you reach your potential in general and
get you closer to back to that level
that you
should be at so overall those are some
spining status cover for my research
home it's helpful and as always see you
guys at the finish line