Dr. Luc (Luke) van Loon

But, of course, from a muscle perspective, yeah,

Nothing makes sense on recovery after exercise that cold would actually be helpful.

So we did a study where we used the intrinsically labeled protein so we could track where the protein goes acutely, but also more long-term.

And after exercise, we put one leg in cold water and one in thermoneutral water.

And we saw that the lag in the cold water did not get the same stimulation of muscle protein synthesis.

And basically, less of the protein would actually go to the lag, less perfusion, less stimulation of muscle protein synthesis.

So from at least for the first six hours, it seems evident that acute recovery, recovery in the light of muscle protein synthesis,

glycogen restoration is actually compromised by the lower temperature.

Part of that is that because you inhibit perfusion, but also, of course, all the enzyme and all the process activity in the muscle is also reduced by a lower temperature because that's just what happens.

I was surprised that I thought like, hey, maybe then you compromise that acute recovery phase, but then you maybe catch up later on when you warm up.

So that if you do this over two weeks, it doesn't make any difference.

So we continue doing that for, if I'm not incorrect, over two weeks with six training sessions.

And so at six training sessions, we've only up to about 15 minutes of cooling.

I thought that could never have an effect over those full two weeks.

And if there's an effect, we wouldn't be able to pick it up, but we did.

And over those two weeks, total protein synthesis in that leg that received cooling compared to the other was actually less and actually measurable less.

So that six times 15 minutes cooling over two weeks of

14 days, 24 hours had a negative impact on the stimulation of muscle protein synthesis.

My only conclusion is that the reconditioning is therefore not optimal.

Now, if you still want to do the cooling, now the shower is only short, but would it be good to do it at different times?