Effect of short-term garlic supplementation on lipid damage after exhaustive exercise in non-athlete men

Introduction and Nowadays the use of herbal supplements to prevent free radicals has become more prevalent. This study was performed to determine the effect of short-term garlic supplementation on lipid peroxidation after exhaustive exercise in non-athlete men. Twenty male non-athletes (aged 21.05±1.35 years, weight 67.15±7.30 kg and height 179.2±6.92 cm and BMI 22.02±2.95 kg/m2) were assigned to two equal supplement and placebo groups in a randomized and double-blind design (500mg/day garlic or dextrose for 14 days). After supplementation, all participants participated in Bruce test. The blood samples were taken in three phases (before and after the supplementation and after the exercise). The data (Mean ± SD) were analyzed by repeated measure ANOVA, Bunferoni and independent t-test (P≤0.05). The results showed that the effect of measurement stages was not significant for the garlic group (F=1.923 p =.175). However, a significant difference was observed for the control group (F=60.321 p=0.000). The result of Post Hoc test indicated that there was a significant difference between stage 2 and stage 3 of the experiment. Therefore, it was found that short term garlic supplementation did not have any effect on basal MDA index in plasma. But this supplementation could reduce pos- exercise MDA increase. Discussion and Results of the study indicate that garlic supplementation can reduce lipid damage due to severe physical exercise. However, since few studies have been conducted in this area, more research is needed.