Exercise and training results in muscle damage which, in turn, limits continued physical excertion and will reduce performance during subsequent exercise.

intact® supplementation has been proven to improve recovery from physical exercise. It has now also been proven to increase power output in power sports. Also, thirty-nine endurance athletes on a standardized training regime were supplemented in a double blinded, placebo controlled trial, with either 60 g daily of whey protein concentrate (WPC), or 60g of intact® over an eight week period. The athletes were tested for performance and recovery before supplementation began (week 0) and also at the end of supplementation (week 8). The test involved the athletes running to exhaustion in two incremental treadmill runs with a twenty minute recovery period between runs. The second run performance was used to test the recovery from the first run.

The results proved that intact® significantly improves the ability to perform a second bout of maximal exercise following a short rest period i.e. “a second half effect”. The mechanism for this recovery is unknown but is probably due to the effects of one or more of the bioactive proteins present in the powder. The results of the trial indicate that these effects may include an increase in muscle resistance to damage during exercise.

Details of the findings of the trial include:

1. Athletes on intact® ran significantly (p=0.04) further during the second treadmill run following the twenty minute rest. There was no significant difference in the distance run in the first run

This data can be shown as the percentage of the first run distance which could be repeated in the second run after a twenty minute rest.

2. Because the runs were incremental with the treadmill being raised 1 degree every 3 minutes, the work done during the run increased exponentially with distance covered. Thus the actual work done was significantly greater in the intact® group (p=0.03).

The mechanism of action is unknown, but may be related to less muscle breakdown during exercise.

The intact® athletes displayed a strong trend over eight weeks to reduce the increase in serum creatine kinase concentrations per unit of work done (p=0.16) while there was no such trend in the WPC group (p>0.94).

The results could also be partly due to a contribution to general health and well being with intact®. Before the trial code was broken, athletes completed a detailed questionnaire. After the trial code was broken, it was shown that the percentage of intact® athletes reporting improvement in performance and well-being tended to be higher than the WPC group.

3. intact® athletes lost a significant amount of body fat (p=0.005) over the course of the trial. Athletes on WPC also lost fat mass but the loss was not significant (p=0.08).

REFERENCES
1. Aust. Patents 644468, 668033, N.Z. patents 260568, 239466

2. Buckley, J., Abbott, M., Martin, S., Brinkworth, G. & Whyte, P. (1998), “Effects of an oral bovine colostrum supplement (intact®) on running performance.” 1998 Australian Conference of Science and Medicine in Sport, Adelaide, South Australia, October 1998.