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Application of Exercise/Training Models to Evaluate Food Functionality with Special Focus on Preventing Inflammation and Oxidative Stress and Enhancing Exercise Performance

Summary

This review explains how different types of exercise affect your body and how specific foods can help. Moderate exercise like walking benefits from antioxidant-rich foods to reduce inflammation, while intense training requires more careful supplement selection because too much antioxidants can actually harm your training gains. The research shows that personalized approaches considering your genetics, gut bacteria, and individual responses work best for optimizing performance and health.

Background

Exercise and physical training induce diverse physiological responses that can be modulated by functional foods. Moderate exercise promotes health through anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, while intense exercise can induce muscle damage, inflammation, and immunosuppression. Understanding how to evaluate food functionality across different exercise models is critical for optimizing both athletic performance and health outcomes.

Objective

To examine how different exercise models—from moderate exercise to intense training—can be applied to evaluate food functionality in preventing inflammation, oxidative stress, and enhancing athletic performance. The review highlights the importance of appropriate exercise model selection, timing, and dosage of nutritional interventions.

Results

The review identified that moderate exercise combined with functional foods synergistically enhances endurance capacity and antioxidant defenses. Intense exercise reveals the antioxidant paradox where high-dose supplements can impair adaptations. Emerging approaches including nano-processed compounds, gut microbiota modulation, and personalized timing strategies offer promising results for optimizing food functionality.

Conclusion

Selection of appropriate exercise models is crucial for evaluating food functionality. Future research should prioritize point-of-care biomarker testing, clinical validation of microbiome-targeted approaches, and digital health technologies to transform functional foods into precisely prescribed interventions that balance performance enhancement with health protection.
  • Published in:Foods,
  • Study Type:Review,
  • Source: PMID: 41375963, DOI: 10.3390/foods14234025
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