A fresh scientific study, published in the venerable journal ‘Nature’ shows the positive impact of nutritional + physical fitness intervention vs. physical fitness intervention alone.
The study has solid methodology, a good sample size, and included a comprehensive, 12-week randomized controlled trial featuring healthy and fit active-duty Air Force personnel. The participants were randomly assigned to either the exercise plus nutritional supplement group or the exercise plus placebo group.
According to the scientists, the nutritional supplement beverage was designed 'to support both muscle and cognitive performance’. When looking at the ingredients of said nutritional supplement beverage, it’s a protein + carb + fat source combined with a multivitamin formulation augmented with Choline, DHA and HMB.
The exercise intervention was designed ‘to enhance mission relevant strength, cardiovascular health and fitness’ and included a total body resistance circuit designed to improve strength (twice a week), a cardiovascular workout designed to facilitate active recovery, flexibility and core strength (twice a week) and a cardiovascular endurance training and high intensity cardiovascular workout (once a week). Training sessions were scheduled five days a week for the 12 week duration, with each session lasting 45 minutes. In addition, the participants were guided on proper form for each exercise by professional supervisors.
The study found that, relative to exercise training alone, thel fitness + nutritional intervention further improved working memory (+ 9.0%), fluid intelligence reaction time (− 7.7%), processing efficiency (+ 1.8%), heart rate (− 2.4%) and lean muscle mass (+ 1.5%). Out of the measured results, the improvement in heart rate is of particular interest to us at Rohtos Labs.
The authors conclude that ‘our study demonstrates that the combination of a nutritional supplement and an exercise training intervention provided physical health and cognitive gains beyond those from exercise alone.’
Enhanced physical and cognitive performance in active duty Airmen: evidence from a randomized multimodal physical fitness and nutritional intervention