High-Grade Oil Improves Top Human Speed

Bringing down the Olympic Games world record is not an easy feat, as proven by the fact that the times obtained in 1932 were only improved by 2008 with 0.6 seconds. This feat was accomplished mostly due to rigorous training exercises and an advancement in training technology. Now, a new scientific study conducted on mice comes to show that the same result could theoretically be obtained using a simple change in the diets that sportsmen regularly use.

Naturally, all performance athletes are on a special diet, which ensures that their bodies remain perfectly adapted to the intense efforts running short distances at high speeds implies. Now, Austrian experts at the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology (RIWE) have demonstrated in a new lab study that average mice fed with polyunsaturated fatty acids experience a rise in performance that is equivalent to that obtained by humans after many exercises and diets.

In the experiments, researchers noted that mice fed over two weeks with diets high in sunflower oil, which is rich in n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, ran on average 0.19 meters/second faster than mice fed with foods high in linseed oil, which has high concentrations of n-3 fatty acids. This means that, over a two-meter sprint, the mice in the first group emerged victorious by about 0.4 meters. When we translate this statistically, the creatures obtained the same boost in speed in two weeks that people did in about 76 years.

“The results of the current study on mice suggest that moderate differences in dietary n-6/n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid intake can have a biologically meaningful effect on maximum running speed,” Dr. Christopher Turbill explains. He will be in charge of presenting the finds today at the annual meeting of the Society for Experimental Biology. He adds that, in other species, muscle and skeleton bones filled with the n-6 fatty acids were generally associated with an increase in speed.

Diets featuring these fatty acids “could also affect the maximum (or burst) running speed of other vertebrates, including humans. The application of this research to the performance of elite athletes (specifically those in sports that involve short distance sprints, including cycling) is uncertain, but in my opinion certainly deserves some further attention,” he concludes.