Hey everybody, it's Mikki here, you're listening to Mikkipedia, and this week on the podcast, I speak to Dr. Matthew Cook, Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Science at the University of Worcester, about New Zealand blackcurrant and what the research really tells us about its potential benefits for exercise performance, metabolism, and recovery.

Now, you guys don't really have to be long-standing listeners of the show to know that I completely rate currants, and it was such a delight to be able to sit down and talk to one of the leading researchers about this topic.

So, Matthew does give us a bit of a 101 in terms of the blackcurrant extract, why the metabolites produced after we consume anthocyanins may be more important than the anthocyanins themselves, and how supplementation compares with simply eating just the whole fruit.

And on today's episode, we dig into one of the most consistent findings in the literature, that an increase in fat oxidation during exercise, and putting that into perspective about what this might mean for glycogen sparing, and why some people may appear to respond better than others.

We also explore the major gaps in the research, and this is the super exciting part, I think.

There's research gaps, particularly in women, perimenopause.

Menopause, insulin resistance, and people with higher body fat.

And then we get practical about dosing, timing, loading before events, and whether blackcurrant may also have a role in recovery after demanding exercise.

I'm a huge fan of the currant supplement.

I take it every day, and also it played a huge role in our Grand to Grand Ultra that we did a year ago now.

I can't even believe that.

Particularly for its potent effects on...

Reducing GI distress in the heat.

So, if you're an athlete, if you're just interested in health, because it's got a lot of just health-related benefits, I think you're going to love this episode.

So, Dr. Matthew Cook joined the University of Water in 2017 as a lecturer in sport and exercise science, and had completed his PhD at the University of Chichester, all these names, where he conducted the first doctoral research examining the effects of New Zealand blackcurrant on physiological responses at rest.

And during exercise and trained cyclists.

He is a professional member of the Chartered Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences, and has worked with a range of athletes, including cyclists and runners.

And he's also provided recent advisory support to the Football Association on supplementation strategies, and contributes to the profession as a registered supervisor and reviewer for the Chartered Association's Supervised Experience Pathway,

and as an academic associate on the Sport Next.

Now, I have a link as to where you can find Dr. Matthew in the show notes.

And before we crack on into this episode, guys, I would like to remind you that the best way to support this podcast is to hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast listening platform.

That increases the visibility of Mikkipedia, and it makes literally thousands of other podcasts out there.

So, more people get to hear from the experts I have on the show, like Dr. Matthew Cook.

All right, guys, enjoy this conversation.

I'm heading into winter.

And FYI, not that you care, but I literally just had my two currents before jumping on this, because I thought it's about an hour away from when I'm about to hit the pavement.

So, it's probably perfect timing.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm sure we'll talk about it in the coming hour or so.

And, you know, maybe share why that's so.

Beneficial.

I love that, Matt.

And, you know, let's kick off, actually, because so I believe you know this, but I've had Fleur on the podcast several times to chat about currents.

And, in fact, listeners of the show will remember this if they've sort of been long-term listeners.

But I discovered currents not through its exercise benefits, actually, but from many people contacting me.

To ask if I'd heard of this product that seemed to have cured their hay fever as we're coming into spring.

So, I'm like, well, this is super interesting.

And then I delved a little bit further, had the opportunity to chat to Fleur.

And, really, the rest is history from my perspective.

But I'm curious for you just to sort of, I guess, set the scene for listeners.

Can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you ended up in exercise physiology?

And, of course, sports nutrition is part of that.

Yeah, absolutely.

So, my background, as you say, is sport and exercise science.

I studied that as an undergraduate degree here in the UK.

And I studied that at Southampton Solent University.

And I followed that up with a master's degree in sport and exercise physiology.

And I studied that at the University of Chichester.

And I stayed at Chichester for a few years.

And I suppose that's where my interest.

In nutrition really started to take off.

And I kind of became quite interested, I suppose, in the physiological responses to nutrition,

looking at kind of performance, recovery, and health.

So, at Chichester, I actually undertook a PhD.

And on that PhD, I investigated the effects of New Zealand blackcurrant in trained cyclists.

We were looking at exercise performance and various physiological responses.

And then, when I fringed my PhD, I got my present position where I'm at currently,

which is at the University of Worcester.

And I'm now a senior lecturer in sport and exercise science.

And I teach exercise physiology, sports nutrition, statistics.

But I also still maintain a research presence.

So, I'm still researching the effects of blackcurrant on performance, recovery, and health outcomes.

Amazing.

And was your supervisor, Mark?

Was Mark Willems or similar?

Is he at Chichester?

I'm not even going to say that properly.

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.

So, when I was at Chichester, and as I said, I studied for a PhD, Mark Willems was my PhD supervisor.

And Mark and I still work closely together today and collaborate on studies, experiments, and papers.

So, I suppose over the coming weeks and months, listeners that are interested might see more papers from Mark and I coming out.

But, yeah, you're absolutely right.

Mark was at Chichester.

What strikes me over the last, it feels like several years at this point, because, of course, I get the Curran's newsletter comes into my inbox a couple of times a month,

is how it's reflected.

And it's really sort of come onto the scene in terms of its sports nutrition benefits, in terms of like the European Sports Nutrition Awards, I believe, like the American.

But you may be, you can correct me if I'm wrong.

But I just remember particularly two very big rewards for, or awards, for Curran's have been awarded this year.

And that's not too different from last year, actually, as well.

So, you know, what are those awards about?

Matt, can you give me insight?

It's okay if you can't, because I know that I didn't actually have that on my sheet of things I was going to ask about, but I'm curious.

Yeah, I suppose, you know, I don't know all the ins and outs of the awarding process or the company that award them.

But all I can say is I suppose it's worthy recognition for a body of work that's been going for years.

Just over 10 years now, maybe 12 years, whereby there is, if you were to undertake a literature search, a considerable body of work done on the same product that's giving some performance and health related outcomes.

So, the recognition, obviously, is coming now from industry partners.

And that's obviously only going to...

It's going to be beneficial to Curran's for further marketing, for further outreach of the product.

So, yeah, that's, I suppose, all I can say insofar as how that's come about.

Yeah, no, I love that.

You know, these awards are sort of up against other products which people understand to be helpful for ergogenic...

And also, of course, health.

And I really like that the product itself does not tackle health and performance.

But, you know, when it comes to being an athlete and being your best, you can't really untangle the two.

Because in order to be, like, a high-performing athlete, you still have to be healthy as well, right?

So, it's almost like a by-product that you might be taking Curran's for, like, an ergogenic perspective.

But actually, there is this sort of flow-on effect.

Which I think is super beneficial.

Matt, you've mentioned it just as we were discussing it.

And, of course, Fleur and I have talked about it.

But it has been some time.

So, can you sort of remind people what actually is it about the New Zealand Black Currant Extract that provides a lot of those benefits?

So, just sort of like a summary before we sort of dive into...

A summary and a few questions before we dive into some of the research.

Stuff that we're going to discuss.

Yeah, absolutely.

Happy to.

So, the product that we've worked with from Curran's is essentially a concentrated black currant powder.

And those black currants that it's coming from are grown in New Zealand.

And I suppose if you look at the environmental conditions whereby various fruits, vegetables, etc. are grown,

that influences the nutritional makeup or the concentration of various...

Various products in those foods.

So, the black currants grown in New Zealand are exposed to a very high ultraviolet radiation.

You get a lot of sunlight in New Zealand, as I understand.

So, therefore, they are very high in what we call polyphenols.

And the one that we're specifically interested in for black currant is anthocyanins.

And those anthocyanins give the black currant its deep, dark purple color.

And anthocyanins are present in...

Lots of berries, drupes, and other types of fruits and vegetables.

But the ones that are specifically high in black currant are anthocyanins called delphinidin and cyanidin.

And each of those is actually attached to a carbohydrate molecule.

I suppose to compare it to something people might be also quite familiar with,

let's take blueberries, for example.

They're quite rich in anthocyanins, but they've got a different profile of anthocyanins.

And they're typically high...

They're high in the anthocyanin malvidin.

And a lot of our understanding of the consumption of fruits and vegetables,

these anthocyanins and polyphenols, they've got antioxidant, anti-inflammatory properties.

And those confer a lot of the health benefits from the consumption of those.

But it's the black currant anthocyanins, and then specifically their metabolites,

after you've consumed them,

that we think are driving the physiological effects that we see in the studies that we've done.

So that's kind of what we think's...

Well, what's in the product and how we think it's working, essentially.

Yeah, interesting, because I was listening to another podcast a few weeks ago,

and they were talking about the beneficial effects of blueberries, actually,

in terms of, I think it was recovery or something.

And they were discussing how they'd...

They'd bought a couple of big bags of blueberries just to help with...

To help meet that polyphenol need, if you like.

And it is interesting, actually, those different types of anthocyanins.

So did you say delvin...

What did you say?

I said delfinidin and cyanidin are the anthocyanins that you would see in black currants.

Amongst a few others, but those are the ones that are particularly high.

Yeah, it is interesting, isn't it?

Because it just sort of underscores, I suppose,

how much about food itself that we understand,

but yet don't understand in terms of all of these anthocyanins.

And I remember that we might know, and just as a general comment,

we might know like one thousandth of what those beneficial...

beneficial effects are in a particular product or fruit or berry like black currants or let's say blueberries.

And I'm curious, actually, Matt, and you may not have sort of delved into this.

So, you know, we can skip over this if we need to.

But what is the difference between, I suppose, the anthocyanins that are present in black currants,

which make it so beneficial versus what we might find in a blueberry?

And do they provide...

similar benefits or are the benefits actually not as potent or just different

because it is a different anthocyanin?

I suppose a mixture of some of those.

We can look at it at some of the in vitro work.

So kind of, you know, studies that examine things in isolation, almost in test tubes.

And what they sometimes or what they've observed is things like delphinidine

has got a little bit more antioxidant potency, if you like, than let's say cyanidine.

But I mentioned very briefly that it's the metabolites that we think are the driving the effect.

So I mentioned that those are the anthocyanins present in black currant.

Well, you consume...

You consume the black currant, it'll then get processed in the liver if some of it gets uptaken in the blood,

or the ones that don't get uptaken will get broken down by a lot of our gut microbiome.

And then we absorb a lot of the metabolites from those.

And we think that the metabolites are likely having the effects versus the parent anthocyanin molecule themselves.

So it's also true as well, because you mentioned blueberry versus black currant,

that each brightly colored fruit or vegetable has their own unique anthocyanin or polyphenol profile.

And I've also said that the growing conditions where those specific foods are grown influences that.

I suppose speak to any wine producer in France.

And they will tell you the grapes from one region will taste and provide a different flavor to grapes grown in a different region.

And that's down to the climate conditions in those different regions.

So we can maybe experience that sensation quite easily.

But when you start to then look at maybe the health benefits of certain fruits and vegetables grown in different places,

yeah, unpicking that is quite complex.

Yeah.

And I'm curious.

And again, this is a little bit...

off script too.

But you mentioned that if it's the metabolites that we break down or gut microbiome breaks down,

does it make a difference in terms of that gut microbiome diversity?

Like how much do we know about that?

And is that an area of sort of exploration moving forward?

It's a current area of exploration.

And it's not an area of expertise.

But yeah, again, unique individual profiles.

Yeah.

And I think the term they use in that literature is alpha diversity.

Essentially, how diverse is your gut microbiome can seem to influence a lot of the outcomes from consuming of various nutritional products, including blackcurrant.

And that might be a factor.

We'll probably talk about this a bit later.

But your gut microbiome profile might be a factor for predicting whether you're going to be...

a responder or a non or a low responder to the consumption of blackcurrant for some of the outcomes that we've tested in our research.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's super interesting stuff.

And I guess it's such a...

feels like such a minefield at this point because gut microbiome research itself,

even though it's obviously a thing that's been happening for sort of probably a few decades at this point,

it still feels like such an emerging area in terms of our understanding and particularly that sort of individual response.

And what's made up.

Hey, Matt, like, obviously, people listening to this, that they're aware that you can...

Well, they may or may not be aware, but you obviously we had the currants, capsules.

How many or what quantity of blackcurrants or say blackcurrant juice would we need to consume versus a sort of standard dose of currants itself?

And just on the back of that, what if I got my blackcurrants from, I don't know,

Luton, for example?

Luton in the United Kingdom?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So how different, like, do we know how different the currants in New Zealand are compared to currants that are grown elsewhere?

I suppose I'll start with that part before going on to the dose part.

As I understand, my knowledge has not...

We've not done any investigations, we say, comparing.

The physiological responses to a blackcurrant grown in, you know, Luton versus in New Zealand.

However, you know, a blackcurrant is a blackcurrant, but there are specific cultivars of blackcurrant.

It's a bit like a species or, you know, a breed, if you like, of a dog.

You know, they're all dogs, but they're different, you know, types.

You can get different cultivars.

And there are cultivars that have been produced in some laboratories and other cultivars as well that are quite resistant to some of the growing conditions in those countries or even potentially pests that you might experience.

So while a blackcurrant is a fruit per se, regardless of what bush it comes from, again, the nutritional value or the anti-signing properties...

The concentration might be different or will be different based on the cultivar as well.

So there is data I've seen as well, you know, showing that blackcurrants grown in different countries can have different anti-signing concentrations amongst cultivars as well.

So, yeah, so the Luton versus New Zealand bit, I know where I'd rather be.

However, you asked...

The opening part of your question, I think, was, you know, how much can you get from maybe eating fruit versus like a juice or a drink or the product?

Well, we've done quite a bit of dose response and duration response work because they're nice applied studies to undertake.

But what we've kind of settled on a lot within the literature is that if you use 600 milligrams of extract, which is too...

Currans capsules, that gives you around about 210 milligrams of anti-signings.

And if you were to kind of view that in a whole fruit term, what would you actually need to consume?

Obviously, that depends on the cultivar and maybe how those anti-signings are measured in that food specifically.

But you might find around 250, 300 milligrams of anti-signings per week.

100 grams of fresh fruit.

So, to get 210 milligrams, this is all obviously theoretical and, you know, a basic calculation.

But you would need to consume maybe 70 to 80 grams of that food in itself, which, you know, is not an insurmountable amount to consume.

But it's particularly difficult to consume 80 grams of black currants when they're not in season.

100%.

You can't pick them in the winter months.

You can't find them in the supermarkets.

So, that's how, you know, concentrated powders and spray-dried powders then become very beneficial to us.

Because they're then encapsulated.

It extends the shelf life.

And it then means that you can then, as an athlete or as a health consumer, take that product throughout the year and know you're getting a broadly consistent dose.

So, yeah.

You could consume from the food.

It brings with it seasonality problems and also consistent dosing.

So, that's, I suppose, a benefit of using encapsulated products with longer shelf lives as well.

Yeah.

It makes perfect sense.

And, you know, to your point, like products like currants are independently tested for the content of those isothionins and what you get in the frozen section of the supermarket.

Or be it, they may taste delicious, like those little currant mixes, you're not necessarily guaranteed to get the overall benefits.

Or be it, you'll still get benefit from having them.

But if we are thinking about particular metabolic and health benefits and performance benefits, which people are wanting, then obviously having the extract makes sense.

And certainly, you know, if I'm thinking about the types of events that I've done over the last year where we've been out in the desert or in, like, the mountains for several days.

And I'm taking four of those currants tablets to help with, to minimize GI distress or optimize my sort of GI response across a long day of running.

Popping black currants as a fruit is not particularly practical.

It brings with it, you know, by sheer definition, a high intake of fiber.

Yeah, it does.

Because it's a fruit.

Yeah, yeah, completely.

And, you know, the encapsulation process.

It removes that, but brings with it benefits.

So, yeah, there are many reasons to choose a product over the real food.

And so, Matt, one of the most consistent findings, I suppose, across the literature, and this I would sort of categorize as both, as, you know, it could be both metabolic and performance benefit,

is that sort of shift in the fat oxidation during exercise.

Can you just sort of talk us through what this might mean for, like, I guess the, I guess maybe both the average person and also potentially from an athletic perspective as well?

Like, like, yeah, what is the, what is the state of play there?

Yeah, I'd be really happy to, because this is an area of my active research and also one of my early findings from one of my first few studies that I did in my PhD.

Yeah.

So, yeah, you are right in that there is a pretty consistent and repeated finding now showing that we can increase what's fat oxidation or essentially fat usage during exercise.

So, I suppose, what does that actually mean?

Well, when we exercise, we typically metabolize two fuels to fund that exercise, and you've got a mixture of carbohydrates and fats and the interplay between those.

So, when you're at very low intensities, it's predominantly all fat, but when you're at really high intensities, for example, maybe sprinting or 80, 85% of your VO2 max for a few minutes, that would all be predominantly funded by carbohydrates.

And we can measure this mixture in an exercise physiology lab by essentially looking at the amount of oxygen.

So, we can measure this mixture in an exercise physiology lab by essentially looking at the amount of oxygen people consume and then the amount of carbon dioxide they produce.

And by taking black currents, as I've said, we're able to show that people are increasing the amount of fat they've used during exercise while at the same, should we say, treadmill speed or the same cycling power.

And what we're seeing there is that the energy demand is the same.

The intensity is not changing.

It's just that interplay between all the minerals.

It's a mixture of fuels that is being influenced.

So, from a theoretical point of view, we might be able to reduce our reliance on stored muscle glycogen, which as we all know from endurance perspectives is important for performance, for fueling those long events.

But an enhanced or an increased fat use of exercise doesn't mean that we're going to be able to reduce our reliance on stored muscle glycogen.

So, we're going to be able to reduce our reliance on stored muscle glycogen.

It doesn't automatically equal glycogen sparing.

And there's some nice recent observations from that with the use of black current as well.

So, those are kind of separate outcomes that would need to be tested.

But that's some of the, well, a lot of the work that's dominated some of my recent papers and also some of my early PhD stuff.

Yeah, amazing.

And Matt, your meta-analysis that I saw.

It pulled about, I think, 15 trials, I believe.

And there was that consistent, but like a fairly small shift, I suppose.

So, can you just talk us through, you know, how should we sort of view that size of the effect for, yeah, for what we're discussing here?

Yeah, I'm also very happy you mentioned this paper.

Yeah.

Because, yeah, it was a recent one that I've published.

I was also delighted to get it published because it had been on my radar for a little while.

But it's important to recognize what a meta-analysis is.

And if you look in the evidence hierarchy in science, a meta-analysis and systematic review is often considered the peak of the pyramid, if you like, or the peak of the triangle with regards to the strength of the evidence.

So, by taking 15 studies.

And we've managed to screen from the literature with a set of criteria.

We then take the data from those papers and we're able to pull them into an analysis.

And the benefit of that is, let's say you've got one laboratory-based protocol that might have 12 or 15 participants in it, the meta-analysis allows you to pull all of them.

So, in our analysis, we actually had data of 226 participants.

Of which 192 of those were male and 34 were female.

And as you said, the effect was fairly small.

So, the pooled analysis actually showed that we were increasing fat use during exercise by 0.042 grams per minute.

So, I suspect for your listeners, even if you got out your kitchen scales, you couldn't measure.

Half a gram on your kitchen scales.

And obviously, this, I mentioned a moment ago, there are two fuels that we typically use during exercise, carbohydrate and fat.

The other side of that coin being carbohydrate use.

If fat use was up by almost half a gram, carbohydrate oxidation was slightly reduced to 0.09.

So, yeah, you're absolutely right.

The interpretation of that is...

It's small.

But if you were to then do some steady-state exercise and you kind of multiply it up, we're not actually, as you say, even still talking huge numbers here.

So, an hour at a moderate intensity, those kind of changes from the meta-analysis, you might be looking at 2.5 to 3 grams of fat additionally burnt an hour.

Again, your listeners might have struggled to measure 3 grams on a...

So, it's not a huge amount.

But again, if you then work out the kilocalorie content of 2.5 grams of fat, you're looking at just under...

Sorry, just over 20 kilocalories.

So, again, not a huge amount.

But it works.

It sounds more impressive when you look at it from a percentage point of view.

So, let's say...

And it's not uncommon.

You could measure somebody in an exercise lab.

They're metabolizing or burning 0.2 grams of fat per hour.

Well, 0.042, which is what we showed in the meta-analysis, that's a 21% change.

So, we've reported some percentage changes before in our manuscripts that have been particularly high.

But they're high percentages because they're percentages of very small numbers.

So...

Yeah, it's physiologically detectable.

It might be meaningful, even though that difference is quite modest.

So, yeah, I'm glad you gave me the opportunity to talk about the recent paper.

Yeah, no, I love it, Matt.

And I don't know that you've got an answer for this because I don't know that anyone does.

Like, I wonder that you mentioned that the majority of the studies have been done on males.

And I'm curious as to whether you...

You hypothesized whether, you know, there were...

Did you see any delineations from the sort of the single data points for females?

I guess that's like, do we have any idea if there's a sex difference there?

Yeah, I'm also glad you mentioned this because this very...

This touches upon, I suppose, the recognized issue that we've got in sport and exercise science

in that women and females are underrepresented in sport and exercise science research.

And we have done some single cohort studies where you've got maybe just males or just females.

And it wasn't part of the meta-analysis that you mentioned, but we have done it in a separate study

where we directly statistically compared males versus females within the same study.

So, we had a sample size of 22, which for a sport science study is not bad.

It's a pretty good sample.

We had 11.

We had 11 men and 11 females.

But as I mentioned, we've got some single sex cohort studies done within the literature as well.

But within the male versus female study that we actually managed to do here at Worcester,

we didn't actually see that males versus females responded differently insofar as they both increased

their use of fat during exercise.

So, it's a pretty good example of what we've done with blackcurrant.

However, what we were able to observe is that essentially the magnitude of change in females

was correlated to their body composition, so their body fat percentage, in that the females

that had a higher body fat percentage responded more.

But that relationship wasn't visible in males.

But I do want to caveat that, that that's obviously an observation.

It's an observation done on an N of 11.

It needs to be repeated, but it's obviously the first or one of a few findings that starts

to unpick some of this responder versus non-responder conversation that's occurring, and also trying

to directly compare responses within the same study between males and females.

What do you think is...

Do you have any sort of hypothesis as to what we've done?

Yeah.

What that might be due to men?

We can only speculate because the study was observational insofar as females have different

distribution of fat than males.

Females have menstrual cycle.

Obviously, estrogen plays a factor in things like lipolysis, and females typically tend

to be more efficient at metabolizing fat during exercise than males anyway because of higher

concentrations of transglucan.

So, if they're tight, if they are under the skin, where—if they're low on lattic acid,

or if they're especially hardy, they tend to tend to work as non-ind admissions.

How about withவag?

Does thatван dopamine come back to you?

That's an interesting question.

We should have them corn on the cob.

Oh, man.

Wow.

Wow.

interesting and and i did note that the body fat percentages of the females were still fairly like

athletic i suppose rather than being a sort of average female you might see out on the street

you're absolutely right you know we we were dealing with dare i say a convenient sample

in a sport and exercise science students department where you've got you know access

to people who play sport and then typically have a a better you know lower body fat percentage but

again it raises an interesting question if this was the observation we see in young fit healthy

relatively lean females does that extend to females across the lifespan where you're maybe

perimenopausal menopausal maybe these are people if you've got overweight or you're

suffering with obesity

again those are conditions that that might demonstrate different findings and we don't

know how black current would work for those people under those circumstances

yeah it is interesting isn't it particularly like you mentioned um perimenopausal and not to

sort of take it down this this road too far and and i'm not but you know i think about the the

shifts in fat metabolism over the lifespan or projected shifts you know women tend to be a

little bit more intrusive and they tend to be a little bit more intrusive and they tend to be a

little bit more intrusive and they tend to be a little bit more intrusive and they tend to be a

little bit more intrusive and resistant through that perimenopausal phase um they have a shift in

that body fat distribution um they may have a you know the the shift in insulin resistance may

reduce that lipolysis so i wonder whether the you know taking currents may may enhance but

to your point like until those studies are done unsure as to what that that actual outcome would

be yeah yeah it is part of the broader

conversation i feel around trying to determine responders versus non-responders or trying to

almost come up with an individualized sports nutrition or a health nutrition plan

for whoever's in front of you and um we've started some of this in sports nutrition and

in health nutrition already if you're lactose intolerant you don't eat milk so you have an

individualized nutritional plan to

to deal with that and there's some nice work in caffeine for example in sports nutrition that's

been able to identify you know responders and non-responders based on um single nucleotide

polymorphisms essentially the genes that help you um sorry sorry the polymorphisms of different

genes that help you metabolize caffeines so those differences in genetics can predict a responder or

a low responder to caffeine um and it it presents as i say this broader health nutrition or sports

nutrition uh conversation whereby it it will be very interesting in the next 10 or 20 years to

see if sports nutrition really does start to hone in on more um nuanced approaches for certain

individuals because we know from testing xyz you're going to be a responder

and i say that broadly with regards to maybe any supplement versus just blackcurrant because

it's quite common that athletes take a variety of supplements not necessarily just one

um and again that presents yet another question that we don't know in sports nutrition here you

know what what happens when people take a cocktail of different supplements how do they interact

um and is there you know ergolytics or is there you know a lot of different supplements

or ergogenic effects by taking two or three different supplements so it starts that kind of

you know rabbit hole of different directions and questions to pick this apart so i've digressed a

little bit but it's it's all part of the picture and the conversation around trying to identify

those responders and non-responders really i agree and um and and again this is a bit of a

tangent as well but so we won't dwell but

i understand that ai will probably help uh accelerate knowledge in this area um to some

degree so that 10 and 20 years that you just mentioned matt that might be five years away for

you know depending on the depending on what's um uh how quickly the the sort of field moves on

i'm curious also like with regards to fat metabolism i wonder whether the response

will be different in the future or will it be different in the future

for someone who is um you know has a good fat metabolism is able to burn you know um a good

amount of um fat per minute versus someone who may not be as good at burning fat per minute so

that's i guess maybe another area which is which is sort of interesting to look at yeah um we've

done a bit of uh mark and i have done some uh secondary analysis on this and i have to give

credit to mark for kind of

essentially observing this or suggesting it and then pushing forward with the analysis because

that he was the one that that came up with this but essentially mark and i undertook a paper where

we did a secondary analysis again on lots of data sets and by kind of combining those data sets from

multiple papers what we were able to show is that people who entered the laboratory and on their

first test um

if they had a higher what's called a respiratory exchange ratio and that's a very complex way of

turning around and saying the amount of carbon dioxide you produce divide by the amount of

oxygen you use it's called rer and it predicts um the amount of substrate that you're using or

predicts what substrate you're using during exercise we were able to show that people who

were predominantly or or metabolizing more carbohydrate

had a great amount of oxygen and they were able to predict the amount of oxygen that they were

going to consume which gave them a greater capacity to respond and and essentially that i suppose it

makes sense you know if you think of a ceiling in a room if you're already burning lots of fat

you've got nowhere to go and and that was the the way in which that um analysis was was undertaken so

again it might be um another factor to helping kind of unpick that responder

slash not respond to that so i'm going to go back to that for a minute i'm going to go back to that

non-responder response but the the big caveat to this is that the measurement of RER

is done in an exercise physiology poetry you need kit that you see behind me where we've got

respiratory gas analysis and you can measure carbon dioxide production and oxygen usage during

exercise for the the average athlete going out you might have a Garmin watch or a smart watch

and you're getting some some data on it it will not be providing you accurate data on how much

carbon dioxide you're producing because that needs to be measured as a respiratory gas so

as again as of yet the the impact of it we're not too to clear on but again it might provide

a piece of that jigsaw to help us understand responders and non-responders yeah no that's

that's super interesting one of the

interesting things about the RER is that it's not just a matter of how much carbon dioxide

comes from so that Liverpool group the group that did the biopsy needles actually found that

extra fat was coming from inside the muscle and type 1 fibers rather than from circulating fatty

acids so can you chat to me about what that means I'll do my best insofar as this starts to open

should we say Pandora's box a little bit and as an exercise physiologist you know observing

something is brilliant but observing or or working out why is potentially even better

because if we can work out why can you then exploit that mechanism somehow and and obviously

you mentioned Liverpool the the study was done at Liverpool John Moores University so it's quite

well respected university and they've used and have access to the muscle biopsy technique so

essentially taking samples of muscle and able to determine glycogen

and then also different muscle fibers within that now in the the that study they also observed an

increase in fat use during exercise but they you're absolutely right earlier that the the

biopsies that they did showed that there was greater usage of intramuscular triglycerides

essentially which is the fats that are in the muscle and then the fat that's in the muscle and

that was specifically in type 1 fibers so your type 1 fibers are your your as we say your slow

twitch fibers they were those fibers that would typically be used during endurance activity those

ones that are quite fatigue resistant so it some of our early work in black current we we speculated

maybe there's whole body changes in

lipolysis or blood flow that then might be transporting fatty acids to the the muscle

that then help it increase fat oxidation and and that might still occur but I suppose the

the muscle biopsy is is not necessarily ruling out those systemic actions but it's giving us

maybe a picture what's going on inside the the muscle that yeah there's there's there's greater

usage of those stored fat but it's too early to get really into it and so quite often they explain

those systemic actions but it's giving us maybe a picture what's going on inside the the muscle that

so it's an exciting development i think in the uh the black current world yeah absolutely and

you know i i again think about the potential health ramifications of this and i don't know

whether it would hold for a non-trained um individual as well but you know athletes you

know that use of that intramuscular triglyceride is a is a ready source of fuel uh yet in someone

who maybe has poor metabolic health who may um who is sedentary um who may have you know um

type 2 diabetes or whatever um the fat that's in and around their muscle tissue is more sort of

inflammatory uh it's it's not uh something that can be i don't know it's it's it's not benign if

you like so you know it's an interesting area to sort of think about in terms of the um whether

they're

utility there also this sounds like conversations i used to have with mark all the time

in that you you have a new set of data in front of you or a new finding and and you sit there and

you you think my goodness you know what about in this circumstance or this population or under this

uh procedure and and and that's the process of research in the you know each new set of data or

should lead you to the next set of observation and discovery that you you then make and you you

build up your knowledge base in your jigsaw uh this way um and often you you asked about you

know perimenopausal menopausal obesity insulin resistance in diabetes well each of those that

i've just listed there could be their own separate investigation because their own uniquely uh you

know different

you know different

in their um in their physiology and and that there suddenly is then another 10 years worth

of research so yeah it's uh it just reminds me of those conversations i used to have

yeah i guess you're never going to get bored in your area in your line of research matt if you

stick to the black currents because there's so many avenues to explore with this uh you know

what if you if you do a literature search and you

you you filter that literature search and you go back 10 or 15 years there was research interest

there was papers but if you then plot those papers over time it creates almost like an exponential

shape on the graph you can see that globally we are doing more research in universities

but filtered onto the terms of should we say antocyanins or polyphenols and and sports

nutrition there is a definite intra uh

increase so you extend that to health what you say yeah you're going to be busy for the rest of

your career matt are you more excited by the performance potentiality of currents or or the

health ones that's a that's a question i'm i know i don't mean to put you in a spot no you see what

i'm you know so i teach sport and exercise science here at worcester and you know a lot

of my students would be interested in exercise performance

and you know that's maybe the message that would really resonate with them but you know

unfortunately you know the the element of being human is we all tend to at some point in life

become sick or need treatment for something so there is a lot more focus there's a lot more

funding there is a lot more um impact of our research that comes from doing research in

in health related outcomes so

you can help with treatment or management of a health condition by a dietary supplement

then then yeah you might be helping many more people than a football singular football team

or an individual win medals so i'm gonna be a politician i think and say i'm gonna sit on the

fence and then i'm excited by both outcomes but they serve different purposes a hundred percent

yeah and and you know i think as i said sort of at the start and and as we both sort of said

you know in order to perform at your best you need to be a healthy individual also so it's not like

these two are mutually exclusive yeah yeah i agree should we say health span across the lifespan

yeah yeah yeah love it so matt for um people listening to this wanting to try um and i and

of course fleur and i have have chatted about this on our podcast and i'm going to be talking about

but for the purposes of this podcast if someone is listening what dose would you suggest how long

should they take it and and and when yeah again i like the these types of questions because they're

very applied that people can then put into their their practice so if someone wants to replicate

what we've done typically within the literature the most studied protocol and the best one that's

that's got the most evidence is around 600 milligrams of the black currant currants powder

and that would be provided in two 300 milligram capsules and you would take that per day and we

typically spread those capsules those two 300 milligram capsules through you know morning and

evening is fine and if you've got let's say a triathlon or an event or some sort of endurance

exercise or a

an ultra endurance event that that's coming up you you might want to you would start taking these

seven days before the event and that's what the the literature has showed that when you dose for

a period of days we then start seeing these effects it's not as acute as say something like

caffeine on the day of your event you know you're going to be nervous you might have slightly altered

nutrition you might be thinking about what you you put in your stomach on the the morning but

ideally if you can

you know you're going to be nervous you might have slightly altered nutrition you might be

thinking about what you know you're going to getท Curtis

two hours before you're you're getting to the start line before the start of that event

take two capsules um before that that event kicks off um and that again leads into some of it kind

of the duration response work and the the timing and dose response that the others have done um

and then for those that are maybe interested in in using it obviously supplementing across

uh training sessions don't do something for the very first time in a competition setting

because you could pay the price um so you know practice in training get it right um

and uh and you'll be doing everything that we can support from what we observe in the literature

with regards to things like metabolic effects like changes in in fat oxidation this is not a

sensation you would necessarily be able to perceive but it's it's something that you know

if is of interest to you it might be occurring it might help with uh longer term fueling and

things like ultra endurance events um or or even we've only really talked about the

the performance and health but there is quite a lot of data on the recovery

and um you know there are some observations that if you then take

black current in the days after an an ultra endurance event or sport that's maybe damaging

so you could have let's say rugby or maybe even football where there are eccentric contraction

elements to that sport and you could have a bit of muscle damage or inflammation if you take the

black current for a few days after the activity that could then help speed up the rate of recovery

or return to baseline so it could then be useful in those circumstances

but i understand in the the podcast we don't have time to cover

every observation that we could possibly talk about in in the world of you know black current

research well um yes to that point there is a lot and also a lot of that stuff we have

actually covered before on other podcasts too with with it which is which is one of the reasons

why i enjoy getting experts like yourself back on it like on the podcast to talk again

about the emerging or the sort of the the body of evidence around things like

like black currents so um no that was absolutely perfect matt so finally you know what should we

expect from your lab what's a study that you're excited about coming up and and um and how long

do we need to wait um studies that i'm doing at the moment i'm still involved in some black

work we're interested in i elucidated earlier

you know what happens when you combine various supplements together with black current so we're

with we're going to be starting some of that um that work um and how long does it take well

we uh you know early stages at the moment recruiting participants getting going and

then as per normal you know we will continue the the black current show if you like and

papers will keep coming out as and as and when you know you've got them through the review process

and we will be watching them over the next couple of weeks so i think this new reality

is really what we're waiting what we may consider to be for later on so um but i don't think

it has

you know too much of a number of depois the

the heavy might pushes it into lots of different ways things if you tail Grif

do you think that maybe that we might get a lot of that kind of science fictionness

you know using black forward for you know multiple reasons a lot of the time it's just

oxygen to your heart and the body completely thinner and then you have to imagine what might

be of interest to other people like william et al as we might say but it's really außer

You know, like something like Curren's, like any supplement or any strategy is a tool in the toolbox for an athlete or just someone who's wanting to optimize their health, et cetera.

And, you know, as we kicked off, this is a well-recognized supplement for health and performance.

And there are a lot of ways with which it can help ergogenically, but also metabolically.

And it's definitely one of my faves.

So I always enjoy chatting about it.

Matt, thank you so much for your time.

Where can people find more information?

Of course, with the studies that we've discussed today, as a bit of an update, I'll pop in the show notes.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Yeah.

So I want to just mention.

If there are any good news stories or people have taken it and they've observed a change in something or maybe they could be a sports coach and using it with a team and they're getting a benefit, we really like to hear about those stories as well.

So please feel free to reach out.

You can Google me.

Matthew Cook, University of Worcester, and my email address is on that, my university page.

And you can contact me from there.

You'll see a lot of my papers listed on my university page as well.

And also a lot of the research news as well gets shared by Fleur Currens.

And she's very good with her media promotion on these studies because, again, that's her strength.

We do the studies and she shares them very well.

So a lot of the way you can find specific details, mentions of studies, news stories, et cetera.

It can come from Fleur and her website for the more academic stuff.

Or if you've got some good news stories that you want to share, please reach out and get in contact where maybe you've used it and changed your practice or changed what you're doing would be really nice to hear from people.

Absolutely.

And I guess that's a real hat tip to the fact that there's a lot of stuff that, you know, a lot of our evidence comes from the science lab.

But actually, the anecdotal facts.

The anecdotal reports of, you know, hundreds, thousands of people are also like another sort of arm to that sort of evidence that we have for its benefits.

And Matt, actually, I said, I've got one final question.

Say your university name again.

Wichester.

What is it?

University of Worcester.

Is that like the source?

Yeah.

The ongoing joke, isn't it?

You know, Worcestershire sauce.

Yes.

That is where, you know, the city of Worcester has a factory that makes Worcestershire.

Worcestershire sauce.

And yeah, notoriously difficult to say, but it's very good in a stew.

So.

100%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I always get, I always get the mick taken out of me when I try to say it.

Because, of course, my husband being from the UK, he's very, he's like, go on, say it.

And I'm like, I'm not saying that.

I'm not saying that.

Matt, thank you so much for the time.

Your evening.

I really appreciate it.

It was great, too.

To have this discussion.

Yeah.

Brilliant.

Thank you for the invite and the opportunity.

All righty.

Hopefully you enjoyed that.

And just to remind you, you can get a discount on Current when you use the code MICKAPEDIA

because they are a sponsor of this show, which I've been a long, long term.

User of Currents.

So it was a really natural fit.

I'd love to hear what you thought of this and anything related to the podcast that I

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All right, guys.

Enjoy this conversation.

All right, guys.

You have the best week.

See you later.