Curcumin's anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects have been the subject of a growing body of clinical work in athletes and recreationally active adults. Randomised, placebo-controlled trials have found that curcumin supplementation around exercise reduces perceived muscle soreness and blunts the usual post-exercise spike in markers like creatine kinase and IL-6, particularly when taken in the days before and after intense training, with dose–response research testing doses in the 750–1500 mg/day range over the days surrounding exercise-induced muscle damage. In runners specifically, a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial gave recreational male runners a turmeric extract for four weeks around a half-marathon race and found it led to a smaller rise in myoglobin (a marker of muscle damage) two hours after the race, alongside a bigger increase in the anti-inflammatory marker IL-10, compared with placebo. A broader review of polyphenols and post-exercise muscle damage similarly concluded that curcumin's antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties allow it to reduce muscle injury through several mechanisms, and that timing matters: curcumin taken after exercise tends to stay in the bloodstream for longer than curcumin taken before it, which is one reason curcumin research increasingly recommends consuming it around the point of exertion rather than only pre-loading.

A 2022 meta-analysis pooling five clinical trials found ingestion of Panax ginseng or its active ginsenosides significantly improved exercise endurance, with the strongest effect linked to a specific compound called ginsenoside Rg1. A separate systematic review of ginseng for fatigue concluded trials showed ginseng performed better than placebo across fatigue scales and heart rate recovery. A more recent 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis, focused on ginseng's role in supporting exercise endurance as part of cardiovascular health, found consistent positive effects on the body's exercise-related biochemical markers: ginseng supplementation was associated with meaningfully lower blood lactate, lower blood urea nitrogen, and lower creatine kinase after exercise compared with placebo, alongside improvements in exercise time-to-exhaustion and VO2 max reported in the human studies reviewed. As with most botanical research, results aren't universal — some individual trials, particularly in hot conditions or single-dose settings, haven't shown a measurable endurance benefit, and the authors of the 2025 review note that most of the strongest evidence still comes from animal studies — but the weighted evidence across trials leans toward a real, if modest, effect on fatigue and stamina.

MCTs are absorbed and metabolised more quickly than typical dietary fats, and animal and mechanistic studies show a plausible route to improved endurance, including evidence that dietary MCT intake increases mitochondrial biogenesis and metabolism during exercise via activation of key cellular energy pathways. It's worth being straight about the human evidence here: results in people are mixed. A systematic review of human trials found most studies reported MCT oil did not improve exercise performance or measurably shift fat and carbohydrate use during exercise, even though blood ketones reliably rise. That said, a 2023 randomised, double-blind, controlled trial combining daily MCT intake with regular walking in healthy middle-aged and older adults found the MCT groups saw significantly greater increases in knee extension strength after 12 weeks compared with a control group on regular oil, with the group taking 6g/day also seeing a rise in grip strength — suggesting a role in supporting muscle strength when paired with regular movement, even if muscle mass itself didn't change. We include MCT oil for its established role as a fast, clean energy source and this emerging strength-support evidence, while keeping expectations honest about mixed results in the sports-performance literature specifically.