Do Antioxidants Help Muscle Growth? | Educational Video | Biolayne

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A new randomized controlled trial in sarcopenic women (60–75 yrs) found that giving 1,000 mg vitamin C + 335 mg vitamin E during 12 weeks of resistance training led to:
• More muscle gain
• More strength gain
• Better functional improvements
…compared to placebo, even though both groups trained the same.
(PMID: 40859523)
But here’s the twist most people miss:
In young adults, the same antioxidants often blunt the training response.
Multiple studies show high-dose vitamin C & E can interfere with cellular signaling needed for hypertrophy — especially the ROS-mediated pathways involved in adaptation.
What the research shows:
• Vitamin C/E supplementation reduces endogenous antioxidant signaling and blunts mitochondrial adaptations to training in young people (PMID: 30899342)
• Vitamin C/E can attenuate increases in anabolic signaling (e.g., p70S6K, ERK1/2) and impair strength/hypertrophy gains in young adults (PMID: 25384788)
• Vitamin C supplementation alone reduces training-induced improvements in performance and blunts antioxidant response signaling (PMID: 30899342)
So why the difference?
Young people need ROS (reactive oxygen species) as part of the adaptive trigger for muscle growth.

Older adults with sarcopenia often have:
• Higher oxidative stress
• Lower antioxidant capacity
• Impaired satellite cell function
In that context, antioxidants may actually restore the ability to adapt.
Takeaway:
Antioxidants aren’t “good” or “bad.”
They’re contextual.
• Young lifters → high-dose antioxidants can get in the way
• Sarcopenic older adults → they may enhance gains
Training is still the foundation — supplements just modulate the response.
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