ABSTRACT
Antioxidant supplementation has become a common practice among athletes as a means to reduce oxidative stress, promote recovery and enhance performance. Antioxidants in acute physical exercise and exercise training remain a hot topic in sport nutrition, exercise physiology and biology, in general. The composition of antioxidant defences differs from tissue to tissue and from cell-type to cell-type, but broadly, antioxidant defence systems can be classified into endogenous enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidants on the one side, and exogenous, that is, dietary anti-oxidants on the other. Important low-molecular mass nutritive antioxidants include vitamin C, vitamin E, carotenoids and polyphenols. The more recent human studies investigating the interrelation of antioxidant supplementation and exercise training implemented more sophisticated design, methodologies and techniques and were focused not only on performance, but also on the health aspects of endurance training. The subject of antioxidant supplementation and exercise training continued to be of high interest.
