WHAT’S NEW?

COW’S MILK AS A POST-EXERCISE RECOVERY DRINK: IMPLICATIONS FOR PERFORMANCE AND HEALTH 
Managing recovery after exercise depends on the nature of the exercise, the time between exercise sessions and your goals. From a nutritional perspective, your main considerations are:

• Optimising your muscle protein turnover 
• Glycogen resynthesis • Rehydration 
• Managing your muscle soreness 
• Managing energy balance. 

Milk (that’s plain milk not flavoured milk) is uniquely suitable because it is approximately isotonic, and provides high quality protein, carbohydrate, water and micronutrients (particularly sodium).

Research has shown that drinking milk post-exercise can be beneficial for acute recovery and for chronic training adaptation. It:

• Augments post-exercise muscle protein synthesis and rehydration 
• Can contribute to post-exercise glycogen resynthesis, 
• Attenuates post-exercise muscle soreness/function losses. 

Milk is at least comparable and often out performs most commercially available recovery drinks, but is a fraction of the cost.

Drinking milk after exercising has also been shown to reduce subsequent energy intake and thus may lead to more favourable body composition changes with exercise training.

Read more:

• Cow’s Milk as a Post-Exercise Recovery Drink: Implications for Performance and Health