High level racehorses and competition horses are animals for which the zootechnical performance is expressed by the gains.
These reflect not only the physical performance on the day, but also the recovery capacity of these athletes and therefore the number of events they can do per season at their best.
Genetic potential, training, nutrition, and many other factors are the keys to success.
In order to help improve this performance, it is possible to reduce oxidative stress.
This is manifested by the appearance and especially the accumulation of free radicals in the cell: reactive forms of oxygen, toxic waste products of respiration. In horses subjected to intense and repeated efforts, as in all athletes, this “stress” affects performance (de Moffarts et al., 2005).
Oxidative stress decreases the fluidity of red blood cell membranes and contributes to an increased risk of exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage (Derksen, 1997).
At the level of the muscle cell, oxidative stress causes damage to the mitochondria, which serve as reactors for the cell, which can lead to inflammatory phenomena, muscle loss and even pathologies such as myositis.
The management of this cellular waste is a cascading process that involves several substances called “anti-oxidants” (Fisher-Wellman & Bloomer, 2009).
These are numerous and of two natures: endogenous, produced by the animal itself or exogenous, from the diet or the environment. When the antioxidant capacity of endogenous origin is saturated, and it is often the case for the type of horses we are talking about, it is necessary to make an exogenous contribution of antioxidants via the food for example.
But, be careful, these contributions must be reasoned because the antioxidant molecules act in synergy with each other and carefully measured because some reactive forms of oxygen (free radicals) are more toxic than others.
This is the work that ROYAL HORSE®’s Research and Development department undertook a few years ago and still continues to improve the performance and well-being of horses with its exclusive antioxidant core based on plant extracts ‘AO Elite®’ that you can find in the products of the range intended for racehorses and competitors.
