A well-planned diet, adapted to one’s training regime, is in itself the key to achieving those goals that were set at the beginning. However, it is possible to have recourse to aids that facilitate the task. Such aids are food supplements, i.e. substances, natural or synthetic, with the power to increase the nutrient potential of meals and reduce the adverse effects of these on body composition. Now, as stated in the introduction to the work, there are basically three objectives to be achieved by manipulating the diet:

1. provide the body with substances that can be used to improve athletic performance;
2. facilitate and speed up post-training recovery processes;
3. optimise body composition.

We will therefore consider here the food supplementation products that can support the diet in relation to achieving the above-mentioned aims. Regarding the first two in particular, a clarification is in order: as is well known among athletes and trainers, training and recovery are like two sides of the same coin. It is therefore necessary that a greater training load is followed by a better recovery process, otherwise one runs the risk of chronic overtraining, such as to generate a worsening of athletic performance and to produce symptoms of body and mind bordering on the pathological. Having said this, whenever one resorts to any stratagem to increase the training load, including dietary supplementation, one must necessarily also act on recovery.

Preliminary note on herbal supplements

Supplements of herbal origin possess many beneficial properties (which will be explored in detail below). Nevertheless, the dosage of these products can sometimes be problematic. Specifically:

1. What acts on the organism is not the herb or plant itself, but the active ingredient it contains. Unfortunately, it differs greatly depending on the variety of the plant, the area in which it is grown, the time of harvest, as well as various other factors that manufacturers are not required to specify on the label;
2. the concentration of active ingredient is not the same for each part of the plant: the aerial part (leaf, flower, stem, etc.) generally contains a different amount than the terrestrial part (root);
3. the way a plant is treated after being harvested, i.e. the way it is reduced to powder and stored, affects the concentration of active substances.

Thus, taking a herbal supplement can mean not actually knowing how much active ingredient you are taking in. Some companies, although they are not required to do so, specify the standardised (or titrated) concentration of active ingredient per 100g of product while others refrain from providing this indication. Obviously, those that do are the most reliable. If you choose to buy herbal products, it is a good idea to always look at the product label and make sure that it is standardised to the amount of active ingredient that research has established to be effective (this differs from supplement to supplement and is discussed in detail below).