SaltWrap Ingredient Profile: CherryPURE®

By Joe Zagami

If you think cherries are only good for topping ice cream sundaes and filling pies, think again. These tasty little fruits are packed with health benefits. And I don’t mean just some extra antioxidants.

Research shows that one variety – tart cherries – comes with recovery-enhancing and performance-boosting properties that serious athletes should know about. Going a step further, we believe that one patented form of tart cherry extract, CherryPURE®, is in a league of its own.

We’re going to break it all down for you.

Tart Cherry 101

Let’s start at the beginning: what is tart cherry?

It’s not a regular old sweet cherry (Prunus avium) that turned sour. It’s an entirely different species, Prunus cerasus.

Also known as sour cherries, tart cherries are more common than you might think.

For instance, most cherry pies, preserves, and jams in North America use tart cherries – not sweet cherries. This is likely to counteract some of the sweetness so that you taste cherry and not just sugar.

It’s only when you snack on tart cherries by themselves that you’ll notice that they’re pretty… well, tart.

There are many varieties of tart cherry, but for our purposes, we’re concerned with one variety: the Montmorency cherry.

Named after the Parisian suburb, the Montmorency cherry is by far the most popular sour cherry in the U.S., and not just for pies. You’ll find this one in most tart cherry juices, concentrates, and dried forms.

And for good reason: research shows that Montmorency cherries can help boost athletic performance and optimize recovery.

Montmorency Cherry: A True Athletic Superfood

Many athletes report drinking tart cherry juice to help tame post-exercise inflammation and muscle pain. Even some of the world’s most elite athletes, including members of the U.S. women’s national soccer team, use it for exercise recovery.

It’s not just anecdotal. Rock-solid scientific studies back this up.

One randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study ( “the gold standard”) followed 54 healthy endurance athletes with an average age of 36. They all ran about 16 miles a day.

Researchers had the athletes drink a 12-ounce bottle of either tart cherry juice or a placebo cherry drink twice daily for seven days leading up to a race. They also did this on the day of the race.

The result?

Both groups reported increases in pain after racing. (Note: I’m in pain just thinking about running 16 miles.) Yet the tart cherry group reported significantly less pain than the placebo group.

In fact, the placebo group saw a threefold increase in pain on average.¹

Kerry Kuehl, Chief of Sports Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University and lead author of the study, says the reduction in pain was equivalent to taking “about 800 milligrams of ibuprofen.”²

This isn’t the only study showing the benefit of tart cherry for athletes.

A large meta-analysis of 14 studies on tart cherry supplementation showed benefits in reducing muscle soreness and aiding the recovery of muscular strength.

Some inflammatory and muscle damage markers in the blood saw reductions, too.³

And talk about a recovery benefit we could all get behind, one small study found that tart cherry helped older adults get an average of 85 additional minutes of sleep after just two weeks.⁴

It’s clear that consuming tart cherry can benefit serious natural athletes. But what’s the best solution for getting them?

At SaltWrap, we take quality ingredients seriously. We searched high and low for the purest and best-studied natural tart cherry supplement on the planet.

And we found it in CherryPURE®.

CherryPURE®: A Perfect Natural Recovery Solution for Athletes

CherryPURE® is a patented form of freeze-dried tart cherry powder.

Unlike most generic tart cherry powders, CherryPURE® doesn’t use any carriers or filler ingredients.

Not “some.”

Not “minimal.”

Zero.

This means you’re getting only the phytonutrient-rich skin of Montmorency tart cherries. And it’s why it takes about 100 pounds of fresh cherries to produce a kilogram of CherryPURE®.

Plus, the cherries used to make CherryPURE® are 100% organically grown in the U.S. and are fully traceable back to orchards near Traverse City, Michigan.

But it’s not just about purity or being produced here in the USA. (Though both are extremely important to us here at SaltWrap.) What really matters is what research shows it does for athletes.

In that department, CherryPURE® shines.

One study at Texas A&M University looked at the effects of CherryPURE® on muscle recovery after strenuous exercise. To do this, 23 healthy young athletes capable of squatting at least 1.5 times their body weight took either a placebo or CherryPURE® for 10 days, including the day of exercise.

Subjects performed 10 sets of 10 repetitions of Smith machine barbell back squats at 70% of their one-rep maximum. Muscle soreness tests were given 24 and 48 hours after exercise.

Researchers found that compared to pre-workout ratings, muscle soreness in the quadriceps muscles was significantly higher in the placebo group 48 hours after exercise. (Note: this is when muscle soreness tends to peak.)

The placebo group saw soreness ratings increase by 55-170%. But the CherryPURE® group saw soreness ratings increase by only 35-104%.

In other words, even the worst (highest) soreness scores in the CherryPURE® group were about 40% lower (better) than the placebo group.⁵

Athletes weren’t just less sore. They also had fewer markers of inflammation and muscle damage in their blood after exercise compared to the placebo group.

The same trend was also present in another CherryPURE® study.

This study – also conducted by researchers at Texas A&M – followed 27 young endurance athletes who took either a placebo or CherryPURE® for 10 days leading up to a half-marathon run.

The results were significant.

Not only did the CherryPURE® group finish the race 13% faster on average than the placebo group, but their inflammatory blood markers were about 50% lower as well. Their reported soreness levels were about 30% lower, too.⁶

Putting It All Together

The science is clear: tart cherry comes with major recovery and performance benefits for natural athletes. And CherryPURE® is in a class by itself.

Not only is it the purest form of tart cherry available, but it also has well-designed scientific studies to back it up.

To take things a step further, here’s something we really like about CherryPURE®: the benefits don’t extend to just one type of athlete.

As you saw, the benefits applied to endurance and strength athletes. And when you consider that the average fitness enthusiast falls somewhere in between, CherryPURE® may offer significant universal benefits.

If running fast is your thing, CherryPURE® may help you run faster for longer.

If you want to get as strong as naturally possible, CherryPURE® may help you recover more efficiently between strength training sessions.

It’s clear that CherryPURE® is an excellent choice for any natural athlete wanting to optimize recovery and boost performance.

That’s why it’s one of the star ingredients in our newly updated Protein Clinic™ formula.

We’ll tell you a little more about it in the coming days. But in short, when we listened to user feedback, we heard that athletes were turning to Protein Clinic™ as an all-in-one muscle recovery and performance-boosting solution.

That didn’t exactly surprise us.

After all, the original Protein Clinic™ formula was carefully designed to do both. But there was one thing we didn’t see come up as frequently as we thought it would: hypertrophy.

Most Protein Clinic™ users were primarily concerned with muscular recovery and performance increases – not size.

Then it became clear to us: we could make Protein Clinic™ even better by focusing on adding proven recovery-boosting ingredients.

That’s why every serving of the new and improved Protein Clinic™ now contains the clinically supported dose of 480 mg of CherryPURE®.

And speaking of user feedback, we’re proud to offer the new Protein Clinic™ in two wildly delicious flavors: Creamy Chocolate Fudge and Vanilla Cream.

Not to brag too much, but the flavors aren’t just delicious. They’re insanely versatile. (Especially Vanilla Cream.)

We know you’re going to love the new Protein Clinic™.

Click the button below to learn more.