I’ve heard this mentioned a few times now across to few training and nutrition videos/discussions but never in detail.
I think I struggle with a bit of inflammation after a big ride, as I’m sure many do, and wonder if I can make even a small dent in that by adding a natural anti-inflammatory in to my post-ride recovery efforts.
I’m wondering if anyone can share recommendations and experiences with natural anti-inflammatories?
Same time, suppressing inflammation too much can blunt training effect. But to be honest, I know little about this topic, better do your own googling. Lot of listed foods are in my daily diet and I don’t plan to change it even if this blunting effect is true.
I’ve googled the hell out of it, it’s difficult to find training specific information but I posted because I was keen to hear some real world experience 
No no no. This is acute inflammation, in reaction to your event, and is good for you. It’s the body repairing itself and getting stronger , as long as you allow enough recovery time. It’s chronic (near continuous long term) inflammation that is bad for you, and a trigger for many diseases.
I picked this up recently somewhere in a thread here: drink chamomile tea before bed. Not too much obviously as it will interrupt your sleep. But apparently it calms down the limpathic system and can help with recovery. I have been doing it the past few weeks and my HRV doesn’t dip that low after hard efforts and I subjectively feel better, sleep better since starting to doing that.
As alluded to above, “inflammation” drives a lot of the muscular pathways into hypertrophy etc. Why would you want to avoid the positive effects?
Focus on high level recovery (nutrition, rest, sleep, mobility) and the rest will fall into place.
yassss!
Acute inflammation is your immune system doing upgrades to your body.
The only reason I’d like to blunt that would be if I need to perform the next day, e.g., during a multi stage event.
As mentioned above, you don’t want to shut down inflammation after a ride if the focus is adaptation and getting faster.
Andy Galpin and Andrew Huberman have discussed this on the podcasts they’ve done, just no way I could remember which one(s) and where. But I think it’s something like 3-4 hours after endurance workouts (potentially longer?), and as much as 24-48 hours after hypertrophy workouts.
Things that you want to avoid to maximize adaption is pretty much anything that shuts down inflammation and that includes icing and cold plunges. A cold plunge / ice bath can effectively negate the benefit of a hypertrophy workout IIRC.
Now, if you’re in a stage race, or trying to recover for the next day and not focused on adaptation or getting faster (e.g. between stages of the tour) is a different story and that’s a scenario where it’s a good thing.
Johnathan Vaughters was on the Giro commentary on Sunday, and he mentioned that they see substantial water retention (i.e. inflammation) in their fatigued riders on the rest day. He stated that, counterintuitively, the more fatigued/inflamed they are, the more time they’re told to spend on the bike on the rest day to help reduce inflammation. Presuming this is to increased blood/lymphatic flow to the muscles and thereby aid recovery and return to homeostasis. Obviously this is all about recovery not adaptation, but I thought this was interesting. I am not aware of studies that corroborate the utility of light workouts on rest days vs. total rest (pretty sure those tracking perceived soreness and adaptation say they’re similar).
I have an old knee injury unrelated to cycling so I’ve figured out a cocktail that keeps it from getting irritated which is liquid collagen, glucosamine, chondroitin, hyaluronic acid and then omega 3, turmeric curcumin and ginger pills. The biggest thing I would recommend is to slowly build up your training volume in order for your body to adjust. In the past 6 months I’ve improved by ftp in watts by 16.5% and w/kg by 32% so I highly doubt it’s doing anything to suppress fitness gains. What kind of inflammation are we talking about with you?