Caffeine is largely consumed by a majority of the population, especially athletes, and it is known to improve fatigue, muscular endurance, sprint performance, aerobic endurance, high-intensity efforts, and maximum strength. However, the positive effects are known only to be acute, and this causes the consumption of caffeine throughout the day or during sporting events. Consistent consumption of caffeine will decrease the physiological response effects over time. Therefore, some individuals will go for a short period of time to make sure the effects are in full swing when consumption occurs once again. Additionally, there are some that say habitual consumption may even decrease performance.
In this study, the purpose is to answer whether or not habitual caffeine intake alters ergogenic effects, and to explore if withdrawal will restore ergogenic benefits. The importance of the study is to give athletes a definitive answer as to whether caffeine consumption is beneficial, up to certain amounts, and if withdrawal is necessary to restore ergogenic benefits if so. This is crucial because caffeine has been a key drug, along with many others, used by many athletes to achieve peak performance. Most of the subjects were males in the studies for data collection, and only some females were recruited for one of the tests. Different subjects were tested in many different time-to-exhaustion trials under different conditions ranging from placebo to 5mg/kg caffeine. Some of the subjects were habitual consumers.
To make sense of the data, it is summed up to show that different tests will exhibit different answers. Some habitual caffeination shows reduced ergogenic benefits, but some also show that there is some ergogenic benefit within a certain amount of time prior to competition. There is the potential for more caffeine to be consumed over time to maintain ergogenic benefits. This could be harmful to athletes and the long-term effects are not completely known. Also, there is the fact that females may metabolize caffeine differently than males. Overall, it is uncertain to say that 100% there is reduced ergogenic benefits with habitual consumption, and more studies are necessary to find a true answer.
Pickering C, Kiely J. What Should We Do About Habitual Caffeine Use in Athletes? Sports Med. 2019 Jun;49(6):833-842. doi: 10.1007/s40279-018-0980-7. PMID: 30173351; PMCID: PMC6548063.
Hi Gia,
ReplyDeleteAs someone who is very active this was an interesting thing to read about. Especially because I consume caffeine to stay awake during school or to study, but I have never considered ingesting coffee to improve athletic performance.
I read a research article that found high acute doses of caffeine between 9-11 mg/kg/b.m did not improve muscle strength or muscle endurance with habituated use. (Wilk et al, 2019). This research only had male strength training participants, whereas yours tested males and females. I would be curious to know what type of athletes Pickering and his colleagues tested as well as if there was a physiological reason for picking that specific demographic.
You stated the more often people drink caffeine the more tolerant their body becomes. Significant research is still being done to find out at which point our bodies become tolerant. Another article I found discovered that competitive cyclists had increased athletic enhancement up to 15 days of daily caffeine ingestion at 3 mg/kg/day (Lara et al, 2019). A majority of sporting competitions do not span over that long of a time period. However, if people can see athletic advancement with daily drinking of caffeine up to 15 days, then in theory as long as they don’t drink caffeine consecutively for longer than 15 days they would have a leg up on their competitors who have not done this. With that being said, while this next question is a bit dramatic, you never know. Do you think that if researchers are able to find a big enough physiological correlation between caffeine and performance, caffeine could be banned in athletic competition like blood doping is?
References
Lara, B., Ruiz-Moreno, C., Salinero, J. J., & Del Coso, J. (2019). Time course of tolerance to the performance benefits of caffeine. PloS one, 14(1), e0210275. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210275
Wilk M, Krzysztofik M, Filip A, Zajac A, Del Coso J. The Effects of High Doses of Caffeine on Maximal Strength and Muscular Endurance in Athletes Habituated to Caffeine. Nutrients. 2019 Aug 15;11(8):1912. doi: 10.3390/nu11081912. Erratum in: Nutrients. 2019 Nov 04;11(11): PMID: 31443220; PMCID: PMC6722777.
Jenai,
DeleteThis is a very interesting and though-provoking question. At this point, I feel as if caffeine is too highly consumed that it would be nearly impossible to ban in athletic competition. Caffeine is in countless products that we consume from coffee to tea to cocoa beans. If this were to be a banned substance, nearly all athletes would have to carefully lay out their beverages and foods to make sure they do not violate competition rules.
Hi Gia! Thank you for the interesting article about athletes and caffeine consumption! As an athlete myself who trains pretty consistently, I really resonate with this article because I do take caffeine substance before training sessions.
ReplyDeleteI found an article that relate to yours in the fact that it primarily concentrates on different aspects of caffeine consumption for athletes and how it compares to other ergogenic substances such as carbohydrates, creatine and amino acids. In this article, researchers found that caffeine consumption improved endurance, sprint and power performance by helping release glycogen storages for energy and increasing Ca2+ concentrations in intracellular fluids (Sokmen et al 2008). In this article they also explained that there are factors to take into consideration such as gender, timing of consumption, dosing of caffeine, and withdrawals. This was very similar to your article with the research aspects, except they also compared to different ergogenic substances. They found that these coupled together has no significant additive effects; however, there is still some speculation on this due to increased CHO oxidation, so further research is needed in order to prove or disprove this. In the comment above, Jenai discusses an article on blood doping and if caffeine should be banned in athletic competitions like blood doping is. My question to you is what do you think needs to be done in order to get significant research on this topic? Based on the results from your article, and mine there are similarities as well as differences with what researchers found. There are so many factors that go into consumption based on each individual person which definitely makes it more difficult to research!
Here is the link to the article I found:
https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Fulltext/2008/05000/Caffeine_Use_in_Sports__Considerations_for_the.47.aspx
Cassidy,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment! I truly believe that more research needs to be done on both female and male athletes. Clearly, there is a difference in the way that our bodies work, and focusing on one group is not sufficient enough. It would be interesting to see maybe how different caffeine products produce better or worse effects. I am also a consistent caffeine consumer, especially in the form of coffee, but it is more so to stay awake in all aspects of my life and not primarily for sports (Lol).
Hey Gia, thanks for sharing this article, it really resonated with me! I used to take pre-workout for years before going to the gym which contained about 300mg of caffeine. For a really long time, I felt like the caffeine really aided my focus and performance in the gym. Something that I didn't like about caffeine was how tired it made me once it wore off. I have a theory that this tiredness was caused by how caffeine elevates blood pressure. By raising blood pressure the heart will need to work harder. Since the heart is a muscle and requires energy, you'll feel tired if it's working hard.
ReplyDeleteThis had me wondering if there was a healthy alternative to caffeine to improve athletic performance. As it turns out, branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) are a popular supplement that can aid with athletic performance. In a 2020 study, AbuMoh'd and colleagues tested the effects of BCAAs on fatigue during exercise. As some context, they indicated that exercise can yield increased plasma levels of serotonin which can contribute to muscular fatigue. They hypothesized that consuming BCAAs can lower serotonin activity. They found that blood plasma levels of serotonin were lower in individuals who consumed BCAAs supplements. They also found that individuals who consumed BCAAs can exercise for longer before feeling fatigued. These are awesome findings as they're illustrating a potential alternative to caffeine. Luckily, BCAAs are quite inexpensive and cost as much as a scoop of pre-workout or a cup of coffee (if you make it at home).
AbuMoh’d, M. F., Matalqah, L., & Al-Abdulla, Z. (2020). Effects of Oral Branched‐Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs) Intake on Muscular and Central Fatigue During an Incremental Exercise. Journal of Human Kinetics, 72(1), 69–78.
Hey Gia,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this article. As an athlete who regularly consumes caffeine throughout the day, it was interesting to see how there can be positive and negative impacts from it. I was interested to see if caffeine use was more beneficial to athletes of one type of sport vs. another. I found an article that discusses the role of caffeine in both endurance exercise (cycling, running, cross country skiing and swimming) and muscular endurance and power athletes (weight lifting). For endurance athletes, it was found that endurance was improved by 2-4%. Athletes who participated in exercise involving muscular endurance, however, saw instances of zero benefits and even some muscle impairments. I found these results super interesting. They make me wonder if caffeine is more beneficial for certain athletes over others. It seems like more research is needed to answer some of these more specific questions.
Here's the article:
Guest, N. S., VanDusseldorp, T. A., Nelson, M. T., Grgic, J., Schoenfeld, B. J., Jenkins, N. D. M., Arent, S. M., Antonio, J., Stout, J. R., Trexler, E. T., Smith-Ryan, A. E., Goldstein, E. R., Kalman, D. S., & Campbell, B. I. (2021). International society of sports nutrition position stand: caffeine and exercise performance. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 18(1), 1–37.
Hi Gia,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing such an interesting blog post! During the past few months I have been relying on caffeine more than I probably should but I have convinced myself that consuming caffeine has some benefits. I was not aware of the potential ergogenic effects that caffeine had on athletes. I came across a similar article that states caffeine is listed as a monitored substance in athletes by the World Anti-Doping Agency as it can enhance an athletes performance. The article I came across was relating the potential ergonomic effects of caffeine in strength training and anaerobic exercise as opposed to more endurance based activities and did conclude caffeine showed an enhancement in strength training performance in comparison to the caffeine placebo group. The reason for this difference was hypothesized to be related to the amount of motor neurons that are recruited to the muscle as well as the Adenosine receptor being inhibited by caffeine and thus its function is inhibited resulting in delayed muscle fatigue (McCormack & Hoffman, 2012). The article also mentioned that caffeine seems to create an “enhanced excitation coupling effect” resulting in more calcium release and more muscle contraction (McCormack & Hoffman, 2012). Although, there seems to be evidence to support caffeine intake has the potential to enhance athletic performance, the extent is what still remains unknown. I would be interested to know how and if caffeine tolerance would play a role in the amount of athletic endurance it would provide.
Source: McCormack, William P. MA; Hoffman, Jay R. PhD, FNSCA Caffeine, Energy Drinks, and Strength-Power Performance, Strength and Conditioning Journal: August 2012 - Volume 34 - Issue 4 - p 11-16 doi: 10.1519/SSC.0b013e31825f4d7e
Hi Gia,
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting topic to write about, especially considering that caffeine is actually a banned substance in the NCAA. This is largely due to the fact that in sports where a small peak in performance can lead to large differences in placing in sports such as swimming, cross country, track, and cycling. Any sport that requires intense aerobic exercise, caffeine has been shown to increase performance when used in moderate amounts. However, it may also depend on what study you are looking at, as several studies have conflicting results. Because of this, it may come down to personal opinion on how caffeine affects your exercise ability. As a collegiate cross country runner, I am of the opinion that caffeine can help with performance in intense exercise that lasts a long period of time. Many of the studies that I have found also only look at shorter runs but not much longer ones, such as 5k or longer. This may lead to skewed results because the shorter a run is, the more variance there is in the times and the more the results are due to other factors such as fatigue from lack of sleep or soreness from a previous activity. Longer runs depend less on these factors and there is typically less variance in times.
sources:
Southward, K., Rutherfurd-Markwick, K. J., & Ali, A. (2018). The Effect of Acute Caffeine Ingestion on Endurance Performance: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 48(8), 1913–1928. https://doi-org.dml.regis.edu/10.1007/s40279-018-0939-8
Ramos-Campo, D. J., Pérez, A., Ávila-Gandía, V., Pérez-Piñero, S., & Rubio-Arias, J. Á. (2019). Impact of Caffeine Intake on 800-m Running Performance and Sleep Quality in Trained Runners. Nutrients, 11(9), 2040. https://doi-org.dml.regis.edu/10.3390/nu11092040
Whalley, P. J., Dearing, C. G., & Paton, C. D. (2019). The Effects of Different Forms of Caffeine Supplement on 5-km Running Performance. International journal of sports physiology and performance, 1–5. Advance online publication. https://doi-org.dml.regis.edu/10.1123/ijspp.2019-0287