Caffeine and Exercise Performance
grapplinglane.substack.com
grapplinglane.substack.com
That said, I think biggest mood/focus/energy difference (besides a nice workout which is also important) for me was getting vitamins and other micronutrients in order. I highly suggest you to do a blood test or two per year for all the common vitamins/micronutrients to see which you need to fix.
For men, I think it is especially important to get magnesium, vitamin D and zinc in order; lack of any will likely affect your testosterone levels negatively which will then screw you up in many more ways.
For example, way back I had critically low vitamin D resulting me in frequently getting sick and having periods of complete lack of energy; fixed that and I did not even get common cold for a long time, also no longer random days with no energy.
You shouldn't overly rely on nootropics, caffeine+l-theanine or other supplements to cover up base deficiencies with your micros.
My first comment is that I think this is why we have placebo-controlled double-blind studies.
My second is that I took a multi-vitamin for many years and I recommend caution in their use. For much of that time, when I went to the doctor for my yearly physical I would have elevated AST and ALT liver enzymes which is a marker of liver damage. All tests for typical causes of this (hepatitis, others) came up negative.
Finally my doctor asked if I took a multivitamin. I said yes and she told me to stop taking it. That was about 15 years ago and I have never had elevated liver enzymes since then.
It will show you nutritional holes in your diet like insufficient magnesium, vitamin C, zinc, etc that you can then fill with dietary solutions.
You also get to see what foods have what, it’s interesting. Like how one little prickly pear has 200% of your vitamin E needs.
Do you have a source for this (USDA FDC data and google-fu don't concur)? I'd love to have alternate options for Vit E besides almonds :). It's a fat soluble vitamin, available from nuts and nut oils - vegetable sources are harder to find.
https://www.famnom.com/my_food/294b1d1d-6ca3-47ac-9cd4-bfbd6...
Resulted visiting a doctor who did a blood test, saw I had critically low vitamin D level (~5 ng/ml). Gave high-dose supplements of 20 000 IU to take every day for up to a month and to touch some grass under the sun :D
After fixing vitamin D I did improve my diet more as well (added more vegetables that fixed few other micronutrients that were just slightly low). Combining that with more exercise gave my next big jump in health improvement. I think my diet is pretty close to typical paleo-type diet excluding fish.
But what I found super useful is gut health probiotics. No need to eat them all the time, just when you feel challenged.
I don't want to promote specific supplement products here, but let's just say there is one that helped me enormously.
To state the obvious; Since there are so many things changing in our lives, it's impossible to know whether the "improvements" you mention were specifically caused (/only) by taking more vitamin D.
I also experienced this same effect after moving to London (from California) in the winter (very cloudy). I felt so low energy for a solid month, and was constantly feeling unwell. Moreover, I had the strangest "cravings" to bask in the sun (such a weird thing to explain, I've never had such an urge before).
The week that I started to figure out my Vitamin D deficiency, I made sure to get a lot of sun every day (it just started getting sunny in London). I noticed immediate improvements.
In my particular case when I did initial blood test, vitamin D was the only thing critically low. There were few other micronutrients that were just slightly low. I was prescribed high-dosage D-vitamin supplements and was told to touch some grass while out in the sun (computer screen time did not count). In just a month after doing that my overall noticeably improved.
After the wake-up call with vitamin D efficiency I paid more attention to my diet and also having some regular exercise. Improving combination of those gave me my next jump in health improvement. Afterwards, I started using few supplements such as L-theanine with my usual cup of coffee in the morning, I'd like to believe it has given me just a slight boost in focus but it could still just be plain old caffeine. However, I know that some people respond to it a lot stronger so there is certainly variation and is quite anecdotal.
For full multivitamin, I recommend Thorne, which uses the most bioavailable chelated versions of vitamins and minerals. Once you learn how in-bioavailable the vast majority of ingredients in a standard MV are, you will feel sad
You should be looking for citrate or glycinate.
PSA: 48% of people have magnesium deficiencies, the highest of any vitamin/mineral, I'm pretty sure.
https://examine.com/supplements/magnesium/#dosage-informatio...
I would, however, recommend improving your diet before loading yourself up with too many supplements. Just add various vegetables and you likely won't need to care about things like zinc, magnesium, iron and few more. I think vitamin D was one of the few micros you usually want to supplement as it's hard to get it high naturally. I am sure HN has some dieticians that know more.
Potassium: https://www.famnom.com/nutrient/1092/
Tea and coffee have long been my companions. During Covid I cut down from two pots of brewed coffee a day to one. In June of this year I unexpectedly had to stop drinking coffee for almost a week and since then have had only one cup, which I accidentally drank out of habit (someone put a fresh one next to me while I was sitting and reading). After 46 years of daily high consumption I just…stopped. And I don’t miss it. I walk past the pot full of coffee in the kitchen and don’t notice it.
It makes me wonder how much is simply habit.
But as for coffee just being a habit, no way. I’m not sure how you did it so cleanly, but the headaches on stopping can be terrible.
Additionally apparently having coffee first thing in the morning, your body gets adjusted to that and your brain gets dependent on coffee to get a quick start.
I was hospitalized, pumped full of drugs and didn't eat anything (except via IV) for a week -- the absence of caffeine thing was kind of a random side effect. Not an approach I would recommend!
I was pumped full of antibiotics and took more after being discharged so pretty well wiped out all the bacteria in my gut, which I replaced by eating yoghurt. My diet has changed fairly radically since then (zero interest in sweets, for example) so I wonder how much of my coffee and other food desires were actually my gut symbionts' desires.
Then one day I had a panic attack, not a terrible one, but I felt pretty shocking. The next morning I had my coffee, and the panic came back. Every time I drank coffee I felt the same.
I lusted after coffee, I had blinding headaches and would wake up thinking about coffee for a month or two. Even knowing what it would do to me, my body was desperate for it.
After about 6 months I could handle one small coffee again without panic, and now I can have two or three a day without issue - I've not tried pushing it further, but some days when I'm stressed, even a second coffee will leave me feeling a little overwhelmed.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Mushroom-Supplement-Vegetarian-Nature...
Check out L-Theanine[1], it works wonders for keeping caffeine's focus, but dampening the anxiousness.
Anecdote of one: I stopped taking L-Theanine because I would experience a noticeable comedown of apathy two days later.
This was also my experience, but not two days later - the same day. I'd take L-Theanine, feel okay for a few hours, then feel extremely irritable and anxious for the rest of the day. More L-Theanine didn't help.
What makes you think that?
Seems that although it increases performance and stamina for me it also brings my heart rate up, which is not desirable in most cases since I'm training ~80% of the time in zone 2 (aerobic). At given pace I can have few bits higher HR when caffeinated (between 5 and 10 bpm) which means that I need go go slower in order to stay in zone 2.
For me it's a tool that I'm using during races. Also worth noting is that caffeine works on me really well.
As such, there are trainings where I use extra caffeine for a variety of different purposes, e.g. to get maximum speed to train my body to go faster, or for the mild analgesic effect to counter some discomfort from long distances. Depending on how much extra I take and when, I may have to take the attendant tiredness into account when planning the following day's activities, both physical (more training) and mental (programming).
I believe I benefit from my use of caffeine, but it's tricky. I log all the caffeine I take as well as all the calories, analgesics and alcohol in a text file (which I keep in a public repository in GitHub). I can then look back and try to figure out what's worked well in the past so I can do more of it as well as what has held me back.
For all of the fitness tracking that exists, perceived exertion and relative pace to your max is better.
It's great for getting shit done in a sprinty bulldozer, potential wake of destruction kind of mode. But I can't imagine it working well for me in a distance running context where managing my cadence and cardio/breathing is key.
Anecdotally as someone who quit caffeine entirely about a year ago, the effects of caffeine withdrawal seemed to last much longer than the 24 hour period that many studies ask participants to abstain for.
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6213082/
After decades of personal experimentation with caffeine, this is my conclusion personally. I get about two weeks of a boost if I go from 0 caffeine consumption to moderate caffeine consumption. After that two week period, I am simply consuming caffeine to feel normal.
I think the only meaningful way to run the study is to compare people who are completely free of caffeine, versus people who are steady state a certain level of caffeine per day. Either two different groups, or the same group separated by a month.
This research assumption is right in line with how society ignores caffeine as a non-drug. When asked what drugs I'm taking, I've told doctors things like "500mg caffeine" and they looked at me like I had two heads. Or my aunt who has trouble sleeping to the point of being prescribed benzos, but still has coffee at 5PM. Apparently it's all just "drinking coffee" and not doing a psychoactive drug, because "drugs" are "bad".
I felt the same way as you and would often have coffee before bed, but since stopping that practice I feel much, much more rested. I stop 6 hours before intending to go to sleep, since that's about the half-life of caffeine in the body. Everyone is probably a little different in their ability to process caffeine, but this has been working for me.
Now in my early 40s I feel the effects of coffee more directly (a physiological buzz if I have more than usual in the morning) and falling asleep and probably sleep quality both seem to suffer if I’ve not allowed a sufficient washout period - which now requires most of the afternoon and evening.
Edit: I can say that a pre-workout with 300mg made positive differences in a progress plot on a beginning strength program. But there were other things in there too. When I switched to coffee, creatine, beta alanine, and taurine, the effects did not persist.
That said, you may fall asleep, but you don't know how the quality and depth of your sleep is affected. You can be sleeping for 10 hours and still wake up wrecked.
I've found that caffeine tolerance is a huge factor in how it affects me, but tolerance changes quickly. A month off of caffeine for me is a complete reset and a few weeks do a lot to drop my tolerance.
Conversely, amphetamine relaxes me, lowers my blood pressure and my pulse rate by 15 bpm. Though I am very aware it would not let me sleep if I tried to.
(I do not mix the two. I was a daily two cup drinker until my diagnosis, now it's a coke zero once a week if any)
YMMV.
For those folks, it won't give them a burst of energy unless they drink a lot of coffee and a smaller amount can conversely calm them down. Caffeine works through a separate neurotransmitter process than ADHD meds (it blocks adenosine receptors whereas adhd meds boost dopamine and norepinephrine) which may be helping some people by lowering neuron stressors which incidentally helps relieve ADHD symptoms.
That might just be addiction? Nicotine relaxes smokers, but because they're in withdrawal when they do not smoke.
I'll probably tone down the dose, because it's the equivalent of 3 espressos, which is a bit much. I would normally do a double espresso.
Also I find that eating a good meal with fats before taking caffeine works better for me. Otherwise I feel sleepy after caffeine.
Also, for faster absorption, I put it under my tongue and let it dissolve. That’s the fastest way to see the effects.
For me, the tolerance made the effect go away after a month or two. I could take a caffeine pill, and go back to sleep. I had to start taking two, then three, until one morning I took so many I was basically shaking from caffeine, yet I was still sleepy.
Maybe it was just me, though. Everyone's metabolism is different.
Just like you, I realised that perhaps it wasn't the best idea since I was just taking them out of habit, and I stopped. It took me a few weeks to return to normal, during which I had the weirdest sleep and eating patterns.
But more importantly, I just really enjoy drinking coffee. It's one pleasure in my daily ritual.
If you drink more than three cups of coffee a day, you may need five to 10 times the amount of vitamin B1 than other people. That’s largely because you’ll excrete more of the nutrient through your kidneys and into your urine.
https://www.sheknows.com/health-and-wellness/articles/808646...
I’m revisiting training and going light for now but if I go the PED route again I will definitely go harder and longer because of the recovery advantages from steroids and protein.
It's now or never. It's not like it'll get easier in my 50s or I'll get another chance in the next life. We've only got this one.
It's strange to me when people list their stats more than they list the part of the process that's interesting.
My god, I've never been more clear-headed in my life. My working memory seems greatly improved. I'm able to work out complex problems in my head that previously I would struggle to keep my "mental eye" on. Moreover, I'm much less anxious in general and generally much happier.
I think I'm ADHD/anxiety-prone and I think that, while coffee for some with ADHD really helps, the increased anxiety made it difficult for "long, slow" mental processing to occur in my head.
A confounding factor is that I've also recently introduced a green powder in my diet, but the effect of no-coffee has been much more immediate.
I love coffee and never thought I'd be able give it up, but I don't even miss it now...
I still drink it in the morning just because I enjoy it.
Trying full strength but low caffeine varieties might be a nice option.
Funny enough, I was actually experimenting with matcha+coffee before going no-coffee. It also greatly improved by mental abilities. This reinforced my thinking that it was the anxiety all along that was causing me to feel mentally cloudy.
As I recall caffeine has an effect of "enhancing" dopamine sensitivity in the brain which is the likely cause of this effect. Could probably reset this over time, but don't really have multiple weeks to wait this out!
Haha, I definitely agree with that! Coffee is certainly a great way to get your brain in the mood to do work, any work at all.
One thing that really helps (really the base "pillar" which all health-optimization rests on) is making sure you get good sleep. I aim for 8-9 hours of being in bed per night. I've spent a lot of time working on getting good sleep.
Even yesterday I was just yawning and almost falling asleep between sets at the gym, even though I drank an espresso right before the workout.
I had a normal 8 hours of sleep that night too, so don't think it has to do with sleep deprivation.
Is this something anyone else has issues with?
From my ADHD way of controlling my ADHD the ideal way to stack caffeine with other stimulants is to take 70mg or less daily with the ECGC component of green tea in the form of Cacao to get both Caffeine and Theobromine
!. Theobromine is a weaker stimulant that has a lot longer half life than caffeine. 2. ECGC from green tea changes the conformation of the adenosine receptor, i.e. blocks it thus raising dopamine levels.
It's the way I get away with a lower L-DOPA dosage and that higher concentration lasts all day just by taking a tablespoon of cacao and my green tea extract in the morning.
To clarify, are you saying you're taking only cacao + EGCG to manage your ADHD? How about 90% Lindt dark chocolate as cacao source? Do you then stack L-DOPA on top of that.
Aside: EGCG counteracts the release of vasopressin (which causes your body to retain liquids), which is used post-MDMA roll to aid urination.
Current hypothesis: something in coffee causes or worsens ADHD.
Please share any other nootropic nooledge.
I am also an hobbyist endurance cyclist. I do cycling 'events' that last as long as 12+ hours. And average somewhere between 6-8. While I've tried for years to add caffeine into my nutrition plan for these events. I have only ever had adverse effects.
I seem to manage 6-8 ounces of coke. But in spite of my morning ritual, if I consume any coffee or caffeine infused energy bars or gels I will be miserable. Every time I get weak, shaky, feel like I am going to pass out, and feel absolutely miserable. After about 30-60 minutes, I'll have to suddenly pee. Once I pee I slowly feel better and in another 30 minutes back to normal.
I've talked to a hundred people about this, nobody seems to have the same effect. But it seems as if my body just rejects the caffeine, pees it out, and carries on.
In Ironman France, which effectively has a Tour De France category 1 climb of 12 miles up a mountain, I got sleepy at the top of the climb, to the point I wanted to take a nap. Yes, you can get sleepy during an ironman.
I has heard 1-2%, 2-4% was greater than I thought. If that is true, no endurance athlete is competitive at the top levels without doing caffeine, so it's almost guaranteed every olympic athlete does caffeine.
I remember this being a thing going around - the proposed mechanism was that while caffeine helps in general, it constricts brain blood vessels making blows to head more dangerous, since blow to head "spills" stuff from neurons and due to the constriction they take longer to be resupplied. I remember some scientific articles on this but I don't recall if this was conclusive.
It might not be much of a concern for BJJ, where blows to head are relatively rare, but it for sure would be a concern for boxing or MT.
Contact sports and oats will be linked to some brain damage. Contact sports and listening to seagulls in the evening too will lead to brain damage.
OSS
There is also some guidance that you should give it 3-4 hours after waking to have your first coffee, as it gives your natural cortisol a chance to do it's thing (caffeine supposedly uses similar mechanisms and blocks your cortisol).