Ellen's caffeine article

[Ellen]

Howdy All

Several board members have asked me about caffeine since I am a sports dietitian. I've written an article on this topic titled "Back to the Grind -- the Return of Caffeine as an Ergogenic Aid." www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/td_030909p8.shtml

Miles of smiles,
Ellen

[lilbitmo]

Ellen,

Most of my big hikes have been enhanced by "Moderate Quantities" of Caffeine and I've never had dehydration problems except once and that was a lack of consuming enough water to compensate for "effort put out" and the amount of "Caffeine ingested" - my urine was actually starting to smell like "Amonia" so I knew I needed to start increasing the water intake.

I cannot tell you how many hikers try to tell me it's a bad thing to consume caffeine during hikes and I laugh and just keep comsuming and never "Bonk or Dehydrate" even in the hotter weather.

Thanks for confirming what I've always felt was a misconception.

lilbitmo

[FIGHT ON]

Not me!
I don't voluntarily eat caffeine and have no plans to in the future, for any reason.
And I would especially never take it to better my time on a hike or enhance my performance.
It takes the (I) out of anything a person claims to have done.
I couldn't say I did this or that with any credibility because in fact I didn't do it. The stimulant did!

Can't imagine having to take stimulants every day to get started either.
Who cares how many people in the world do it or if they consider it socially acceptable or if it is a personal preference or if it tastes good or what ever.

I've always wondered what a persons time really would have been if they didn't use these stimulants. I wonder...

What ya ought to do is when you post your time from now on put a little * next to it and include how many doses of what ever stimulants were taken.
And for that matter post your real time or performance when you do it w/o drugs.

[zippetydude]

Clear and coherently written; thanks for the article Ellen!

As far as the asterisk, well, I'm not close to record books, so unfortunately I won't have to deal with that.

I haven't personally found any link to caffeine intake and my performance - except in the pass/fail sense. I am not a morning person, and some mornings, getting up at 4:00 a.m. to show up at Skyline is beyond miserable. A cup of coffee seems to wake me up - sometimes, I even drink a cup and go back to bed. About 30 minutes later, I wake up and go about my business of getting ready to go. I seriously doubt it affects my time very much, but if it gets my lazy butt out of bed when I would have otherwise slept in, I'd say it's great for my training, since it helps me wake up and get going.

Incidentally, I find that the time of day does have a big impact on my speed. My schedule is busy, so I normally go for long runs very early in the morning. If I have the chance to go in the afternoon (with no caffeine, incidentally) my times are much faster in long, short, and medium length runs.

Ellen: Here's a question. Ithere a way to trick my body before a race and make it think it's 2:00 in the afternoon?

z

[AlanK]

One thing's for sure. No one around here needs to take downers as long as...

[Zé]

Excellent work Ellen!

In my spare time I tried to do some literature review on effects of caffeine, and saw a bunch of conflicting papers, but this clears it up a bit.

It's clear that caffeine definitely reduces the rating of perceived exertion, I can attest to that. But if in elite athletes there is an effect, I'd have to think its more than lowering RPE. If an athlete, well trained and able to train with high pain tolerance, even if the RPE is high, they can still perform at a high level.

As for dehydration, there's definitely conflicting evidence, though you are right in the end there tends not to be an effect. Basically the volume of liquid one drinks in a coffee may offset any dehydration effects. But when are the measurements taken? I don't notice dehydration from caffeine for a while....like 24 hrs.

For instance, if I drink some coffee one morning, the next morning I will definitely wake up more dehydrated (low urine output, concentrated, thirsty) even though I was consuming plenty of water the day before with no effects. So for me there is an effect, but it would not affect that day's performance.

For fight on, one wonders if the world is black/white or just shades of gray. Carbohydrates enhance performance, since you'll do worse if you don't eat them. So will water. So will Na, K, Ca, etc...

Do you take those performance enhancers?

Not to bring up the GU discussion again, but you do realize its just carbohydrate, just like bread? You eat bread don't you?

[FIGHT ON]

Oh no! Not you too?
If caffeine is the same as all this other stuff then why not make a cup of them in the mornin to wake up instead?
Don't see em on a Starbucks menu, do you?

What happens to the heart rate when caffeine is consumed? (does it get slower?:lol:)
Any nutritional value?
It's not food!
It's a stimulant taken to target the heart, to increase its rate and strengthen each beat.
You can claim that you are taking it for other reasons all day long but this is the real reason it is taken.
I mean you can say you take it to wake up and not for the purpose to hike faster or further but that doesn't change that it does. (peek a boo, I see you!:lol:)

so you've been eatin this stuff on all your hikes huh? wow j, that's just crazy!
Pretty sure GU contains caffeine too.

[KathyW]

Thanks for the good article Ellen.

Fighton: You have already expressed your opinion that you do not think it is good to ingest caffeine when hiking; so now it's time to move on to another subject. We don't need to have you continue to reinforce how "good and perfect" you are because you don't ingest caffeine. Maybe you need this type of reinforcement, but I don't think other people that frequent this message board do.

GU is a brand name - some varieties have caffeine and others do not.

[bluerail]

....nothing I like more than getting jacked up on caffiene and sugar, going out in the desert and kicking over cairns and stampin my name on stuff.

[AlanK]

Pretty sure GU contains caffeine too.

Of course you've expressed your opinion on that subject many times, in several places, even though you admit it is not based on actual knowledge.

Kathy is right. Give it a rest, man!