Exercising Is Easier with a Cup of Coffee

While high amounts of coffee are never good for you, a new research seems to indicate that if you drink a cup right before going to the gym or getting on a bicycle, then the tasty beverage might aid your practice by reducing some of the pain associated with intense physical effort. The paper also says that this works even if the people drinking the coffee are not in the habit of doing this regularly. Apparently, caffeine works in parts of the spinal cord and the brain, it involves processing painful stimuli and has the ability to reduce activity in these regions.

The adenosine neuromodulatory system extends from the spinal cord to the brain, and Robert Motl, a community health and kinesiology professor at the University of Illinois, says that the way in which it processes pain can be influenced by a variety of substances, ranging from illegal narcotics to steroids and even coffee. Basically, what caffeine does is inhibit the action of adenosine, a bioreceptor that plays an important part in energy transfer throughout the body, especially when exercising.

For the actual experiment, Motl divided 25 fit males into two groups, with the criteria being the amount of coffee each of them regularly consumed. Following a workout that was aimed at finding out each of the participants' maximal oxygen consumption (the point in which the muscles burn oxygen and produce energy at an optimal level), the test subjects were asked to return after some time. Before the actual investigation, all of the “patients” were required not to consume caffeine in any form.

The experts then gave each of them a pill. While some got a placebo, others received a pill that was laden with caffeine. An hour later, they were asked to perform a strenuous 30-minute-long exercise on the bicycle, and their perception of muscular pain was assessed at regular intervals. “What we saw is something we didn't expect. Caffeine-naïve individuals and habitual users have the same amount of reduction in pain during exercise after caffeine,” Motl shares.

“Clearly, if you regularly consume caffeine, you have to have more to have that bigger, mental-energy effect. But the tolerance effect is not ubiquitous across all stimuli. Even brain metabolism doesn't show this tolerance-type effect. That is, with individuals who are habitual users versus non-habitual users, if you give them caffeine and do brain imaging, the activation is identical. It's really interesting why some processes show tolerance and others don't,” the former cyclist turned professor concludes.