Originally published July 7 2005
Study: Caffeine may be helpful to athletes
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The drawbacks of caffeine are well-documented, but, according to the Washington Times, a new study from the University of Birmingham says caffeine may help athletes by boosting their bodies' absorption of carbohydrates.
In the study, a group of eight cyclists took part in three two-hour exercise sessions.
For each of the three trials, the cyclists took one of three different sports drinks _ glucose, glucose mixed with caffeine and water.
The research showed that caffeine increased the amount of carbohydrates absorbed from the sports drink.
"You are kind of sparing your small body carbohydrate stores," Dr. Asker Jeukendrup, director of the university's Human Performance Laboratory, said.
"You can get more energy from your drink, it means you are using less energy from your body stores."
Jeukendrup said the results do not prove that caffeine is a performance-enhancing substance, but simply show how caffeine affects the body's carbohydrates.
"We didn't even measure performance, and also this is just a way to increase the availability of carbohydrates," Jeukendrup said.
"There are other ways of increasing the availability of carbohydrates.
The simplest way would be to just ingest more carbohydrates."
Caffeine, an ingredient in coffee and cola, was removed from the World Anti-Doping Agency list of banned substances in January 2004.
WADA, however, continues to monitor the use of caffeine.
Test subjects in the Birmingham study were given a high dosage of caffeine, equivalent to drinking four cups of coffee an hour.
Jeukendrup said in future studies, less caffeine will be used in the experiments.
Performance enhancement wasn't included in the study because it is a difficult subject to control in a laboratory setting, Jeukendrup said.
However, he said he plans to include it in future caffeine studies by controlling the test subjects' exercise, diet, temperature and motivation to perform.
"In this study, we just wanted to see, does caffeine have an effect, yes or no," Jeukendrup said.
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