experiment
Robert Mortel, a professor at the University of Illinois, has been studying the relationship between caffeine and exercise for seven years. He found that caffeine can affect the parts of the brain and spinal cord that deal with pain, so he speculated that it can alleviate the pain caused by exercise.
To prove this conjecture, Mortel and the researchers organized an experiment.
They divided 25 healthy men in their twenties into two groups. One group usually drinks little or no coffee, while the other group consumes about 400 milligrams of caffeine every day on average, which is equivalent to drinking 3 to 4 cups of coffee.
The researchers first asked the subjects to ride an exercise bike and measured the maximum oxygen consumption of each person. Then they were arranged to do two groups of high-intensity cycling with a duration of 30 minutes.
experiment
It is stipulated that subjects should not consume caffeine by themselves within 24 hours before exercise.
conclusion
The researchers gave the subjects pills 1 hour before the start of exercise. The tablets taken before exercise in the first group contained caffeine, the content of which was 5 mg per kilogram of body weight; In the second group, the tablets taken before exercise were placebo without caffeine.
After the exercise, the researchers regularly recorded the pain degree, oxygen consumption, heart rate and exercise efficiency of quadriceps femoris.
The results show that these 25 people have the same degree of pain relief during exercise.
"The result was unexpected," Mortel said. "Obviously, if you consume caffeine regularly, you need to drink more to get a more obvious refreshing effect. But this tolerance effect is not universal ... you let people who drink coffee often and those who don't drink coffee often consume caffeine, and then scan their brain images, and you will find that the brain activity is exactly the same. This is very interesting. "
continue
Mortel said that his research team will verify this discovery in mice, so as to better understand the biological mechanism of caffeine in relieving pain.
"If we master the biological mechanism, we can understand why the tolerance effect exists or does not exist," he said.
As a former competitive cyclist, Mortel will also study whether caffeine can help improve sports performance. However, he said that the current research results are enough for ordinary people.
"If you go to the gym to exercise and feel pain, you may want to stop. Pain is a factor that makes you give up, "Mortel said. "If taking some caffeine can relieve the pain, it may help them keep exercising."
Examples show that drinking coffee before exercise can really have an effect on exercise. Of course, drinking salt water properly in outdoor sports will increase the water lost by the body.