#608： How Caffeine Hooks, Hurts, and Helps Us
Episode Stats
Summary
More than 80% of the world s population consumes the same psycho stimulant every single day, yet few of us know very much about our favorite daily drug, caffeine. Today, my guest will shed some light on humanity s love affair with this pick me up substance. His name is Murray Carpenter, and he s the author of Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps Hurts and Hook Us.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast more than 80
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percent of the world's population consumes the same psycho stimulant every single day
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yet few of us know very much about our favorite daily drug caffeine my guest today will shed some
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light on humanity's love affair with this pick-me-up substance his name is murray carpenter
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and he's the author of caffeinated how our daily habit helps hurts and hooks us we begin our
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discussion exploring what caffeine does to our mind and body before delving into how caffeine
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consumption developed in different places all around the world and how the way we get our
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caffeine fix has evolved over the millennia murray i then discuss the popularity of coffee in america
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and how our grandparents actually drink way more coffee than we do today murray explains how
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caffeinated sodas became a stimulating competitor to coffee in the 19th century and how energy drinks
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became a huge business in the late 20th century murray and i then discuss how you're probably
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ingesting more caffeine than you realize and what the generally recommended maximum amount to consume
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per day is we then get into whether caffeine can enhance athletic performance how much you need
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to take for it to make a difference we then discuss the overlooked benefits of caffeine as well
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as its downsides and we end our conversation with the question of whether caffeine is an addictive
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substance this episode will get you thinking about your morning joe differently after the show's
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over check out our show notes at aom.is slash caffeinated
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all right murray carpenter welcome to the show thanks thanks for your interest in in caffeine
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so yeah a couple of uh a couple years ago you published a book called caffeinated how our daily
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habit helps hurts and hooks us so what's the story behind this book you were just you had a caffeine
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habit you want to explore why do i drink coffee every morning yeah i mean that that's the nut of it
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i've been a caffeine drinker for decades and and i've been intrigued by it you know the the idea that
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most of us do consume caffeine daily and yet we don't think of it as a drug and so that was sort
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of my point of entry is you know what is it about this substance that that makes us makes us want to
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consume it to drink coffee every day so let's talk about okay what is caffeine so it it is it a drug
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it is a drug by any standard yeah it's it's a drug it's it's a simple drug it's it's an alkaloid
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it's a compound that emerged independently in many different plants all over the world and so
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wherever caffeine seems to have evolved humans seem to have figured out how to put it to use for
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their own purposes so let's broadly speaking because we'll get in the details of what caffeine
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does to our minds and bodies but broadly speaking what what do we know that that caffeine does to our
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physiology and even our our minds well its primary mechanism is very very simple there's a neurotransmitter
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called adenosine and in broadest terms what this does is lets us know that we're tired and caffeine
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looks remarkably like adenosine and is able to sit in the receptors for adenosine and basically nudge
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them aside and not you know not let adenosine sit there and um you know it's like it's sitting at the
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bar stool and adenosine has to walk away and so you know it's this simple trick of sort of pushing
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adenosine aside that that allows caffeine to work the magic we know so well which is basically to make
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us feel you know a little bit more stimulated a little bit more energetic so that's interesting so
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like the caffeine itself isn't giving us energy it's just blocking a neurotransmitter that makes us feel
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tired and we don't feel tired yeah yeah that would that would be the simplest way to look at it yeah
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okay and besides blocking that neurotransmitter any other effects that it has on our brain chemistry or
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physiology you know there are some more subtle things it may enhance a calcium pump in that's in
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muscles that might subtly enhance your muscle strength but you know by and large that that's the
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principle mechanism for which it's known and loved is is it's effect it's a relationship with adenosine
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okay so you you talked about that this is it's a substance that's all it's natural it's found all
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around the world do we know when human beings figured out that if they you know ate a leaf or drink ate a
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nut that they would have this boost of energy from caffeine we have a pretty good sense that
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that is well we know it's been going on for thousands of years at least and i visited the
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place that we have the the earliest known the earliest evidence of human use of caffeine and
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that's in a part of what's now mexico and in chiapas and basically there were there were people there who
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were consuming cacao who were consuming chocolatey drinks 3 000 years ago and so archaeologists have been
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able to you know extract or find the caffeine in the residue of these chocolatey drinks 3 000 years
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ago so we know that you know back then people were cultivating cacao a caffeinated product and they were
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consuming it and so we we know that that was going on 3 000 years ago around the same time it looks like
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tea culture probably emerged in china you know by folklore the chinese tea culture what might be as
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old as 5 000 years but it seems to have been you know around 3 000 years ago that that started
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happening so you know those are some of the earliest indications that people were using caffeine so this
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is interesting because like these are independent discoveries like multiple discoveries like human
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beings just disparate groups figured this out on their own without any connection to each other
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that to me is one of the most fascinating things yeah because we haven't even talked about coffee
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which which all was another independent discovery but you know much later maybe only as recent as a
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thousand years ago that people in africa and northern africa were starting to then chew the coffee bean
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and eventually started to roast it and and develop it into the beverage we we know now but yeah there
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and additionally in in in north america there were native americans who were consuming in tea form
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yopon holly which is also caffeinated so yeah it is odd because yeah i think it's it's hard for us to
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imagine people sort of wandering around doing amateur ethnobotany right like hey i wonder if i chew on
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this what it'll do to me but yeah people did it and they figured it out yeah people have been looking for
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like i mean i guess being a human is is tiring it's exhausting so we've been looking for something
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to help us out with that for for thousands of years yeah i think i think that's part of it and
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and and i think and we can talk about this more but it's it i think one of the underestimated
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aspects of caffeine is it's not just a stimulant right we we know it for its stimulant effects
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particularly at higher doses but at lower doses it it has a much more subtle and yet i think a very
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significant effect it just makes you feel good and so you know i think that's part of the appeal
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uh all over the world so let's talk about different ways we get caffeine so we've talked about three
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ways already so in in mexico they were cacao so it's chocolate in china it was tea and then in africa
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i mean i think most people don't don't realize this here's another thing i think what i love about this
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book is it really explores like what where caffeine comes from is i think most people just take it for
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granted the coffee bean it's originally from africa but i think most people think when they think coffee
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they think oh juan valdez south america that was a transplant it was a transplant absolutely yeah
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yeah originally from africa and then you know spread through the islamic world and you know didn't even
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probably get into europe until maybe the 1600s i mean you know it was it was kind of a slow migration
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and then eventually of course came over to the u.s but yeah the you know it's not native to many of
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what we consider the coffee growing regions yes it's it's the plant is is native to the african
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continent and has been transplanted worldwide and of course yeah some of the coffees that we
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are most fond of are now grown in south and central america and let's talk about coffee consumption
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that's a that's for most of american history that's been the primary caffeine delivery substance
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so why why did coffee take root in america compared to other cultures like even in europe
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i mean i was like tea was sort of the place where they got their caffeine from and how has coffee
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consumption changed throughout american history well yeah in terms of how it took root i don't know
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there there have been there there are some good historians who've gotten into this but it's certainly
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been an american beverage you know perceived as an american beverage for quite some time you know
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there's some people who even think that at the time of the boston tea party it was perceived as
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you know patriotic to not consume tea but instead to consume coffee so it it's it's been at least for a long
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time throughout the history of america it's been it's been a popular beverage increasing in popularity
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through the 1800s and through the early 1900s and and then really peaking around the world war ii years
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and that's one of the things that really fascinated me to learn is that people you know are i guess our
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great-grandparents generation that era they were consuming about twice as much coffee as we do now
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and that's you know that was a real surprise to me well that's what's going on there because i mean
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there's like a starbucks in every corner now you can go to any convenience store get coffee how is it
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that we're consuming less coffee than our great-grandparents i know it's it's it's really
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counterintuitive and and you're right yeah there it's it seems it seems like you can't you know you
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can't throw a rock without hitting a coffee shop or i guess one way of looking at is we're sort of
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consuming coffee more conspicuously now we're making a bigger deal out of it we're paying more for it
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but in in the era that i'm talking about when people were drinking something like 53 gallons of
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coffee a year per capita there was probably like just a coffee machine going in the break room you
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know there was there was a coffee pot or a percolator probably at the time just cranking in your house
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all the time people were just sort of habitually routinely consuming cups of coffee and eventually
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what happened is uh coffee got displaced by other beverages that are more popular and one of those
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beverages and you talk about this the rise of soda pop and caffeinated soda drinks yeah that's that's a
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that's a huge you know i think that would be the one that that you would say really if you look at the
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the the graph of where of how coffee has declined and how sodas coke etc have grown that they pretty
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much you know you you can you can see that one is replacing the other and the the lines crossed
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probably around the early 70s and that you know that that's a big part of it is we're we're consuming
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a lot more coca-cola or a lot more soda in general than we did in you know the late 40s early 50s
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and and that in in part displaced coffee drinking and and you know to be clear there there's been a
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some something of a rebound like over the last 15 20 years during this this golden age of coffee
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that we're talking about you know with the starbucks on every corner certainly i think per capita our
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our coffee consumption has increased somewhat but still we're we're you know we're pikers compared to
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what people were doing in the 40s and 50s and imagine the coffee in the 40s and 50s wasn't that great
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they weren't doing like these exotic roasts it was just like all right you got Folgers instant coffee
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there you go yeah and i i think to our palates today it probably wouldn't have been good at all
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and you know the coffee beans were probably and i've talked to a few people about this there there
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you could probably get some really good coffees back then but part of it has to do with how how
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it's processed i mean yeah like if you if you were getting the big can of maxwell house or Folgers that
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you know just a commercial blend it would be roasted far away from you long before you consumed it
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ground put in a can and then you know it may be weeks months before you even crack the can
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and so yeah the coffee wouldn't have even even if even if it was a great bean that was being roasted
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it's not going to taste the same as a good bean that you're that was freshly roasted and you that you
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ground just before you consumed it and additionally you know people were percolating coffee and you know
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some people like percolating percolator coffee i've given given it a hard time before and people have
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rushed to its defense but it over extracts it tends to over extract the flavors and so this would be
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like if if you're if you're using a cone filter you know and and after you you've put the right amount
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of coffee through you think oh i'm not going to put any more coffee in i'm just going to like try to get
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that last bit out of there and it kind of has this like funky stale flavor i i think that that's part
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of what percolators did all right so coffee was the primary source of caffeine for americans for a long
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time but then starting in the late 19th century coffee began to have a competitor in the form of
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caffeinated sodas like coca-cola what i think is interesting is when soda caffeinated soda first came
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out on the scene the temperance movement for example touted it as a healthier alternative to
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alcohol and really sung its praises but eventually drinks like coke and other caffeinated sodas they
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came in for some criticism for their caffeine content and what's interesting is that coffee even
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though it had caffeine didn't get the same amount of criticism as caffeinated soda what was going on
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there yeah well so coke went through an interesting evolution you know it was first launches like a
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patent medicine with with wine and you know a little bit of cocaine you know i i think it would have
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been a pretty powerful beverage for most of us but then eventually it became a temperance beverage i mean
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it was actually marketed that way and it it was mostly then you know sugar or you know sweetness and
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caffeine and what happened was in the early 1900s people were beginning to be concerned about the
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caffeine in the product and just about the product in general and about the fact that it might be
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addictive and that it might be marketed to kids and there was a hard charging regulator in the bureau
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of chemistry which was basically the precursor to the fda and he basically challenged coca-cola
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in a court case over their use of caffeine and said it was an adulterated substance that it was marketed
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to children that it was addictive and so that was like one of the early regulatory challenges to
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cocaine to sorry not to cocaine to uh to coca-cola and the soda industry and as you highlight in the
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book i didn't know this but like the early coca-colas they had the same amount of caffeine as like a
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modern day red bull that surprised me too yeah and i was glad there were some good statistics that i
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could mine uh to find that and that that all came out of this court case because they they were able to
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you know detail like the constituents of the early coca-cola yeah so it had more caffeine and and
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the way i look at it is coca-cola invented the energy drink you know something like 80 years before
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red bull did as a result of the court case and and i've i've scoured coca-cola's archives and every
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every other historical account i can find so i i don't know i've never heard coca-cola say that this
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is what we did but sometime during that court case it appears that they reduced the caffeine content
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and that it was probably further further reduced through the 1930s so that original sort of energy
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drink coke that was that would have been very much akin to a modern red bull was pretty much gone by at
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least the 20s or 30s and something you highlight too is that even then like coca-cola and some of the
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other soda manufacturers they understood i mean it sounded kind of like some of like the tobacco stuff
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that we saw in the 80s and 90s where the pop makers like they'd say the caffeine was there just for
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flavor but like they knew that it actually was a stimulant and kind of addicted people but they didn't
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want to say that because then it would you know they'd have to like sort of market it as a drug
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basically i think that's the case and i and i think you know to their credit i mean one one of the
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arguments at that time is what would you do next regulate coffee and the argument of course and
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it's a valid argument coffee has more caffeine than this beverage so why would it be fair to regulate
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coca-cola and not coffee but i think that's been a question you know through the years and every time
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the regulatory battles heat up again and this happened in the 1980s it happened you know more
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recently with energy drinks the question is this is to what degree does caffeine the drug drive the
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consumption you know the the purchase pattern of these products of sodas and of energy drinks and
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it's a question that i i don't think has been adequately resolved you know even today but you
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do highlight research where they've done studies on that where they'll give people like a soda that has
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caffeine and not caffeine in it they don't tell what was but like people seem to be drawn to the
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beverage with caffeine in it yeah and it increases uh you know the term is liking it increases you know
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the liking of the product there's another term of reinforcement so you know the caffeine reinforces
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the purchase of the product so in other words if you if you reach for a soda that's caffeinated
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you're going to tend to like it and you'll be more inclined to reach for it next time than for an
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uncaffeinated product and i think you know the social science again or the science of the the
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metabolic science we we need more of that and it would be good to see more of that but i i think
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something that we overlook is is the market has spoken on this i mean eight of the top 10 selling
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sodas are caffeinated if you want to sell a beverage in america and you want it to be or you know all
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over the world and you want it to be successful i think you know adding caffeine is is a pretty sure
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bet yeah it's hard to find post them these days you can't really find that stuff anymore yeah or even
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you know caffeine free coke and so you know some people do like sprite and and some people like
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fanta but you know aside from that you know the the colas the diet cokes uh mountain dew diet
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mountain dew all all of the top sellers you know dr pepper they're all caffeinated we're gonna take a quick
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and now back to the show so soda pop caffeinated soda beverages they overtook coffee consumption
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for the sort of the source of caffeine in like the 70s but caffeinated soda has been
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overcome by energy drinks this is like something that started like in the 90s let's talk about the
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history because this is really interesting when did energy drinks start taking off like this idea
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that there's a drink that's just designed for energy like coffee and coke they might have been
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marketed as it sort of a pick-me-up but they never said this will give you energy one of this
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ideas that you have a drink just for energy yeah i would say the late 90s for sure early 2000s this
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this is starting to become a trend and you know 2005 from there on i would say red bull was really
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really starting to take off and and you're right it's it's a different thing it's it's not just saying
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oh you know this is a refreshing beverage or this is a stimulating beverage it's like you know here
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have this it'll give you energy it was it was a brazen very direct marketing you know of the
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caffeine of of the stimulating effect of the drink and it was something new at the time no i know from
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my own personal experience like 2000 that year 2000 i was a senior in high school and i remember
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that's kind of when red bull came out i think red bull came out in the late 90s but i started before my
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football games i would get two red bulls one was to drink before the the game and the other was to
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drink at halftime that was like the first time ever like i consumed a beverage just for performance
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before i would drink coke and mountain dew because it just tasted good but here i was you know 17 years
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old buying a drink so it could enhance my performance wow that's you're an early adopter
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really because a lot of people had were not yet consuming energy drinks at the time and what's
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interesting about these energy drinks is that in the beginning they often downplayed the caffeine in
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their products and instead they promoted like the other ingredients like the guarana or what are the
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other weird supplements they have in there why did they downplay the caffeine yeah that's that's a
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really important point i think they downplayed the caffeine because the the regulatory framework had
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been fraught it had never been resolved very much i mean fda basically had considered caffeine
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generally recognized as safe that's one of their their terms when it was used in cola type beverages
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so it was for very specific uses and i think what red bull did was they kind of nudged the door open
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they're like hey what if we you know marketed this highly or more caffeinated beverage and just see what
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happens and it became wildly successful and that's you know then other energy drink manufacturers came in
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behind it and they're like well you know nobody has stopped red bull the fda hasn't done anything
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i guess this must be okay and then gradually you have seen this evolution where you know caffeine was
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not really talked about yeah it was you know taurine or whatever all these other products when you know
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caffeine is really the the so-called energy product in any of these the energy ingredient in any of these
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drinks but more recently you have seen bottlers more brazenly or more openly i'd say using the word
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caffeine on their products and this is sort of this the energy drinks allows you allows people to see
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the weird murky world of food and drug regulation because in a lot of in the early days a lot of these
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energy drinks they wouldn't put the caffeine content like on the the thing itself instead they say
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there's like there's a proprietary energy blend and you had no clue like how much caffeine you were
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getting in your you know energy shot and it's because they were marketing themselves as a supplement
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and because they marketed themselves as a supplement there was less stringent standards if if they had
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marketed themselves as a beverage a drink yeah you're absolutely right and fda did issue some guidance
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on that basically you know saying if something's consumed like a beverage you know then it should be marketed
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as a beverage i mean you know if it's if it's a 12 ounce energy drink and it's in the cooler you know
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next to the sodas is that really a supplement or or is it essentially a more caffeinated soda you know
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and i think fda came down on the side of the ladder so yeah that was that was one big change and you are
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seeing increasingly i would say you're seeing improved caffeine labeling it it still leaves a lot to be
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desired i mean you still need virtually need a magnifying glass in some cases to see how much
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caffeine is in a product but at least you know if if you're looking for it you can usually find it
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one of the things that's really interesting is during the super bowl this year coca-cola launched
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a new in the u.s they've launched elsewhere earlier a new drink called coca-cola energy i mean
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you know buried distinctly it's an energy drink and it's got you know the coca-cola brand on it so this
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is something that they hadn't really done before they had purchased a share in monster and they had
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a distribution deal so you know coca-cola was still sort of keeping the energy drink thing at
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arm's length but now they've got this coca-cola energy and on the can it says guarana b vitamins
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caffeine i mean right in the front so it's an example of how you know coca-cola has tiptoed around to
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to this to embracing energy and and notably uh this has you know in the the pretty much the same
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caffeine concentration as their 1909 beverage although now it's coming in you know a 12 ounce
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can so it has i don't know 118 milligrams it's it's almost the exact shape of a can and caffeine
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content of a red bull but it all went full circle it all went full circle yeah that's my point and and uh
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and i think you know to your point about people you know bottlers not using the term caffeine i
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think they're coming around to it and i think coca-cola understands the value now of touting
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caffeine all right so let's talk about you know figuring out how much caffeine you consume on a
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daily basis i remember a couple years ago i sat down to think about you know how much caffeine i
00:24:30.700
consume on a daily basis and i was like gobsmacked like i was actually i was consuming more than i thought
00:24:35.140
i was so why is it so hard for people to know how much caffeine they're consuming on a on a daily basis
00:24:41.320
and this is something that i became endlessly fascinated with it's very difficult it's very
00:24:46.920
difficult for a couple of reasons one because we consume caffeine often in you know many different
00:24:52.320
products throughout the day so many of us drink coffee in the morning what i came to realize a lot
00:24:57.220
of people a very common pattern is to have coffee in the morning and then you know an energy drink or
00:25:02.880
soda either at mid-morning or mid-afternoon or with lunch and so yeah there's there's a number of
00:25:09.080
different ways that you can get your caffeine another challenge is that you know particularly
00:25:14.460
with coffee the caffeine content can vary widely i mean so some people people like to say you know
00:25:20.660
how much coffee do you drink and people say i drink a cup a day well that you know that's an absolutely
00:25:25.260
worthless metric i mean a cup could be a five ounce weak cup they could have you know 80 milligrams
00:25:31.100
of coffee or it could be you know like a 16 ounce cup from starbucks that might have 325 milligrams of
00:25:39.760
coffee so there's just a tremendous variation and then you know on top of this i think we don't really
00:25:47.520
think of caffeine in terms of milligrams we don't really you know if someone says how much caffeine
00:25:52.120
do you consume you say well you know i drank a soda or you know i drank a cup of coffee but you
00:25:57.640
don't say well you know i drank 200 to 300 milligrams but i think you really kind of do
00:26:02.340
have to total up the milligrams uh as you probably did when when you were trying to understand your
00:26:06.860
own caffeine consumption in order to get a handle on how much you're consuming and do we have any like
00:26:11.580
a rough idea like the average amount of caffeine people are consuming on a daily basis i'd have to say
00:26:16.980
you know average for coffee drinkers they're probably in the range of of 250 to 300 milligrams that's
00:26:22.900
that would be my guess and and most people in the u.s are consuming coffee regularly so you know coffee
00:26:29.140
remains and this is a weird thing to understand coffee remains our primary source of caffeine we're
00:26:35.240
consuming more caffeine from coffee than from any other beverage but by ounces you know by by actually
00:26:41.400
you know drinks daily we're consuming more soda pop but the soda it has less caffeine so we're by volume
00:26:49.720
we're consuming more soft drinks but by caffeine we're still getting most of our caffeine from coffee
00:26:55.080
gotcha and like what's the recommended amount from health experts on like what is okay caffeine
00:27:02.760
consumption for an average person and here too this is this is an area that's kind of soft but most people
00:27:08.500
suggest not going above 400 milligrams and this is going to vary a lot from person to person because
00:27:15.240
some people are just much more caffeine sensitive than others and but you know 400 milligrams seems
00:27:21.000
to be sort of a level that most people are saying yeah you know up to 400 milligrams you're okay beyond
00:27:25.380
that you know maybe back off well that's an interesting point some people there's a genetic component to
00:27:30.640
caffeine some people process caffeine a lot faster than other people so they could drink a cup of coffee
00:27:36.760
and it like right before bed and then go right to sleep wouldn't affect them and another person does the
00:27:42.260
same thing they would be up all night you're absolutely right yeah it's it's it's highly variable
00:27:47.100
and certainly seems to be genetic which is to say you know like i know a family of people and they're
00:27:52.680
all this way that they that they'll they'll drink a pot of coffee with dinner you know and then just
00:27:56.980
trundle off to bed but yeah uh some people metabolize caffeine quickly some people metabolize it slowly
00:28:02.780
and some people are really on the low end of you know are really quite sensitive to caffeine and
00:28:08.440
and this is something i i kind of didn't i don't know i think i discounted it and until i did the
00:28:14.200
research for the book but even what might be like a very small amount the trace amount that's left in
00:28:20.720
a cup of decaf maybe 12 milligrams of caffeine that could be enough for someone who's very caffeine
00:28:26.020
sensitive to really make them feel you know uncomfortable that that that they would really get a boost out
00:28:31.060
of that so yeah we our individual reactions to to caffeine varies dramatically so yo in the part of
00:28:40.400
the book i thought was really interesting you talk about different groups of people researching and
00:28:44.100
exploring how caffeine can be used to enhance performance you talk about the military the
00:28:48.280
military is basically putting caffeine in everything surprising stuff like even food they're putting
00:28:53.520
caffeine in but the thing that i'd like to focus on is sports because i think that's where most people
00:28:58.900
if they're athletic in any way they they think they're sort of natural now it's like well you know
00:29:04.200
if i need a boost i have a little bit of caffeine before i do my workout to kind of give me that extra
00:29:09.040
pep what does the research say about caffeine and how it enhances athletic performance well it backs up
00:29:16.280
that that perception you're talking about the idea that yeah you know if i want to if i want to do well
00:29:22.000
or as you would have in high school with during football if i want to do well i might do a little
00:29:26.980
better caffeinated and it looks like the optimal dose for most people would be like three to six
00:29:34.700
milligrams of caffeine per kilo of body weight and this could be a fair amount for you know a bigger
00:29:40.720
person you know maybe 300 milligrams of caffeine or you know say a couple of strong 12 ounce cups of
00:29:48.960
coffee if that's the way you wanted to take it before your athletic event i think the more notable
00:29:54.080
thing about this is that for most athletic events and most of the research has been on endurance
00:29:59.840
events but say if you were going to run an hour race caffeine versus a placebo would probably improve
00:30:07.220
your time between one to three percent in that race and that's i mean that's obviously a winning
00:30:12.460
margin in in many athletic events and that's why you're seeing so many athletic specific products you
00:30:18.220
know gels and beverages and things for people to to consume while they're doing you know triathlons
00:30:24.260
or etc i was surprised the amount of like caffeine you need the dosage for caffeine so i think the
00:30:29.500
example the example you gave in your book was an 80 kilo athlete which is about 176 pounds so if
00:30:35.020
you want to take six milligrams per kilogram that would be 480 milligrams of caffeine which is like
00:30:40.280
double what like the average and that's like at one time like you consume that once and then do your
00:30:45.580
thing i mean if you weigh 200 pounds i mean that's going to be insane like how much caffeine you got
00:30:50.060
to back to get you know get that effect that is and that's the high end but you're still going to
00:30:54.400
get a good effect i think in the three to five milligram per kilo range so but yeah that is to
00:31:00.260
say yeah that would that would be a huge amount and and here you know the researchers i i spoke with
00:31:04.600
talked about this you have to weigh the the the benefits and possibly the cost if you're actually
00:31:08.900
getting you know like stressed and anxious or having some like gi like stomach upset from the
00:31:15.240
caffeine you're consuming obviously you know that's too much and that's gonna it's it's gonna
00:31:20.100
eliminate any benefit you might have gotten from the caffeine but you know the the short answer is
00:31:26.200
yeah some caffeine and probably a moderate dose will improve for most people their athletic performance
00:31:32.260
and so what is the what's the regulations of caffeine so if it enhances your performance
00:31:37.280
most drugs that enhance performance in athletics talking about the olympic stuff football like those
00:31:43.220
are banned or they're they're restricted somehow why isn't caffeine why isn't that been regulated in
00:31:50.220
sports and this too is is to me quite fascinating the reason is that the same dosage the same you know
00:31:58.000
therapeutic dosage that would that would give you an athletic advantage is very much in the range of
00:32:04.560
the average americans daily consumption so you know if you consider that it's basically saying okay
00:32:10.560
most people are consuming caffeine daily you know maybe 300 milligrams but for an athletic event you
00:32:17.120
can't do that and so i think unlike you know testosterone or any any other sort of whatever you
00:32:24.180
might use as to to dope with i think caffeine is is really quite in a category by itself that that
00:32:31.520
makes its regulation fraught yeah and as you said earlier it's going to affect people differently so
00:32:36.100
someone might boost the performance a lot someone could take that same amount of caffeine and not
00:32:40.140
have any performance enhancement it's true yeah and and so it's going to vary and and i think most you
00:32:45.460
know most professional or high-end amateur athletes have figured out their caffeine strategy and i think
00:32:51.840
this has changed an awful lot over the last 30 years you know i used to race bikes in the 80s and
00:32:57.500
and people had a sense that you know if you had a strong like a short strong cup of coffee at some
00:33:04.060
point you know that that might help you in a race or people would say oh i drink coke or i drink
00:33:08.840
mountain dew but i think people are much much more have a much more finely tuned sense of both what
00:33:15.040
caffeine does when it does when it does help them and how best to consume it during a race than you
00:33:20.640
know even that recently yeah i loved how you thought you talked to some of these high-performance
00:33:25.200
athletes and how they would they were very systematic about their caffeine they'd have something
00:33:28.620
before and then along the race they'd have a gel that they would you know throw back and get that
00:33:34.620
so they had it timed perfectly and when they're going to do this yeah i think so and and and i
00:33:39.820
think it makes sense i mean because these are the same people who are very conscientious about
00:33:44.360
everything that they're eating on race day and and in the days prior so why not caffeine and and i
00:33:50.420
think a lot of people find that unseemly because you know there there is at least i don't know sort of
00:33:56.220
a moral distinction between uh yeah maybe they're consuming the same amount of caffeine you and i would
00:34:01.220
be if we're at a coffee shop but they're doing it specifically to enhance their performance
00:34:06.720
and you know that does sort of it it it's an ethical challenge but i think for most people they're
00:34:14.780
they're kind of okay with that all right so for basic you know weekend warrior athletes if you're
00:34:19.660
doing a 5k or you know 15k or you i've also seen research that caffeine can and can help with
00:34:25.700
weightlifting too strength training it actually increases performance there you're looking at about
00:34:30.380
three milligrams per kilogram of body weight and the high end would be like eight or six kilograms
00:34:35.920
yeah i would say six you probably wouldn't want to go beyond six but yeah something like that and uh
00:34:41.600
and you you would want to consume it in in a way that it wasn't gonna you know that it wasn't gonna
00:34:47.540
interfere with your performance in any other way i mean obviously you're not gonna stand there at
00:34:51.680
you know the beginning of a 10k and you know have have a big cup of starbucks probably but you know
00:34:57.520
maybe an hour before to have a strong cup of coffee would probably be be quite helpful all right
00:35:02.740
so we know that caffeine helps us not feel tired it also just makes us feel good generally after you
00:35:09.180
have some were there some surprising benefits of caffeine you came across as you researched this book
00:35:14.060
there are there's some unusual ones and again you know i i mentioned some of these with trepidation
00:35:20.240
because you need i think in all cases we need more research there are some associations
00:35:24.980
with a reduced risk of suicide there's a suggestion that they that people who consume more caffeine
00:35:33.140
have a lower incidence of basal cell skin cancers certainly caffeinated coffee is associated with lower
00:35:39.660
risk of diabetes and maybe associated with a decreased incidence of parkinson's disease and i mean
00:35:46.460
coffee itself it you know there's there's been more research recently you know coffee drinking
00:35:52.760
caffeinated coffee drinking is actually associated now with with a you know reduced risk of mortality
00:35:58.720
people who consume caffeinated coffee have a decreased risk of dying at any particular later age
00:36:07.080
even that's not quite right right yeah i know so now you're not trying to say that oh if you drink
00:36:11.380
coffee you're less of chance of dying no decreases epidemiological studies show a decreased risk of
00:36:17.480
mortality associated with people who are drinking caffeinated coffee and there we have to be careful
00:36:23.360
because we don't know if it's the caffeine or another constituent in the coffee and it may likely
00:36:27.200
or may very probably be another constituent in the coffee it might be polyphenols etc etc but i think
00:36:33.020
all of these health benefits or associations with consuming caffeinated coffee are should go a long way
00:36:40.560
towards easing people's worries if they think they're drinking too much yeah i think drinking full sugar
00:36:45.900
monsters that'll probably give you diabetes and decrease it's not the cat like the caffeine like
00:36:51.180
that would be overridden by the sugar consumption yeah you're absolutely right i mean and and that's
00:36:55.400
it that's sort of the other end of the scale you you uh there there seems to be no health risk
00:37:01.820
associated with consuming caffeinated coffee or tea and there might even be some health benefits
00:37:06.100
but we know there's you know cut and dried health risks with consuming uh full sugar sodas and energy
00:37:11.000
drinks well let's talk about the downsides of caffeine are we talking okay it can help with
00:37:15.120
athletic performance gives you a boost when you're feeling kind of sluggish what are the
00:37:19.240
downsides of caffeine well the the two best known ones and and i think most people are familiar with
00:37:25.140
this is it can disrupt your sleep and uh and i i guess a slightly lesser known one is it can increase
00:37:32.240
anxiety so you know the sleep thing i mean i think a lot we talked about this before a lot of people
00:37:38.580
there are some people who can consume caffeine and just sleep like babies but for a lot of people
00:37:45.280
suffer from insomnia and they consume caffeine daily and there's certainly some subset of that
00:37:50.860
group that would find that if they stopped or reduced their caffeine consumption they would sleep better
00:37:57.060
yeah because like the caffeine like the half-life caffeine is like four to five hours so it stays
00:38:01.060
in your system for at least five hours something like that yeah it's going to be in your system for
00:38:06.040
quite some time and and for people who are more sensitive i mean this is really surprising but
00:38:09.800
even if if their sleep is not acutely disrupted they may have be sleeping lighter uh at night and
00:38:19.040
so this isn't going to be for everyone but this is one of the surprising things that i've found in
00:38:23.640
in talking to people is you know i'd say do you consume caffeine daily yeah do you sleep well no i suffer
00:38:29.940
from insomnia have you ever tried reducing or eliminating caffeine well no and and i think it's
00:38:35.580
it's almost like saying well i'd i'd rather be a caffeine consumer and an insomniac but it's not
00:38:41.620
going to help everybody to reduce their their caffeine consumption but i think if you really do
00:38:45.920
suffer from if you really would like to sleep better it's worth experimenting with with reducing
00:38:51.280
your caffeine consumption all right so sleep insomnia one of the big downsides what's the other big
00:38:56.400
downside uh increasing anxiety anger what what do you think i think increased anxiety is a big one
00:39:01.280
and and little disgust you know again if if you sort of look at the overlap of people who experience
00:39:07.720
anxiety you know either clinical or subclinical and the people who consume caffeine just because most
00:39:13.480
of us consume caffeine you know there's a lot of overlap and i certainly talked to a couple of people
00:39:19.060
in in my reporting and later when the book came out who had been anxious had suffered from anxiety
00:39:25.140
but had never had anyone suggest that they reduce caffeine and did reduce caffeine and found that
00:39:32.000
they felt better so you know again it probably wouldn't help everyone and it's it's it's not a
00:39:38.540
cure-all to quit caffeine but i would say if you're someone who suffers from anxiety and you consume
00:39:44.420
caffeine regularly it would be worth just experimenting you know just just trying to see what what your
00:39:50.700
symptoms are like if you decrease caffeine or eliminate it entirely what is there any research
00:39:56.440
on like what caffeine does with our thinking so i mean i've no i sort of intuitively when i've got a
00:40:00.560
big project i got to do some hard thinking i think well i gotta have a little bit of caffeine
00:40:04.040
it'll help me focus uh is there anything to that sort of natural inclination that i have yeah well i think
00:40:09.760
the the the better research has been on the things that are easy easier to to quantify like reaction time
00:40:16.440
you know and word associations but yeah i think i think most of us feel intuitively that the caffeine
00:40:23.100
can sort of make your your the wheels of your brain spin a little faster and before we move on from
00:40:28.540
health risks uh it's worth noting that the the i the other group that should pay attention to this is
00:40:33.700
people who are either uh pregnant or wanting to become pregnant and who should who are advised to
00:40:40.660
reduce their caffeine consumption a lot of people say to 200 milligrams or below daily in this
00:40:46.420
this is because of an association between higher amounts of caffeine and the possibility of
00:40:53.080
miscarriage and of of babies that are lower uh lower weight at birth so um so if you're if you're
00:41:01.160
hoping to become pregnant or if you are pregnant it's it's worth moderating your caffeine consumption at
00:41:06.400
least so a lot of people you talk about you just mentioned someone who has a hard time sleeping you say
00:41:11.640
hey why don't you give up your coffee and see what that does people like oh no i can't do that
00:41:16.120
so this idea that you know either caffeine's it's it's a habit or it's an addiction what does the
00:41:22.700
research say about that i think and and i hate to say this because i it's it's really it feels like
00:41:28.480
being a killjoy but i think you have to consider an addictive substance i think one of my sources put
00:41:35.820
it best i think he he characterized it as mildly addictive and i think that's the best way to look at
00:41:40.940
it because it does have the hallmarks of an addictive substance you know uh people feel good
00:41:46.620
when they consume caffeine they feel lousy when they don't consume caffeine your your tolerance
00:41:52.400
increases to it somewhat as you consume it and then for many of us if you stop abruptly consuming
00:42:00.520
caffeine then you're going to have withdrawal symptoms so yeah i i think it's it's hard it's hard
00:42:08.100
not to say it's addictive i think part of the reason people hate that term for this is because
00:42:12.620
it's clearly not an addiction with all of the sort of socially negative components of say opiate
00:42:18.840
addiction but you know in terms of the addictive pattern i think it's all there with caffeine what
00:42:23.880
are the withdrawal symptoms whenever you decide to quit caffeine cold turkey the best known one is is a
00:42:29.580
headache a caffeine headache and that that often will come on on like the second day or or maybe even
00:42:35.800
late on the first day of of you know a cold turkey withdrawal but you know sort of unpleasantness
00:42:43.060
edginess and even muscle aches and pains flu-like muscle aches and pains but i think the best known
00:42:50.020
one is is the the classic sort of caffeine headache and that what's interesting there what's causing that
00:42:54.880
it's because when you consume caffeine it restricts blood flow to your brain and then once you stop
00:43:00.580
like things relax a bit and you're just having like this gush of blood go to your brain and just
00:43:04.320
it hurts when that happens yeah and and this is part of the reason that a lot of you know excedrin
00:43:09.900
and hannacin headache compounds combine caffeine with analgesics and additionally there are some
00:43:16.920
some well-known prescription migraine medications that also include caffeine and i'm curious how did
00:43:23.740
your caffeine consumption change after you researched and wrote this book not dramatically but i i will say
00:43:30.940
i use caffeine more strategically i think i have a a greater awareness of of its sort of more subtle
00:43:36.660
effects so while i i never was someone who who consumed caffeine late into the evening i think i cut
00:43:43.880
off a little bit earlier now and just i i'd say i generally moderated my consumption i still you know
00:43:49.960
i still consume a lot of caffeine in the form of coffee probably you know 300 350 milligrams a day
00:43:56.520
so that would be like you know 24 ounces of good strong coffee but i i would say i probably use it a
00:44:03.160
little more strategically now so yeah maybe that's the advice to take away there don't you don't have to
00:44:07.040
necessarily quit caffeine but be smart about it yeah i'd say be smart be smart about it be be aware
00:44:12.320
of of your camp caffeine consumption and be aware yeah it's it's a drug you know and and because it
00:44:18.540
is a drug and it is affecting you in multiple ways it it's just it just makes sense to pay attention
00:44:24.440
to it well murray this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book
00:44:28.360
and your work well i've got a website just murraycarpenter.com and the the book is available
00:44:33.440
on um you know pretty much from your local bookstore or anywhere else and i have another book coming out
00:44:40.320
in a year which is specific to coca-cola and health so you can look for that as well fantastic
00:44:46.400
well murray carpenter thanks so much time it's been a pleasure thank you i really appreciate your interest
00:44:50.360
my guest today was murray carpenter he's the author of the book caffeinated it's available
00:44:54.080
on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can also find out more information about his work at
00:44:57.580
his website murraycarpenter.com also check out our show notes at awm.is caffeinated where you can find
00:45:02.540
links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic
00:45:04.860
well that wraps up another edition of the awm podcast check out our website at
00:45:15.680
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00:45:19.560
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00:45:49.100
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