By Josh Kiely, DC

I love a cup of coffee. When we had our first child, I was drinking upwards of 15 cups a day and I loved every single one. Eventually I had to wean myself off high doses of caffeine as I did start to notice some unpleasant side effects as the never-ending consumption of caffeinated beverages took its toll.

As a chiropractor in Ottawa who works with performance-oriented patients, I get asked about all aspects of health and performance. I believe healthcare should be holistic, and for some people, supplements can be a useful tool to help achieve their health and performance goals (I don’t sell any supplements, so this is just meant to be an educational resource).

This blog will not contain any medical advice, and if you are sensitive to caffeine you should consider talking to your healthcare professional before moving forward with any of this information.

A Primer On Caffeine

Caffeine is the most common and accepted stimulant drug that humans consume. Caffeine keeps us feeling alert by blocking the receptors in our brain that are responsible for reminding us of when we are tired. Caffeine is not a source of energy like food is and it does not remove the fatigue from our cells. Caffeine makes us feel awake because it reduces our brain’s ability to recognize the normal feelings of being fatigued.

Another function of caffeine is to blunt hunger signals and reduce appetite. This can make it an effective tool for athletes who participate in sports with specific weight classes who need to cut weight for competition. Interestingly, when scientists compared caffeinated coffee to decaffeinated coffee, they found that both had appetite blunting effects, so clearly a bit more research is needed to understand the mechanism behind this effect.

Caffeine can be ingested in many different ways. The most common forms of ingestion are drinking coffee and tea. Caffeine is also available in pop, energy drinks, supplements and occurs naturally in many foods. 

Don’t Touch My Coffee

When most of us think caffeine we think coffee, so let’s start there. Like most nutrition in the news, it is a never ending chore to sort out the facts from the fiction. In the past, coffee was blamed for high blood pressure, heart issues and poor health overall. In the past few decades, our understanding of coffee has changed drastically, and research has painted coffee in a much kinder light.

In fact, moderate coffee intake has been found to have many health benefits. Three to five cups a day is linked to a reduced risk of type II diabetes, liver disease, heart disease, and even certain types of cancer. In addition to the health benefits, coffee can be a catalyst for social interactions as well as a great excuse to take a break from our busy schedules.

Caffeine and Performance

It is widely accepted that caffeine can provide performance benefits to athletes. The International Society of Sports Nutrition position regarding caffeine lists many of the benefits that athletes derive from caffeine. For the best effect, it is recommended that athletes ingest caffeine within an hour prior to beginning activity. The effective dose can range from 3-6 mg/kg of bodyweight. It is unclear what the minimum effective dose of caffeine is. Some of the takeaways include:

• Acute improvement in endurance, strength, jumping, and various other athletic qualities.

• Effective in both trained and untrained individuals.

• Helpful for cognitive function including attention and vigilance.

So there it is, caffeine can make all of our dreams come true… if only it were so easy.

The unfortunate side effects of caffeine.

When we ingest caffeine, our body adapts to the dose. Pretty soon, our body requires higher doses of caffeine to provide any perceivable effect. This can become problematic because the risk of side-effects is still present, despite a reduced feeling of benefit from a higher dose.

Doses in excess of 6 mg/kg of bodyweight were found to increase the risk of side effects. Anxiety, gastric issues, and sleep issues are all common with overconsumption of caffeine.

It is very easy to become dependent on caffeine and use it as a crutch instead of an effective performance tool. I have a few tips to avoid the pitfalls of dependency while still being able to enjoy your cups of coffee and even the occasional energy drink.

Three tips to help with moderating effective caffeine dosages

This is the practical part of the blog. These are the things we can start doing today to moderate our caffeine intake and make it a more powerful and strategic tool for increasing performance.

• Set a cut-off time on caffeine intake.

• Use caffeine strategically.

• Embrace decaf solutions.

Set a cut-off time on caffeine intake.

A cut-off time on caffeine intake is an effective way to limit the negative effects of caffeine on sleep. The half-life of caffeine is about 6 hours - this means that at 6 hours we still have half the ingested caffeine floating around our system making us feel alert and trying to stop us from sleeping.

By setting a cut-off sometime in the afternoon, we can reduce the risk of excessive caffeine in our system at nighttime. Usually I aim for a cut-off around noon, but everyone is different when it comes to this, so it’s worth experimenting with a few different times and tracking the effect on sleep quality.

Use caffeine strategically.

To get the most benefit from caffeine, I’d recommend using it sparingly for performance. It’s one thing to have a coffee in the morning to get going, but when we are chugging an energy drink just to work up the energy to walk the dog we might want to consider making a change. Limiting our daily caffeine intake reduces our risk of building such a high tolerance that we lose the positive effects from normal doses. 

When there are situations that you think may perform better with additional caffeine, you’ll have a low enough tolerance that you can get the positive effects without having to take a heroic dose (and avoid risking the negative side effects of huge doses).

Embrace decaf options.

When we had our first kid, I became a coffee monster (my wife’s words). I was easily drinking 10-15 cups of coffee a day. I ignored all my own advice and just lived off the stuff. I like to think that it was justified under the circumstances. 

For me, the key to tapering off this enormous caffeine intake was using decaffeinated options. I began substituting 1 scoop of ground coffee with 1 scoop of decaffeinated coffee in my coffee maker. Gradually I worked up to about 50/50 regular coffee and decaf. 

At this point, it was much easier to begin reducing the total amount of coffee I was drinking without noticing obvious negative effects from withdrawal. If you’ve never experienced caffeine withdrawal before then consider yourself lucky - it leaves you feeling like a slug with a headache and is best avoided if possible.

Wrapping Up

I hope that this sheds some light on the amazing benefits and potential pitfalls of caffeine consumption. I’m a huge fan of coffee, and I love seeing the positive research that has been discovered in the last few years, but I’ve also learned firsthand that there can be too much of a good thing.

Josh Kiely, DC helps his patients improve their performance, manage pain, and feel better through his in-person clinic work and his online consulting. If you’d like to take the next steps for your health and performance, get in touch and have a conversation with Josh about how he can help you.