5 Minute Facts - Caffeine - friend or foe?

This is episode 209 of the Empowered Team podcast.

The Zenith is back. The most amazing retreat that really dives in to getting you to your next level, physically, mentally, spiritually. We have leased out a five acre oceanfront gorgeous spot in Sayulita, Mexico and it is time for you to dive in and change your life. And I don't mean there's anything wrong with your life. I mean up level, expand, make it what you really want. The Zenith is coming end of February this year. We'll tell you more. We just want you to know ahead of time, save the dates.

Welcome to the Empowered Team podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider.

Welcome. Welcome. We are here for our performance power and today's topic is Caffeine is caffeine. This is the kind of thing that.

We just assume is going to be.

A norm, but a lot of us don't know what it really entails. So in performance power, we would like to dive into the research the facts. And we start with 5 minute facts so that we can dive into what the real things are around whatever our topic is. And then we go into Q and A so, so that we can have a fantastic experience for you to find out all of the things that you really want to know for your health, your wellness, your nutrition and your injury recovery so that you can have the optimal performance in your life. Performance power. So caffeine, five minute facts. Fact number one is that the FDA considers caffeine as both a drug and an additive. It is what we would call a central nervous system stimulant. So that's fact number one. It's a drug, it's an additive and it is a central nervous system stimulant. Fact number two for caffeine is that 90% of adults use caffeine regularly. This is the most commonly used drug basically in the world. So 90% of adults worldwide use caffeine and the consumption is more than 200 milligrams per day. So many of these caffeine users are dependent because caffeine is addictive and it's also a mild diuretic. So I'm going to go into those just a little bit more deeply. Number one, the 200 milligrams a day, what's recommended to be safe? So no more than about 400 milligrams per day is safe for caffeine consumption. However, 400 milligrams ends up looking like about four cups of coffee. But when I say cups of coffee, that would be a six to eight ounce serving of coffee. That would usually be our indication. So four of those would be 400 milligrams. Most people can tolerate that and in a healthy manner without having any of the side effects or risks that are associated with this particular stimulant. That's the first part of this fact number two. But the other part is that many people become dependent and the reason is because it's addictive. This is an addictive drug. People think of it as just something they consume in primarily coffee. However, it, it's a stimulant, it is a drug and it is addictive. It's also a mild diuretic. The caffeine affects what's called our adh, it's our antidiuretic hormone, and it affects that hormone and not allowing us to fully retain the water we ordinarily would. So it's this mild diuretic that can be a little bit dehydrating, not as much as something like alcohol. However, it's good to know that sometimes when you're consuming a lot of caffeine, it's a fat affecting your ability to hydrate the other tissues in your body. So that's number two is that 90% of adults use caffeine. It is addictive and it is worldwide. So fact number three, tolerance is influenced by genotype. So meaning there is this very specific gene called the CYP1A2 gene, CYP1A2 that slows caffeine metabolism. So what that means is that if somebody has this gene, they may be more, less able to metabolize the caffeine. So it's very individual specific as to how somebody metabolizes caffeine. So when one person says, hey, you know, you can have a cup of coffee by noon, when you have that cup of coffee by noon, you will metabolize it. You'll be fine by the time it's bedtime. Well, that's not necessarily the case for, for everyone. And some of the people who have this gene, who have a slower metabolism with caffeine, they're at risk at times for hypertension, myocardial infarction. And it's very individual based on their genetics, based on their genes overall. So that is fact number three. We're going to go into fact number four. And fact number four looks like caffeine occurs naturally. It occurs naturally in seeds, leaves, fruits, and more than 60 species of different types of plants will produce caffeine. The thing here is that when caffeine is occurring in all these different types of things, we assume that for the cacao or the caffeine or the coffee beans, caffeine, but we're not necessarily looking for it in other things that we don't typically see it in. So this is going to look like the gum, the jelly beans, the marshmallows, the waffles. Caffeine is being added to all sorts of other foods that we don't realize caffeine is in. And when this comes to our daily safe amount of caffeine, we may be overdoing that amount of caffeine without even realizing it because it's being added into other foods that we don't normally associate caffeine to being in. So it does occur naturally in the plants, but it's being added by food producers in order for you to feel good when you are on a. And that's quote, unquote, feeling good when you are on one of these other foods that has caffeine in it. So be aware that it's showing up in other things. So that's fact number four. And fact number five are some of the benefits that we see from caffeine. Now. In years of working in high performance sport as a physiologist, strength and conditioning specialist, athletic therapist, and in years of coaching private clients, business people, what I see is constant caffeine use. So a lot of people are using caffeine all of the time. What this looks like is because there are results, because there are impressive benefits from using caffeine. That looks like alertness, sports performance. There is an increase in the ability to think or produce your brain actions or brain thinking. It may even reduce Alzheimer's effects and Parkinson's. As well as we've got, there's a Johns Hopkins study that looked at learning and a memory boost. So when people had a learning task in this particular study, they would do this learning task and then have a dose of caffeine after the learning task. And in that scenario it would boost their memory overall for that particular task. So there's also caffeine enemas, and these would be for a liver or a colon detox. And these particular enemas are, I mean, I don't know if anybody looks forward to an enema, but the reason people do this is so that they're detoxifying their colon, detoxifying their liver. Although there can be some side effects or setbacks that way too. Some caffeine has even been applied to the skin to prevent skin cancer. So there are all kinds of benefits that come with caffeine. But there are also a lot of risks and precautions and drawbacks. And some of those look like it has an adverse effect on some people who have bipolar. Or if somebody has heart conditions, it can cause tremors and muscle tremors, potential fast heartbeat, so there can even be arrhythmias. Heart conditions, it can have an adverse effect on diabetes, but it can have a positive effect on diabetes as well. So it goes either way. Diarrhea can really exacerbate diarrhea. Epilepsy, glaucoma, high blood pressure, loss of bladder control, osteoporosis. In osteoporosis, it has a situation where more caffeine, or, sorry, more calcium is being flushed out of the system when it comes to the consumption of caffeine. And so that's where it is detrimental for someone who has osteoporosis, Parkinson's, schizophrenia, these are all areas where caffeine should be used with precaution. It can be detrimental. And there's another problem with caffeine. What this looks like is contraindications with other drugs. And the list for these drugs was so long that I wasn't going to list them all off. But here are a few. Ephedrine, especially ephedrine. This can be dangerous to take caffeine and ephedrine together. And that's something that is. We know about this in sport because ephedrine is a banned substance in sport. Caffeine is not a banned substance at certain doses, but as soon as you go above that dosage, then it becomes a banned substance if it's over a certain amount in sport. So ephedrine, antibiotics, Lots of people end up taking antibiotics. Do they stop consuming coffee? Do they stop consuming caffeine? Often not. So antibiotics, Clozapen, cymodyne, nicotine, valprate, alcohol, birth control, all of these have a different effect with caffeine. Now, oftentimes the effect is it's either these two effects. Either the caffeine causes a lessening of the effect of the particular drug, or the drug slows the metabolism of the caffeine. So if you're taking a drug that you want that effect for, maybe it's an antibiotic or whatever it is, if the caffeine is stopping that effect, then your drug is going to be less efficacious. If the drug is slowing the metabolism of your caffeine, then that means that you might have more of an awake or an alert effect later in the day than you really want to have. So that can be problematic as well. So these things need to be noted because it's so rare that somebody stops taking coffee when they go onto a particular medication. Now, they don't stop taking coffee because most people don't see coffee, caffeinated coffee, as a drug. And that's where some of the problem comes in, because the caffeine actually is a drug. It's not only an addictive drug, but it's a stimulant. So it has to be taken into account with whatever medications or other things that people are taking. So this begs the question, okay, so if we know that it's caffeine, well, what about coffee? Overall, it sounds like there's some benefits to caffeine, and they have to do with thinking, alertness, memory boosting. However, if you're taking caffeine in powdered form, there's a massive. There's a much greater amount, a massive amount of caffeine in the powdered form or a pill form or even in caffeine shots. So we want to be aware of that amount of caffeine that if you're taking a dose of caffeine that it's not more than 75 milligrams, there's not these big boosts that are going to cause a racing heart rate or jittery or have potential adverse effects. So then that begs the question, well, if I'm taking caffeine in coffee, and a lot of people do this, most people, most adults drink some sort of caffeinated beverage, whether it's an urban mate or tea or coffee, but the most popular one is coffee. So if people are taking in caffeine with coffee, but they perceive coffee to be healthy, how do they know that the caffeine is good for them? So there's a couple of ways that you can figure out whether you are a caffeine metabolizer. One of them is really easy. It's with basically a little DNA test. You can do a saliva test. It can be. I've done nutrigenomics. This is where you genetically get your test for a number of different markers, gene markers in your body. Another one is 23andMe. There are different companies that will look at your genetic markers, and when they look at the genetic markers, you'll see things like anything from whether you're predisposed to an Achilles rupture to whether you can metabolize caffeine. I personally can metabolize caffeine. However, I don't drink a lot of coffee or caffeinated teas. I Don't drink any coffee, really. And I rarely drink a caffeinated tea. And here is why. This is the underlying reason that I think is fundamental for those of us who are really looking to have our best health. And the reason is this. It is that most of us are looking for caffeine to wake up, for greater alertness, for greater thinking. And if personally, if I am feeling really low or really dragging, that's unusual. However, if that's the case, it's a big signal for me that I'm not getting the sleep that I need. What happens for me is that I can usually drive through and bring my energy up whenever I want to because I'm so motivated. However, if I start using caffeine to do that for me, what happens is that I'm ignoring my body signals for sleep. I'm ignoring my body signals that are telling me I need to recover, I need a little downtime, I need some more sleep, and I need to relax. So I choose not to caffeinate or to caffeinate as, as infrequently as possible so that I can really be in touch with what my body needs. Especially considering how frequently I train, which is daily. So the daily frequency of training and the demand of family and work and physicality. I want to know what my body needs. Occasionally I might take some caffeine, especially if I'm coming off of a jet leg or if it's a social engagement. But that might mean once a month, it might be once every couple of weeks. It's very infrequent. So that begs the question for people who want less of the caffeine for the reasons I just described, for myself, they want less of the caffeine, but they want more of what they perceive to be the benefits from coffee. Because coffee, we do know has a lot of nutrients, antioxidants, polyphenols, and these are great things for us. These are those extra super nutrients that are found in the cacao or the coffee bean that are found in cacao beans and various plants, especially really hardy plants. We get these polyphenols, this hormesis effect, where if a plant had to work really hard to survive, especially in mountainous areas or extreme heat, then it produces nutrients in that plant that can be beneficial for us. So that's what the coffee. That's what coffee has. It has all these antioxidants and everything. So that begs the question, do you go for a coffee that is caffeine free in order to get the benefits of the coffee itself, but not have the caffeine overall, that is the question. So that's where we look at what's the decaffeination process. And ultimately the decaffeination process does lower. The antioxidants can be up to a lowering of about 15%. However, they still have polyphenols, still have antioxidants. But the more the greater concern is the process that is is used to decaffeinate the beans. The beans have to be soaked in a solvent in for I don't know how long, but it's soaked in a solvent, and it's usually a solvent of ethyl acetate or methylene chloride. Now, these are the kinds of things that are used for thinning paint. They're very, very intense. That's what's used by soaking the raw beans before they're roasted, the raw beans get soaked in order to remove the caffeine. And it's effective, so much so that there's only a small, like a 0.7. I think a 0.7 milligrams of caffeine are left within the serving after decaffeinating. So even if you're having a decaffeinated coffee, there's still a very small amount of caffeine within that coffee. However, what some people might be worried about is, is that solvent in my coffee. So the FDA considers it safe when there's anywhere between 1 to 10 parts per million of that remaining solvent in the product, and that's the safe amount. So there are other ways. There's two other main ways to decaffeinate. One is called the Swiss water method. They use water, and another one is a carbon dioxide method. Carbon dioxide method is very expensive. It blasts the caffeine out. And the Swiss water method is another method. I think it's just a slower method. What's primarily used is that methylene chloride or the ethyl acetate. That might be a concern if you're worried about trace chemicals being in your coffee. If you're concerned about just having any of that, especially if you're pregnant and you're choosing decaffeinated products in order to not have the caffeine. Because having caffeine in a pregnancy would be typically contraindicated. So those are some of the things that come up when it comes to am I gonna choose a decaffeinated option versus a caffeinated option? And I gave the example with coffee because it's the one that we use the most. So it is the product that we tend to use the most. And I'm trying to do some of the answers to some of the questions that I'm seeing. Another question that came around, caffeine is about performance enhancement because you may have heard this for sport. And the question is, should I be using coffee before my workout? When and when is the best time to consume coffee for the caffeine benefits, for my alertness and thinking and my sports performance? That was the question that was posed. However, there are a couple of answers that will come with this. Number one is that yes, the caffeine in coffee or other sources will have a performance enhancing effect for physical performance. This could be your workout, your run, this could be your. This could also be your explosive performance. Typically in research, it's a sprint, it's a jump, it's endurance effects, some of the powerful explosive movements. It doesn't show as much of an effect. However, it does show a solid effect for endurance events as well, but both of them show positive effects. As caffeine being a performance enhancer. I've seen this so much so that athletes that were of the national caliber. One of my good friends as an Olympic heavyweight, Olympic lifter, she would wean herself off of caffeine for about three weeks prior to an event and then reintroduce caffeine around two days prior to the event so that the effect would be there again, because as somebody is using caffeine over time, the effect isn't such that you're not getting as much of the effect. What you're getting is just not having the withdrawal. So what I mean by that is that instead of feeling extra alert, you're feeling normal when you have the caffeine. And when you don't have the caffeine, you go into withdrawal, which would be the headaches and such. That's the addiction that happens with caffeine. So if you really want to get the benefits that I described earlier of being able to think better, having greater alertness, those types of benefits, if you really want those benefits, then it looks like having to not be on caffeine all of the time so that you actually have the benefit of it when you do take it. That's how you get the best results out of the caffeine. And that's why she would wean herself off of her normal coffee drinking for several weeks prior and then start using it again two days prior to the event so that she could boost her last couple practices and then really boost her performance in her lift. Now, if you're someone who's not accustomed to using coffee or caffeine, then it's not something you would do pre race or pre event. For the first time you have to see how your body responds. The last thing you want is to have it be more of a diuretic effect or stimulate diarrhea or something like that pre event. So you never try something new prior to your event. This leads me. So I think that addressed that particular part of the question, but it leads me into the next part of the question, which is this. When is the best time to consume caffeine and the best time overall to consume caffeine is when you are after. It's not quite at wake up time, but it's after you've allowed your body's hormone systems to do what it would normally do at this time of day and what that looks like in first thing in the morning. Our cortisol goes up, our adrenaline goes up a little bit. These are our stress hormones, but they're for our natural waking. If we've exposed our eyes to natural light, if we've got some exercise and we started to move around, those are the best ways to get our hormonal responses to that time of day. Operating at peak function. So then the best time to consume your caffeine would look like about an hour and a half after that. So if you've gotten up at 7am or even two or three hours after that, if you've gotten up at 7am and been exposed to some light, gotten some physical activity, then you're looking at a great time to have the coffee would be post all of that the morning, wake up, the walk, the exercise, then having the caffeine around that 9:00am, maybe 10:00am in the morning, that would be the ideal time because you've allowed your hormonal responses to organically take its effect and then you get the mental boost of alertness from that caffeine you have after. The drawback for you if you're doing the workouts in the morning is that you don't get that performance enhancement pre workout, but you are honoring your body's system and allowing your hormonal system to really wake and engage your brain and body the way it's meant to. Instead of relying on a chemical stimulant to wake and engage your hormonal system, we want it to be activating by light, by movement, by rising in the morning. All of those things will give you an optimal physical response and then the timing of the caffeine ends up being after that. So that would be an ideal timing for our body's hormonal response. However, it's not giving you the effect of the boost pre workout. So if you're working out in the afternoon, however, that would be an option then assuming that you metabolize caffeine well, because if you don't metabolize caffeine well, then what's going to happen is that you may end up being too awake later in the evening when you're trying to get to sleep. Because I think it's a, I'm going by memory on this one because I didn't recently look this up, but I think it's around an eight hour half life for caffeine as a, as a chemical in terms of metabolism. However, again, we all metabolize caffeine a little bit differently. So I think that covers the questions, that's our five minute facts and the questions that we had as well. Really diving deeply into caffeine, we went a little deeper on this one without other questions coming in because this one had so much information. So again, it's got amazing benefits, but remember, it's got some drawbacks too. And remember it's very individual. So it would be worth really checking out whether you are a metabolizer of caffeine or whether this is something that you want to actually have minimal doses of. And it's really worth if you are someone who consumes caffeine or coffee on a regular basis, basis, it's worth trying to go off for a while to make sure that you're not just following the addiction but that you actually can get the maximal benefits from it when you choose, not because you're addicted to the substance. So those are some added benefits or added suggestions with the caffeine and then also knowing where your caffeine is coming from, making sure that it's not coming from those added food sources where they've used caffeine as an additive, but rather having your caffeine come from something that it naturally occurs in and then deciding if you're going to do something that's a decaffeinated coffee or an herbal tea instead of the caffeine based on what your overall intentions are and your intentions around your health and what benefits you're looking for in that scenario. So that is caffeine friend or foe. I think for you. You will have a whole breadth of information now to help you decide for yourself whether and when it is the best for you and your usage with your life, your goals, your performance, your physicality, your overall health. So I hope you got something from this. Enjoy and we will see you next time on our Performance Power. Bring your questions so we can dive into the facts and we can open up the discussion, answer the questions, and really serve your best performance. Have a beautiful rest of your week.

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