Does Caffeine Even Work?
Caffeine is the world's most used drug.
We love it because it makes us more alert and reduces drowsiness. A morning without coffee is unimaginable for most people. But caffeine may not work the way we think.
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On a personal level, I have a love-hate relationship with caffeine. I'm a huge coffee drinker, and I'm certainly aware of its effects, but lately I've had some doubts as to whether its net effect on my alertness is positive. I'm going to write a longer post about this, but here's some of what I've been researching.
Citing this study on the effects of caffeine:
“Laboratory studies have documented its sleep-disruptive effects. It clearly enhances alertness and performance in studies with explicit sleep deprivation, restriction, or circadian sleep schedule reversals. But, under conditions of habitual sleep the evidence indicates that caffeine, rather then enhancing performance, is merely restoring performance degraded by sleepiness.”
Caffeine reduces the quality and quantity of sleep you get, leading to daytime drowsiness and impaired physical and mental performance.
This is why you need to re-caffeinate the next day.
It's called the withdrawal reversal hypothesis.
This study compared caffeine abstainers (3 weeks without caffeine) with regular caffeine drinkers. The next day, before drinking coffee, the regular drinkers experienced a number of negative effects, including impaired cognitive performance, headaches and reduced alertness and clarity. Such effects were not seen in non-drinkers.
After coffee consumption, regular coffee drinkers experienced a reversal of some of the negative effects and an improvement in their performance.
However, caffeine had no significant effect on the cognitive performance of non-drinkers!
This suggests that at least some of us may be stuck in a vicious cycle where we drink caffeine to feel better, but it makes our sleep worse, which leads to the negative effects the next day, which leads us to consume another batch of our favourite drug.
Crazy idea: maybe we should break this vicious cycle and stop drinking coffee?
Ashwagandha for… muscle strength?
Ashwagandha has been shown to significantly increase muscle growth and strength in this randomised controlled trial in untrained young men. The study lasted 8 weeks, and the ashwagandha intake was 300 mg of a highly concentrated root extract standardised to 5% withanolides. It also had some effect on the serum testosterone.
Everyone Should Eat Oysters!
Check out this great article by Jeff Nobbs on why everyone should eat oysters.
Long story short:
Oysters are literally the most micronutrient rich food on the planet, second only to liver.
Oysters are good for the environment - they clean the water.
Oysters are high in omega-3 and low in mercury, a common concern in seafood.
Oysters don't have a central nervous system, so they don't feel pain.
Enjoy some oysters!
This is my Weekly Memo with few points on physical and mental performance. Subscribe for free to receive weekly posts and support my work.