Caffeine Improves Physical and Cognitive Performance during Exhaustive Exercise

PainSci summary of Hogervorst 2008?This page is one of thousands in the PainScience.com bibliography. It is not a general article: it is focused on a single scientific paper, and it may provide only just enough context for the summary to make sense. Links to other papers and more general information are provided at the bottom of the page, as often as possible. ★★★☆☆?3-star ratings are for typical studies with no more (or less) than the usual common problems. Ratings are a highly subjective opinion, and subject to revision at any time. If you think this paper has been incorrectly rated, please let me know.

Caffeine really will “significantly improve” not only endurance performance, but “complex cognitive ability during and after exercise.” The researchers studied 24 well-trained cyclists, giving them either 100mg of caffeine or a placebo and then testing their endurance and their mental function during and after workouts. The signal was loud and clear: caffeine consumption boosted their performance.

Sign me up! I’ve already pretty much embraced caffeine as one of those rare pleasures in life that has minimal downsides — this is just gravy.

related content

These two articles on PainScience.com cite Hogervorst 2008 as a source:

• PS Anxiety & Chronic Pain — A self-help guide for people who worry and hurt
• PS Can Supplements Help Arthritis and Other Aches and Pains? — Debunkery and analysis of supplements and food-like medicines (nutraceuticals), especially glucosamine, chondroitin, and creatine, mostly as they relate to pain

This page is part of the PainScience BIBLIOGRAPHY, which contains plain language summaries of thousands of scientific papers & others sources. It’s like a highly specialized blog. A few highlights:

• A Bayesian model-averaged meta-analysis of the power pose effect with informed and default priors: the case of felt power. Gronau 2017 Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology.
• The neck and headaches. Bogduk 2014 Neurol Clin.
• Agreement of self-reported items and clinically assessed nerve root involvement (or sciatica) in a primary care setting. Konstantinou 2012 Eur Spine J.
• Effect of NSAIDs on Recovery From Acute Skeletal Muscle Injury: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Morelli 2017 Am J Sports Med.
• Association of Spinal Manipulative Therapy With Clinical Benefit and Harm for Acute Low Back Pain: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Paige 2017 JAMA.