This article investigates the effect of combining caffeine pills with a carbohydrate mouth rinse
What’s the deal?
Independent studies have shown that both caffeine ingestion (for example from coffee) and a carbohydrate mouth rinse (for example from a sports drink) improve sports performance and delay time to exhaustion. These effects are thought to be primarily due to an effect on the brain. Would a combination of both lead to synergistic effects on performance?
What did they do?
Study participants underwent three identical trials of a treadmill-based running exercise programme. After a warmup and a 45-minute easy run, participants underwent a high intensity interval training capacity test, consisting of 1-minute hard, then 1-minute easy running, until exhaustion. Every 4 minutes during the test, participants either had a carbohydrate mouth rinse or a placebo mouth rinse. This was in addition to ingesting either a 200 mg caffeine pill or a placebo pill before and after the 45-minute easy run.
What happened?
Caffeine ingestion had performance benefits and increased the time to exhaustion by 10 minutes, compared to placebo. Similar results were found for when participants had both caffeine and the carbohydrate mouth rinse. Importantly, there was no combined benefit of having caffeine ingestion and the carbohydrate mouth rinse.
What can you tell me about the people?
All 8 participants were male, mid-20’s, healthy and relatively fit (average VO2 Max of 54), with a history of playing sports weekly for at least two years.
What else should I know?
If you don’t like the taste of coffee, caffeine pills are widely available and are just as effective as coffee for improving sports performance and prolonging time to exhaustion.
What will I do differently?
Here, yet another study shows the benefit of caffeine ingestion to improve sports performance. I really want to try this and might conduct my own study using a Cooper Test or something similar.
In my opinion, performing a carbohydrate mouth rinse every four minutes during exercise is not feasible, so I won’t be trying that.
This research was published in March 2019 by M Germaine and colleagues from Technological University Dublin, Ireland.
This article highlights our personal take on their research. Check it out here and see what you think!
Abstract Athlete 