Caffeine limits muscle pain during exercise, researchers find

Scripps Howard

It’s hardly surprising that a stimulant such as caffeine can affect athletic performance. Runners, soldiers and watch-keepers have been using it for centuries.

But researchers keep stirring things up with new findings about caffeine precisely because it seems to influence nerve and muscle and blood cells, among other things, in a variety of ways.

One of the more notable findings is that taking in the equivalent of a cup of coffee before exercise helps limit muscle pain while working out.

Scientists at the University of Georgia reported as far back as 2003 that caffeine reduces muscle pain during exercise. Their study, involving muscle pain during cycling, found that riders reported substantially less pain after taking a caffeine pill rather than a placebo tablet.

Other researchers have detected a surge of endorphins — those feel-good hormones released during exercise — in people who take caffeine before heavy exercise, such as a race.

Robert Moti, a former competitive cyclist and now physical performance and health professor at the University of Illinois-Champaign, reports that caffeine indeed works on a nerve signal processing system in the brain and spinal cord linked to pain.

What about using caffeine during exercise?

British researchers have found that athletes who drank a glucose solution mixed with caffeine during two-hour cycling tests burned carbohydrates at a rate 26 percent higher than those who got the same solution without caffeine.

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