How to be Smart About Your Coffee Addiction

We are not anti-coffee here at Cardio High. In fact we have published articles that support drinking coffee before a workout.

But we also know that some people get you into trouble because they think they need to guzzle it constantly to adequately function. A new study may be useful as a guide for coffee lovers who want the benefits of caffeine without needing to make hourly trips to Starbucks.

Here is a breakdown of the study from this article:

The study authors recruited a group of college students to complete a memory task where they viewed and later recalled groups of words. Some of the volunteers were assigned to an early-morning session, arriving at 6 a.m., while others went into the lab at two in the afternoon.

And what they found out was that while the 6am crew who drank caffeine got that needed boost of brain power, the 2pm group didn’t really see any benefits. In other words, even though they were still getting that supposed help from the caffeine their brains were already functioning well enough that it may have been a nice hot drink to sip on but it wasn’t offering up any extra benefits that people expected.

There may be a placebo effect to what a coffee does to our already alert brains. We recommend staying off caffeine after noon. Substitute decaf tea, water – or water flavored with drops of cherry juice concentrate.

-Shane M.