[Note: Redlands coverage can be found here.]
Looking for the latest “performance-enhancing” drug? Perhaps you need look no further than your morning cup of joe. As Gina Kolata reported in Tbe New York Times this week, it appears that caffeine really does give a measurable performance boost.
Caffeine, it turns out, actually works. And it is legal, one of the few performance enhancers that is not banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency.
So even as sports stars from baseball players to cyclists to sprinters are pilloried for using performance enhancing drugs, one of the best studied performance enhancers is fine for them or anyone else to use. And it is right there in a cup of coffee or a can of soda.
Apparently, various scientists and researchers have been studying caffeine’s effects on performance for more than 30 years now. Dr Mark Tarnopolsky, of Canada’s MacMaster University, is surprised that anyone would even ask whether the compound leads to a performance benefit.
“There is so much data on this that it’s unbelievable,” [Tarnopolsky told the Times’ Gina Kolata.] “It’s just unequivocal that caffeine improves performance. It’s been shown in well-respected labs in multiple places around the world.”
So how does it work?
Dr. Tarnopolsky and others report that caffeine increases the power output of muscles by releasing calcium that is stored in muscle. The effect can enable athletes to keep going longer or to go faster in the same length of time. Caffeine also affects the brain’s sensation of exhaustion, that feeling that it’s time to stop, you can’t go on any more. That may be one way it improves endurance, Dr. Tarnopolsky said.
And it turns out that one need only take in a very little amount. According to Kolata’s article, one Australian researcher’s study found that athletes could get a boost from as little as 1 milligram of caffeine per kilogram of body weight. To put that into context, for a male who weighs in at 176 pounds, that would be about the amount found in 4 ounces of (regular, not decaf) coffee. Previously, it was thought that someone that size would need to drink 20 ounces of coffee to get a caffeine boost.
So, if a little is good, would more be better? Up to a point, but there is a threshold above which athletes’ performances start to get worse instead of better. And, given the context above, that would be a about the equivalent of 36 ounces of coffee consumed. To put that into perspective, that’s roughly the amount one would have had to drink in order to test positive for caffeine, during the time it was on the list of banned substances. Caffeine was removed from that list several years ago.
With coffee being legal, and its performance benefits being pretty certain, you might think that all athletes would be using it. That’s not the case, however.
Mike Perry, a friend who is a sculler who has competed nationally and internationally, said that, with one exception, the rowers he knew did not use caffeine.
“People would have psychological issues with using it,” he said. “They would see it as against the spirit of the law, even though it’s not against the law.”
Interestingly, Kolata’s piece then goes on to tell us that Perry decided to run his own, personalized blinded test to see whether caffeine really made a difference in how he would fare. The description of what he did is pretty interesting, using vitamin C pills that looked virtually identical, Perry would take two coded pills prior to each workout and see if he could guess, by his performance, which he had taken. Most of the time, he guessed correctly. And whenever he took caffeine, it helped.
It turns out, too, that even for people who are regular coffee drinkers, having a cup before a workout or a race will help them work harder, for a longer period of time. Even Dr. Tarnopolsky uses caffeine.
He [Dr. Tarnopolsky] puts the caffeine research to use when he trains and competes. Dr. Tarnopolsky is an elite triathlete, ski orienteer and trail runner who has competed at national and international levels. And, he said, he loves coffee: “I love the smell. I love the taste. It’s heaven.”
And before a race? He always has a cup.
One has to wonder, given this new finding, will WADA again ban caffeine, or will they leave it as an allowed “drug.” Given that it’s widely available, and that anyone who reads this article or digs up the research can easily go to the corner Starbucks, or Peets, or 7-11 and get a hot, steaming cup of java, it’s not like the people using it are breaking the law.
Of course, there are a number of other performance-enhancing substances out there that are all perfectly legal. Gatorade. Power Bars. Clif Bars. Water. Food. Especially the last two. Without food and water, most endurance athletes are going to bonk big-time at some point. Gatorade, Power Bars, Gu and all similar products help athletes keep fueled up and hydrated during intense exercise. Which means the athletes can work harder for longer periods of time before the dreaded bonk strikes.
But WADA wouldn’t ban these “performance enhancers” — would they? And how would they test for them, if they did? I can just imagine the first athlete who tests positive for eating food during a race. For shame!
Seriously, though. Given its easy availability and low cost, it’s not as though any athletes are at a competitive disadvantage regarding coffee.Coffee is nearly ubiquitous wherever you go. WADA was right to remove caffeine from their list of banned substances several years ago. One can only hope that they won’t have a knee-jerk reaction to this latest story and immediately push to ban its use in the future.
I have thought for some time now that, in some way, we (that is, ordinary cyclists) are part of the drug problem for reasons which you describe here.
I have subscribed to a number of cycling magazines over the years, and often they have articles describing this or that diet or drink or food to use for increased performance. If not, there is often advertisements for many of the things you list: sports drinks, nutritional supplements, etc. Even before I subscribed to magazines, various people recommended things like orange juice and honey, or defizzed coke (the soft drink) as the way to go. Coke, of course, contains caffeine.
So, if these types of substances, legal both in the criminal justice system as well as in the world of athletics, are perfectly fine to use, where do we draw the line? Remember, in 1984 the US Olympic cycling team made some use of blood doping, which was perfectly legal at the time. I recall an article in Bicycling discussing this and raising the question of whether or not it was ethical. There were also questions raised about safety.
Our old friend Dick Pound discussed the idea of banning altitude training. An interesting idea. I have lived a good portion of my adult life at altitudes of 5000 to 6000 feet. Should I have been banned from athletic competition simply because my career took me some distance above sea level?
I have an idea on what type of criteria should be used, perhaps, to determine whether or not to ban something. Some substances, like ordinary food, water, etc. are only of benefit in longer distance events, and then only to counter the effects of depletion. You cannot improve your time in a 25 mile TT, for example, simply by drinking a glass of water beforehand. You can improve your performance in a 100 mile race be keeping yourself properly hydrated, as compared to your performance if you allow yourself to become dehydrated. And for all intents and purposes, I would classify sport drinks, power bars, goos, etc. here.
Then there are substances which will increase your performance absolutely, and not just in comparison to a depleted state: blood doping, stimulants, steriods to build muscle for events which demand it, etc. These are sort of like putting a hidden motor on your bike. Here is where we should direct bans.
Of course, there is more to it. We need to consider how possible it is to detect a substance, if the presumed benefit is great enough to warrant an effort to ban it, etc.
William,
I think you’re on the right path. It’s tricky determining which “performance-enhancing” methods should be banned. What I think you’re saying is that we need to apply a certain amount of common sense to what falls into which categories.
Caffeine and Viagra (only at altitude). Not just for breakfast anymore!
To its detriment, WADA has involved itself in areas other than those associated with distinguishing between performance enhancing and non-performance enhancing substances, substance use that could cause an undue risk to athlete health, chemically fair competition, and how to reliably test for the before mentioned.
I causes me feel a bit bad for some of the snowboarders, for instance. THC is on the banned list and that enforces a lifestyle adjustment without the benefit of having anything to do with fair competition. I think it was Robin Williams who pointed out that marijuana use and THC are not exactly empowering wrt to athletic competition. He went on to theorize there would be no benefit unless a giant Hershey bar was placed at the finish. Regrettably, the thesis Robin Williams has proffered in his comedy routine is probably better documented than that which led to marijuana/THC being on WADA’s banned list for snowboard competition.
While true that was a bit tongue in cheek. What is not at all tongue in cheek is what WADA caused to happen to Alain Baxter. My low opinion of the olympics aside, Baxter won a medal in alpine slalom competition, which was valuable to him. He was later stripped of that medal because he took the U.S. version of the very same cold medication available on the shelves in Scotland and England. The trouble was the U.S. version of the medication, while packaged in a nearly identical manner, contained a banned stimulant not contained in the UK version.
You might say, “Okay it’s the athletes responsibility to know what he/she ingests and he screwed up, so he loses his medal and no foul from WADA.” Ethically, that position would be wrong. WADA set up the foul with an un-necessary item on its banned list for alpine ski competition. The stimulant would in no way enhance Baxter’s potential result in the competition. One of the very last things he would desire is for the gates to appear to be coming at him faster than they actually were.
When WADA takes action such as banning marijuana/THC use for snowboarders and the stimulant related to the Alain Baxter alpine skiing case, then it is either bowing to social pressure, applying an overly broad brush to a process that requires fine tuning, or are ignorant of the effects of the various substances they are banning. If I were involved in WADA World, I’d find it hard to be proud of any of those options.
wow….caffiene is performance enhancing! I should be racing in the TDF then!! I’d be a GC Contender!!!!
Rant, have you by chance seen the August 2nd editon of Science News? It has an article on Gene Doping. WOW WOW WOW is all I can say! This makes what we currently call doping pretty much like drinking a cup of coffee! Gene doping…change your body type….forever. Create the perfect athlete. I won’t go into the details of the article except to say HOLY MACKEREL!!! Things are about to get REALLY interesting!!!!
Matt,
I’ve seen references to that before. I might even have a copy of that article laying about here somewhere. I don’t remember the specifics right now, but real genetic therapy is still in its infancy. And it’s not perfectly safe or reliable yet, from what I understand. So anyone who attempts something of that sort is truly taking their life in their own hands.
What’s also interesting is a story I found from about 10 days ago that claims a WADA lab in Germany has a test to detect a form of gene doping. Very few details, and no information on which lab, if any, has validated their claims.