The Surprising Impact of Your Daily Coffee
Caffeine is a drug, Let’s be honest about it. It is the most used and accepted drug on the planet. It's also one of the most well-researched and understood compounds.
So.. what is caffeine good for.. really? Well, 19 studies we looked at agreed on one thing. Caffeine/coffee DOES improve exercise performance. Looking for the opposite - studies that showed no gain.. zero!
Does caffeine improve exercise performance?
Out of the 19 studies we analyzed, a whoping ZERO found that caffeine did not improve exercise performance!
Here’s an overview of some of the studies:
2019 Meta-analysis from the British Journal of Sports Medicine: this study found that caffeine improved exercise performance across many different types of exercise tasks.
1996 Highly Cited RCT: this study found that caffeine improved exercise performance by decreasing perceived exertion.
2018 RCT: Tthis study found that caffeine ingestion significantly enhanced peak power, "readiness" to invest effort and even cognitive performance.
2013 Highly Cited RCT: This study found that caffeine enhanced exercise performance by reducing perceived exertion and muscle pain.
2021 Systematic Review: This study found that caffeine improves performance in resistance exercise due to its physiological effects
Takeaway:
Your daily coffee can do more than keep you awake.
Across the research, including many well designed human-RCT's and reviews, caffeine has been shown to improve exercise performance - most notably by decreasing perceived exertion.
So it makes simple sense to have the best coffee you can have when you do imbibe, right?
So here’s some other coffee facts.
~ Coffee needs pure water to allow full flavour and full caffeine activation.. but..
~ Coffee also needs alkaline water because alkaline water extracts more goodies from the coffee than pure water.
Ian: I guess that’s the reason we are very particular about where we order coffee. Our home brew, using our UltraStream water, has spoilt us. It just brings out all the flavour, and it’s something many, many of our customers have commented on.
If you are going to take the drug, do it right. Coffee and UltraStream water.