NUTRITION
CAFFEINE
Most of us have never had to have a drugs test. For me, this is a good thing, as the thought of being naked while someone
watches me perform my unmentionables is in confl ict with all my British sensibilities. But, if I did have one, what substances would be found in my system? Probably far more than I realise. When we think of drug cheats, we are more likely to think of the pumped-up, steroid-addled athletes of the 1980s – like the Canadian sprinter, Ben Johnson, who had his Olympic gold medal stripped away from him – than the majority of those who fail drug tests who have simply commit ed a minor and unintentional error of judgement. An athlete who took Lemsip Max Strength before a competition, for example, could fail a drugs test and be branded a cheat, just because this cold and fl u remedy contains pseudoephedrine, a stimulant. Caff eine is a naturally occurring pesticide found in many types of beans (coff ee, cacao, kola) and leaves (tea, guarana). It also acts as a stimulant in humans – both scientifi c data and anecdotal accounts show that it yields signifi cant improvements in athletic performance. However, in 2004 the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) ruled that
caff eine would no longer be banned as a performance-enhancing drug, and – although the drug’s use has been monitored since this time – athletes are now free to use it. It may seem strange to allow a substance that has been shown to improve athletic performance, but what, then, would happen to the athlete called to a random drug test aſt er drinking a coff ee or eating a chocolate bar (see box)? So, leaving aside the question of if we should use caff eine as a
performance enhancer (for a debate on this question, see page 35), if we do want to use it to help us improve our speed and stamina in the water, we can do so without fear of reprisal. But what should we know about its use?
HOW DOES CAFFEINE WORK? The exact mechanism by which caff eine increases performance is still unclear. The most popular theory for many years was that it increased the body’s ability to use fat as an energy source. It has been well established that the body uses fat as its primary energy source while at rest and during light exercise, but it switches to use more carbohydrate and less fat when exercise intensity increases.
A TESTING ISSUE The main problem with drug testing for caff eine is that moderate-to-high levels of the drug can be ingested through a normal diet, and these may be hard to eliminate. While other stimulants, like pseudoephedrine, only enter the body through pharmaceutical medication, caff eine is in many of the substances we eat and drink every day. Tea, coff ee and chocolate have been part of our lives for more than 300 years, and caff einated fi zzy drinks, like Coca Cola and Red Bull, sell billions of cans per year across the globe. (While Red Bull drinkers get through three billion cans a year, a whopping 1.6 billion Cokes are sold every day). Even aside from the fact that it would be hard to eliminate
caff eine entirely from one’s diet, evidence shows that caff eine use does not demonstrate what is known as a dose-response relationship, meaning that taking large amounts of it will not necessarily yield a corresponding eff ect. Furthermore, some evidence suggests that performance may actually suff er as a result of very high caff eine intake, and this is made more complex because this drop-off point is individually specifi c. It has also been shown that identical amounts of caff eine produce diff erent eff ects in diff erent athletes; for some people there is very lit le improvement. Lastly, a drug test only tests the ‘free-caff eine’ in an athlete’s urine, which diff ers from the actual amount of caff eine that has been ingested. The amount of free-caff eine that is removed from the system varies from person to person. For these reasons – and the signifi cant possibility of a placebo eff ect – it is impossible to state a fi gure above which a particular performance enhancement will occur, ie. a level at which athletes could be found to be abusing the drug.
Nutritionists thought that taking caff eine before exercise increased the rate that fat was broken down in the body, in a process known as lipolysis, by increasing the amount of free fat y acids available for energy. This was thought to happen primarily in the early stages of endurance exercise, thus sparing carbohydrate stores for later use and increasing time to exhaustion. This theory seemed sound; however, more recent studies have observed that, while
LEGAL INJECTION
32
Would you take performance- enhancing drugs? No? What about caff eine? Nutritionist Joel Enoch looks at the plusses and pitfalls of taking this legal high
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