Transcription
We hear all the big stuff about coffee. We hear that maybe it's good for fat loss, good for cognitive performance, and good for physical performance. But I've got eight caffeine studies, coffee studies, that you've never heard of before that put a completely different twist on things. I'm going to jump right into this.
The first one was published in the International Society of Sports Nutrition. This was one of the most fascinating, specifically fat loss, caffeine studies. This study had subjects consume 3 mg of caffeine per kilogram of body weight, and they had them consume this at either 8:00 a.m. or 5:00 p.m. Then they did V2 max testing and what is called a maximal fatty acid oxidation test to see how much fat they were actually oxidizing and burning.
What is really wild here is that when subjects consumed caffeine at 8:00 a.m., they ended up increasing their maximum fatty acid oxidation by about 10.7%. That's a pretty significant amount of fat burned. But that's no surprise because a lot of us know that caffeine helps liberate fats and increases fatty acid oxidation. Here's what's really interesting: the 5:00 p.m. group had a 29% plus increase in fat oxidation. We're talking literally almost 3x the amount of fat oxidized by having caffeine at 5:00 p.m.
While I know you're thinking, "Okay, I'm not going to have caffeine at 5:00 p.m.; that's going to affect my sleep," when you look at this kind of literature, it really makes you scratch your head and wonder why. Here's a quote from the actual researchers in the study: "A combination of acute caffeine intake and exercise at moderate intensity in the afternoon provides the best scenario for individuals seeking to increase maximum fat oxidation."
So we can sit here and speculate why, and I have some theories. It might have to do with the natural states of cortisol in the morning. Maybe you're not increasing as much fatty acid oxidation in the morning because your cortisol levels are already higher, so your fat oxidation rates naturally would be higher in the morning as is. In the evening, since cortisol is lower, you're having a bigger spike; it's a bigger delta change of what you're getting out of the caffeine.
In this case, because you're already oxidizing less fat due to more adenosine built up, maybe you're just flat out going to get more out of the caffeine at that point in time. But let's talk about the elephant that's in the room right now: the sleep piece.
Now, I'm going to talk about the second study. This study was published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, and they gave subjects 400 milligrams of caffeine—that's a lot of caffeine—at 0, 3, and 6 hours prior to sleep. What they found is that all of these led to impaired sleep. Most of them had a hard time falling asleep, but there was also a pretty significant change in their total sleep time. They ended up waking up earlier and having more wake events.
What's interesting is that they were all about the same, even the group that had the caffeine right before bed. Now, you've probably heard of this thing called a caffeine nap. If you can actually consume caffeine and fall asleep fast enough, there's evidence that a caffeine nap can actually help you get by with less sleep. But you can't do that repeatedly; it's a hack that you can do every now and then.
This is kind of frustrating because here we read before that I can have caffeine in the evening or late afternoon and get more out of my total fat loss. Some of the things that I was thinking were, well, in this one particular study that they talked about with the fat loss, they didn't really look at testing midday. Maybe having some caffeine at noon could have a double effect in the morning versus triple that we'd have in the evening.
So maybe we could have caffeine at noon and then work out, and that could get us at least double the fat loss benefit of the morning. I'm not saying don't have caffeine in the morning; I'm just saying this is interesting stuff. That way, we could get a little less of the sleep effect.
Another kind of hack that you can do is if you've ever heard of apigenin, that is a compound that can block some of the influx of calcium ions into a cell, which is part of what caffeine does. It does a number of different things, so it can drive high amounts of calcium into a cell, creating sort of an excitatory response—one of the many cascading effects of caffeine.
If you have apigenin, you theoretically do not block the fat-burning effect, but you do block some of the energy effect. So you're not going to get as much of a stimulatory physical performance effect, but you might still get the fat liberation. In theory, you could take caffeine with apigenin and have it later in the day, possibly being able to sleep better because the apigenin can block some of the sleep-inhibiting effects.
Let's move on. If we're still talking about the brain, there's actually some evidence that caffeine has huge neuroprotective effects. This was published in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Pathology. It was a rodent model study, but it was still very interesting. They took rodents and treated them with aluminum, basically triggering neurodegenerative diseases. They gave them high amounts of aluminum chloride to induce an Alzheimer's effect.
They found that caffeine actually blocked that in a way that protected the structural compounds of the brain. It had this protective structural effect where the brain didn't morph or change the way it does in neurodegenerative diseases. There was also an increased expression of BDNF, and this wasn't to any small degree; this was like an actual change in some of the gene expression here, so the brain could kind of reproduce, recover, and repair.
Additionally, some of the antioxidants in caffeine, like chlorogenic acid, seemed to reduce systemic inflammation so much that it had a neuroprotective effect. This sounds kind of off the rails—not the typical caffeine stuff—but that's what I'm going for. What's interesting here is that we see that caffeine isn't damaging our brain; it could be protecting our brain.
This next study is interesting because we're talking about withdrawals, and there are some myths surrounding withdrawals. People say the longer that you've consumed caffeine, the more withdrawals you are going to have. I could see how that could be theoretically correct, but when you look at the data, it's not quite that way. As a matter of fact, the NIH reports that about 50% of people that come off of caffeine have withdrawals, like headaches.
Only about 13% of people actually have impairment or fatigue to such a degree that it changes their performance or physical function of the day. Now, athletes might be at a different level because caffeine is clearly a performance enhancer, and if you come off of it, you probably will see a decline in performance to a measurable degree, but not necessarily for a recreational athlete.
The point is that the impairment, the physical change when we come off caffeine, isn't nearly what we think. Although caffeine technically can have withdrawal symptoms, it's not truly addictive. I did another video on this; it doesn't affect the dopaminergic system the same way that other recreational drugs would.
Now, it is still addictive because you can get addicted to the physical feeling of it, but it's not as physically addictive as some of these other things. That being said, you can form this addiction or have withdrawal symptoms as early as three days of caffeine consumption. So, if you take caffeine after never having taken it before, you have it for three days, you build a tolerance to it, and you might have withdrawal symptoms.
The interesting thing, but kind of a good thing, is that this continues to increase until about 13 days, but after that, it's about the same. So whether someone's been consuming caffeine for 13 straight days or three months, they probably have similar addictions to it and probably are going to have the same sort of withdrawals.
Now, the other good news that we don't hear a whole lot is that it really only takes 3 to 5 days to reset this withdrawal. All you have to do is stop caffeine for 3 to 5 days, and you're probably right back to the beginning again. So it's almost like, okay, maybe every 20 days or so, take a couple of days off, take a weekend off, do something, be worthless for a couple of days without your coffee.
The other thing that I would mention is that decaf coffee still has a lot of benefits. We're going to talk more about that, but there's another study about that. You could always have decaf, still get a little bit of caffeine with it, still get the antioxidant effect, and still get some of this stuff that might make you feel really good. You can still almost placebo yourself into that.
I also put a link down below for Thrive Market because they have a bunch of different kinds of coffees. By the way, independent of coffee, I think you should check out Thrive Market. They've been a sponsor on this channel for a long time, and that is a 30% off discount link for all of your groceries through Thrive Market. It's one of the largest online grocery stores, except they specialize in only "better for you" options.
They don't have dyes; you're not going to have Red Dye 40. It's going to be stuff you can trust, even the tasty processed food. And I say processed food loosely because, yes, they do have options like that, but it's not the typical hyper-palatable stuff. They have good options; they also have sustainable meat and seafood. They've got all kinds of frozen options too, and that's a 30% off discount link.
So if you want to do your grocery shopping, save some cash, and try them out, getting it delivered to your doorstep is really worth it. It's a pretty big game changer in the world of grocery shopping in general. So that is a 30% off discount link, plus there is a $60 free gift, and that is exclusive to people that watch my channel.
So that 30% off your grocery order, you're not going to find that on their website; you're not going to find it on the internet with a coupon code or something. That's exclusive because I've worked with them for a very long time, so people that watch my channel get that discount. That link is down below; you can sort by diet type, you can sort by different types of coffee, you can sort by different forms. I mean, the coffee selection is unreal because the founders of Thrive are big coffee people too.
Check them out; different forms, also instant forms, all kinds of cool stuff. Link in the top line of the description down below. The next piece is really, really, really interesting. Don't get scared away when I say microbiome because this is beyond just what you would think.
So obviously, the microbiome is important; obviously, we don't know diddly squat about the grand scheme of it. We only know the big pieces, but there was a study published in the Journal of Nutrients that looked at fecal microbiota. It was looking at basically what was coming out in the poop. They broke down coffee consumption: people that consume no coffee, moderate amounts of coffee, high amounts of coffee, yada yada.
What they found is that the more the coffee consumption, the better the microbiome. But more specifically, there were very significant differences in what is called Bacteroides. Bacteroides is the bacteria that we pretty much know is associated with better metabolic health, better health outcomes, and healthier metabolic people—people that are active, people that eat well. Bacteroides is strongly correlated with that.
On the opposite end, there's something called Fusus. Now, Fusus is associated with obesity and other things, so it's not as good. Here's what's wild: sure, there could be polyphenols and things in coffee that are supporting the microbiome. I am inclined to think it's not necessarily that. I sure that plays a part, but I think that people who are consuming caffeine are likely a little more active.
Even if they're sedentary, it's making them more active than these people that don't consume it. So I think there's a metabolic component at play. I also think coffee is an appetite suppressant, which increases gut motility because you're giving your gut a break. So perhaps you're getting a little bit more time for digestion to occur, and that's good for the microbiome.
We don't have all the answers, but it seems as though coffee generally is good for the metabolism. Then we look at the mental health piece. This is a big study published in Nutrients with 14,400 some odd people. It found straight up that people who consumed more coffee ended up having better mental health. Four cups plus per day were associated with lower risks—the lowest risks of depression.
Now, this happens for a couple of reasons. For one, there is a clear dopaminergic effect of caffeine. I mean, you have coffee; it's going to increase this dopamine feel, and you're going to feel better. But coffee is pretty readily accessible, and I don't think we're running out of it anytime soon in terms of caffeine. So if that's going to help you get through your day, I think it's a net positive, especially when you look at the other effects.
Now, I'm sure that caffeine is still a problem to a certain degree if you're completely dependent on it, but if it does help you get through rough times, I mean, coffee's gotten me through some pretty rough times before, so there's merit there. The second piece is we do have chlorogenic acid; we do have these compounds in coffee that definitely could reduce systemic inflammation. There are very clear links there. Systemic inflammation is strongly correlated with depression and vice versa, so maybe there's something there. Maybe it's a double whammy.
A fun and interesting study that people probably haven't heard of is a 2012 study published in the Clinical Journal of Gastroenterology. It's interesting because they found that with this, coffee consumption—the more caffeine consumption, the less liver stiffness there was. Now, liver stiffness is associated with less ability for the liver to do its job. Look at like steatosis, for example, or fatty liver. You get into this scarring stage; once the liver is scarred, it can't do its job anymore; it gets stiffer and stiffer.
So when you're reducing liver stiffness, you're essentially improving the ability for your liver to do its job. This particular study found that three or more cups of coffee reduced liver stiffness. Do you think it's because it's increasing just metabolic flow, like things are operating faster, the liver is being used? I'm inclined to think that it's more about fatty acid oxidation because fat does tend to build in our liver, and oxidative stress tends to build in our liver.
If we're actually able to oxidize that fat at the liver level first, then that would make sense. Reducing fat mass overall is good for longevity and good for organ health, but specifically surrounding the liver region. Once the liver starts to gain fat around it, it starts to lose some of its function, and that's like the first line of defense when it comes down to our glucose levels and all these things.
So we don't know the full answer there, but this data is still quite interesting. I saved one of the best ones for last. This study I love because so many people will tell you that caffeine is bad for your heart; it's bad for longevity. Not really. In fact, when you look at cardiovascular disease, it's quite the opposite.
This study was published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. It took a look at over 449,000 people—almost a half a million people—and they looked at ground coffee, decaf coffee, and instant coffee in varying amounts: zero cups per day, one to three, three to five, five plus, etc. What they found is that ground coffee ended up having the best impact when it came to a reduction of cardiovascular disease—a 20% reduction in cardiovascular disease with ground coffee, a 6% reduction with decaf coffee, and a 9% reduction with instant.
What I find most interesting about this is that it doesn't seem to be a caffeine content because they were all similar in caffeine in the two groups of instant and ground. But what's interesting is that the decaf still had an impact, so it tells us that there's something with the antioxidants and the polyphenols that are in coffee. There's definitely something there.
It also tells us that instant coffee ends up denaturing a lot of those antioxidants just by the sheer nature of the heating and the processing, so we lose some of the effect there. We definitely find out that the antioxidants play a role; there's something there. But then the ground coffee, with a 20% reduction in cardiovascular disease risk, there's something happening there.
The lowest risk of cardiovascular disease came at about four to five cups of ground coffee per day. That's crazy! That's a lot of coffee for most people, and I don't recommend everyone goes out and does that, but there's definitely something there. It's not taxing your heart. As a matter of fact, there are even reductions in atrial fibrillation, so actually improvements in some of the heart function itself.
Now, the other thing is it probably seems it's more so the reduction in oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is a hallmark of aging; increased ROS is not good stuff. So if coffee is like the most antioxidant-rich beverage that we consume—probably the most concentrated amount of antioxidants most Americans at least are getting in their day—I think it's a net win.
But there's also another study; it's been a while since I referenced it, so I can't remember where it's published. Essentially, those that drink coffee had better metabolic health, but they also had less frailty. That could simply be the fact that those who drink coffee are going to be more active as they're older. So it's like a net balance we have to look at.
If someone's going to consume coffee, even if it could be potentially bad, but it allows them to get moving, that's what we want, right? Versus someone who, say, is not consuming coffee for their health, but then they're so tired they don't get up and do the things that they should do to get moving.
I, for one, am not opposed to caffeine. I do like to take periods of time away from it from now and then, but all in all, I think it's a net win if we use it responsibly. We'll see you tomorrow.