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| I am curious if caffeine gum producers will start marketing them as testosterone boosters, now. People's willingness to waste money on temporary increases of a figure on their labwork is amazing, after all. |
It has been a while that I've dissected a "testosterone booster"; for a good reason, that is. After all, there's
no convincing evidence that a 40% increase in natural testosterone levels will have any effect on the way you look or perform. So, even
if you happen to find a product that will actually work, your chances that you will get a return on that investment are... well, more jacked than that T-booster is going to get you ;-)
With that being said, I will, obviously, make an exception from the "ignore the monthly T-booster study"-rule and intend to cover the results of a recent study by scientists from the
Leeds Trinity University. Why is that? Well, it's about a testosterone booster most of you are already using, anyway.
For Caffeine, Timing Matters! 45 Min or More?
Caffeine Helps When Taken Intra-Workout, too
Coffee can Help You Get into Ketosis
Post-Workout Coffee Helps With DOMS
Coffee Brewing 101 (Optimal Health)
Quantifying the Benefits of Caffeine on Ex.
As a
SuppVersity reader, you will remember that the study at hand, in which Reynolds et al. tested the effects of chewing caffeine gum (CAF: 400 mg; 4.1 ± 0.5 mg/kg) or a placebo gum for five minutes on the performance and hormonal response to exercise, is by no means the first study to suggest that the 'right' dosage of caffeine can promote the exercise-induced increase in testosterone.
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| Figure 1: We do have good evidence that high dose caffeine can be too much of a good thing... at least if you measure "good thing" via the testosterone to cortisol ratio which will decrease after 800 mg by 14%; ± 21% (Beaven. 2008). |
I fact, caffeine increases testosterone dose-dependently, albeit with a concomitantly augmented increase in cortisol of which broscience indicates that it would counter the additional increase in "T" Beaven et al. observed with 800mg vs. 400mg of caffeine.
I am not sure if Reynolds et al. were aware of Beaven's previously discussed paper (see Figure 1), but with 400mg per gum, the UK-based scientists nailed what's probably the optimal dosage.
In their study, the scientists aimed at investigating the use of caffeinated gums during half-time in team on sports physiological (blood lactate, salivary hormone concentrations) and performance (repeated sprints, cognitive function) parameters.
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| Yes, I do suggest that it may be beneficial to drink these two and another two cups of coffee w/ lots of sugar after your workout - if you are an athlete, at least | more. |
Another new study confirms: Caffeine is a nutrient muscle-specific repartitioner. While caffeine has gotten a bad rep for promoting insulin resistance, it obviously doesn't do that in muscle. You will remember that several studies have shown that a post-workout coffee can speed up glycogen recovery and, most recently, scientists from the
High Point University came one step closer to explain the mechanism. In their study, they bathed myotubes in physiological levels of caffeine and found significant increases in GLUT4 (that's the glucose transporter) expression, glucose uptake and overall cell metabolism through mechanisms partially dependent on PPARβ/δ (Schnuck 2017).
To this ends, Reynolds et al. recruited players from the professional academy rugby union (n=14) for a double-blind, randomized, counterbalanced study.
Much to their own surprise, the authors did not record significant effects on either reaction time or exercise performance (40m sprint times).
The salivary testosterone levels, on the other hand, went through the roof... for the short period of time between the first and the second sprint test, that is and - as previously pointed out - alongside significant, albeit non-caffeine dependent increases in cortisol levels.
