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Caffeine Reduces Exercise Pain by Michael Childs |
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That cup of coffee in the morning
does more than wake you up. It can also help you feel less pain
during your morning workout.
In a study published last August in the Journal of Pain, researchers reported that caffeine reduced
thigh muscle pain during cycling exercise.
Participants in the study, 16 nonsmoking young adult men, cycled for 30 minutes on two separate
days. The exercise intensity was the same on both days and purposefully set to make the riders’
thigh muscles hurt.
The cyclists took either a caffeine pill or a placebo one hour before the exercise. They reported
feeling substantially less thigh pain after taking caffeine compared with the placebo.
This suggests that prior reports showing that caffeine improves performance during endurance
exercise might be explained in part by caffeine’s hypoalgesic or pain reducing properties, said
Patrick O’Connor, UGA professor of exercise science and a member of the research team.
“Not all analgesics or combinations [such as acetaminophen and caffeine] are effective for every
type of pain or every individual,” he said. “Much of this is due to biological variation
among people in receptors for the drugs as well as variation in pain receptors in different body
tissues.”
Caffeine also seems to work less well for heavy caffeine users, O’Connor said.
The research team previously had learned that aspirin, though commonly used to treat muscle pain,
did not reduce pain produced by vigorous exercise.
“Muscle contractions produce a host of biochemicals that can stimulate pain. Aspirin blocks only
one of those chemicals,” O’Connor said. “Apparently the biochemical blocked by aspirin has little
role in exercise-induced muscle pain.”
“The next step is to learn how caffeine helps people feel less muscle pain during exercise,” said
the study’s lead author, Robert Motl, a University of Illinois kinesiology professor. “Evidence
suggests that caffeine works by blocking the actions of adenosine, however, we don’t know yet
whether the caffeine is acting on muscles or the brain.”
For more information, contact Patrick O’Connor at poconnor@coe.uga.edu.
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Research
Communications, Office of the VP for Research, UGA
For comments or for information please e-mail the editor: jbp@ovpr.uga.edu To contact the webmaster please email: ovprweb@uga.edu
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