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I wrote a satirical post last year on coffee, on it being both good and bad. The problem is coffee beans is a food which has many ingredients, including caffeine. It also depends on the food combinations, as every body is different.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my coffee, or rather my Caffè Macchiato caldo.
Here are another two “contradicting” Canadian studies.
With respect to the timing of consumption, coffee is good and coffee is bad. You choose.
Coffee is Good
From cbc.ca: (the bold highlights are my notes)
Drinking lots of coffee after a strenuous workout while consuming fuel-replenishing carbohydrates can help accelerate muscular recovery, according to a new study.
New research showed that athletes who consumed carbs and drank caffeine had 66 per cent more glycogen in their muscles four hours after working out, versus athletes who consumed carbs alone.
Glycogen, or stored glucose, helps power muscles.
<snip>
The caffeinated drink had caffeine levels equal to five or six cups of coffee
Coffee is Bad
From the University of Guelph (2008 study):
Using two types of cereal — one with low levels of sugar and one with moderate levels — Graham examined the difference in response when healthy male subjects drank caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee one hour before eating breakfast.
The study, which was published this week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, showed the blood-sugar response was higher for the subjects who drank the caffeinated coffee.
"Caffeine interferes with our body’s response to insulin," said the human health and nutritional science professor. "It makes us resistant to insulin which in turn makes our blood-sugar levels go higher."
Blood sugar levels in subjects who ate the low-sugar cereal jumped 250 per cent higher when they drank caffeinated coffee than when they drank decaf.
In fact, combining the caffeinated coffee and low-sugar cereal resulted in higher blood-sugar levels than when the subjects drank decaffeinated coffee before eating the cereal with more sugar, said Graham.
"This shows that the combination of foods you eat affects how your body responds."
Moral of the story:
- Scientific research is great, but often microscopic as they do not include other external factors
- Every body is different, from the energy you burn (fat vs glycogen), the energy you store (fat vs glycogen), and to the way certain foods affect your body.
Jimson Lee
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Frankly, every few years there’s studies saying different things about coffee.
From my own experience and that of people I have trained with, caffeine itself has its uses (whether its in pill form or through coffee) for performance purposes, as long as you cycle it so your body does not get used to it.
Personally, I rarely drink coffee because I hate the taste. When I do drink it though, it’s 45-60 min before my training session and in general, it gives me a boost in performance. Might be placebo, or might be true. I’d wage that your mileage may vary with it.