Caffeine Exercise Warning
January 16th 2006
High caffeine sports drinks could prove damaging to athletes, researchers warned today. A new study suggests that caffeine can have a directly damaging effect on the heart during exercise.
Researchers claimed that although caffeine is stimulating, it has the opposite effect on the pumping of blood to the heart.
The findings come from a study of 18 fit young adults using PET scans to examine the flow of blood to the heart.
Researchers found that while the volunteers were resting, caffeine made no difference to the flow of blood to the heart.
But after exercise, the researchers found that taking caffeine significantly reduced the flow of blood to the heart, according to a report in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Researcher Dr Philipp Kaufmann, of the University Hospital, Zurich, Switzerland, said: "I now would not recommend that any athlete drink caffeine before sports. It may not be a physical stimulant, and may even adversely affect physical performance. It may not be as harmless as we thought before, particularly if you suffer from coronary artery disease or if you are in the mountains.
"We now have good evidence that, at the level of myocardial blood flow, caffeine is not a useful stimulant. It may be a stimulant at the cerebral level in terms of being more awake and alert, which may subjectively give the feeling of having better physical performance."
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