13 ms·

> Subjects ingested 3 mg/kg of caffeine or a placebo at 8am and 5pm 3mg/kg is over 250mg of caffeine for an average weight man. Twice a day makes that 500mg.

> Subjects ingested 3 mg/kg of caffeine or a placebo at 8am and 5pm 3mg/kg is over 250mg of caffeine for an average weight man. Twice a day makes that 500mg. An 8.4oz can of Red Bull contains 80mg of caffeine. They were giving these people an amount of caffeine equivalent to 6 cans of Red Bull. Not a perfect comparison because Red Bull contains other ingredients, but that's still a lot of caffeine. For another point of reference, that's 2.5 shots of 5 hour energy (200mg caffeine per bottle). To top it off, the subjects were caffeine-naive, so they had no caffeine tolerance. They must have been feeling extremely energetic. No wonder they burned more fat. I'm not sure this is going to translate to your casual coffee drinker or someone with a high caffeine tolerance.

watwut 6y ago
Yet another question is, whether or is even healthy. It might just be that not burning that fat more quickly can be healthier then drinking so much coffein.
snarfy 6y ago
3mg/kg for an average weight man is about 3 cups of coffee.
themolecularman 6y ago
Interestingly I've heard about a strong relationship between heart attacks and consumption of energy drinks like Monster/Red-Bull. I used to drink a lot of Red Bull and stopped as a result. But I sometimes think one of the reasons I haven't put on weight despite my lifestyle is because of my caffeine habits.
- SkyPuncher 6y ago
  Most energy drinks include other energy additives, which I think is where the dangers come from. I can no longer drink red bull because it gives me really bad heart palpitations. Meanwhile, I can pretty much drink coffee all day without issue.
  - retrac 6y ago
    Caffeine, at least in large doses, is somewhat stressful on the heart by itself. It increases respiration and blood pressure and heart rate. A strong cup of coffee can give me minor palpitations.
- SkyMarshal 6y ago
  Back in the late 00’s I discovered Redbull really helped me overcome after-lunch food-coma. I’d drink one right after lunch to help me get back to work and focus for the rest of the day. After about 6 months of this, one day I was sitting at my desk having just finished my afternoon Redbull, and felt my heart skip a beat, literally. Like a little mini-heart attack. Scared the shit out of me, and I quit Redbull cold turkey that day. At the time I was really into cycling, riding about 100 miles per week (50 on the weekend plus daily bike commute). I was in tip-top shape, with no family history of heart problems, and an otherwise normal, low-sugar, whole food diet. Never experienced that since, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are studies that find a link between super-high caffeine energy drinks and heart or other health problems.
  - dbsmith83 6y ago
    Ah, this is called an ectopic heart-beat (usually harmless). Back when I drank too much coffee and didn't sleep in my last year of college, I got a few of these. Now I'm a one-cup-a-day kind of guy, and it hasn't happened much anymore.
- krtkush 6y ago
  I was diagnosed with high BP very early in my life (23-24 yo). The doctor said it is okay to have everything in moderation but asked me to not touch energy drinks.
lmilcin 6y ago
I am pretty sure that not sleeping at all also increases fat burning as body uses less energy when asleep The fat burning might be from reaction of organism that is not used to a lot of daily caffeine ingestion. For example, when I don't use caffeine for a long time my heart rate increases when I increase amount of coffee I drink. But then goes back after some time (presumably when my body gets accustomed to it again). Also, this kind of research must be read with a little bit of scientific background. It is easy to get an impression author wanted to establish causation, but in reality this research only shows correlation, and correlation does not prove causation.
- sjg007 6y ago
  Poor sleep is associated with weight gain.
  - umanwizard 6y ago
    I wonder if that’s because sleepiness is associated with poor impulse control. I know when I’m super tired I tend to eat whatever I want the next day.
    - luxuryballs 6y ago
      That and you may be having an extra meal whereas you otherwise would have been asleep.
    - toyg 6y ago
      There is that and there is the “enforced fasting interval” that sleep is.
      - moron4hire 6y ago
        The first meal after sleeping through the night is called "break-fast", after all.
    - readme 6y ago
      it's because sleep regulates the hormones that control your appetite if you mean poor control of your body's natural drive to eat which is imperative to our survival, then sure very few people can consistently control this "impulse" -- the best way to control it is to get adequate sleep and regulate your hormones
raverbashing 6y ago
Yeah one can is my limit (let's say, for a 4h period). I can't imagine what would feel taking the equivalent of taking that amount all at once. Probably the usual effects (headache and severe dizziness) That being said, caffeine is a good pre-workout.
perrylaj 6y ago
Seems like a lot when put in terms of Redbull, but isn't really in the context of athletes and performance. 5mg/kg is a common number as a pre-event dose for endurance athletes, and science seems to be mixed on ideal due to large individual variation in tolerance, response, and metabolics[1]. There are many 'thermogenic' fat loss supplements that have 150mg+ per dose taken multiple times a day. Cyclists I know commonly take 400mg before a race to training session, and often top up over the course of the event if it's more than a couple hours. So I don't think the numbers reported are high, unless casual coffee is your basis comparison. But in the context of caffeine for fat loss, where supplements have high amounts, the numbers seem in line with common use. 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5752738/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5752738/
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  The subjects were caffeine-naive non-athletes. They had zero caffeine tolerance. 500mg is a huge amount for a caffeine-naive person, no matter how you look at it. No one goes from drinking zero caffeine to 6 Red Bulls per day without experiencing abnormally high stimulation.
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    I'm not sure you two are disagreeing?
  - Balgair 6y ago
    As someone that quit caffeine over quarantine, I cannot even imagine slurping half a gram of pure caffeine. I probably wouldn't sleep for a few days and I'm certain my teeth would chatter my filings out. I know it's an experiment and the people were consented, but man, that seems a bit ... mean. There's no way I can see having that much caffeine nowadays and not be a total wreck.
- SkyPuncher 6y ago
  > Seems like a lot when put in terms of Redbull, Redbull doesn't actually have that much caffeine. A typically, 8oz cup of coffee has more caffeine than a redbull. In fact, most "energy drinks" don't have that much caffeine. They have other ingredients that also provide energy.
bluedino 6y ago
240mg is pretty common for the canned energy drinks
carbocation 6y ago
Extrapolating from your comment, I guess we'd kind of want a blocked design that is placebo-vs-caffeine and exercise-vs-none. That would tell us whether there is just an additive effect of high-dose caffeine and exercise, or if somehow the caffeine is interactive with exercise (i.e., has a bigger effect in the exercise group than in the rest group).
sinsterizme 6y ago
A tall (smallest size) pyke roast from Starbucks is 235 mg of caffeine. A venti (what I normally get) is 410 mg.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  The smallest size at Starbucks is “short”, it's just not listed on the menu.
  - noobrunner 6y ago
    Haha, I just learned this recently. It's on the menu in their app. I always order short now when I am in a mood for "unhealthy" drink
Godel_unicode 6y ago
A grande (16oz) drip coffee from starbucks is over 300mg of caffeine. The problem with Red Bull is the sugar.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  How about sugar free energy drinks?
  - bserge 6y ago
    Just use caffeine pills.
ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
It's odd they didn't speak of caffeine itself as a supplement, and instead mentioned coffee. Caffeine is a pretty common ingredient in any pre-workout, and you can get 200mg pills online cheaply.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  Not that odd if you consider science writing should appeal to as many as possible. The study itself used these workout pills you mention which were made from green coffee beans: https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-020-00400-6#Sec2 https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-020-...
- yellowapple 6y ago
  It's also relevantly the "C" in the ECA stack (ephedrine, caffeine, aspirin), which is a well-known supplement mix for bodybuilding - one specifically intended for fat burn.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
Almost seems like you're trying to sensationalize it by changing it to Red Bull, something that's actually pretty low in caffeine once you put marketing aside. How about comparing it to Starbucks' regular hot coffee sizes? - Short - 180 mg - Tall - 260 mg - Grande - 330 mg - Venti - 415 mg Is drinking a 12oz Tall at Starbucks really dropping your jaw?
- have_faith 6y ago
  It drops my jaw that anyone drinks that regularly.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Well, this massive million drinker meta-analysis of coffee consumption (high levels, 5 cups a day) shows it significantly improves cardiovascular health. [1] > A nonlinear association between coffee consumption and CVD risk was observed in this meta-analysis. Moderate coffee consumption was inversely significantly associated with CVD risk, with the lowest CVD risk at 3 to 5 cups per day, and heavy coffee consumption was not associated with elevated CVD risk. [1] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/circulationaha.113.005925 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/circulationaha....
    - nwienert 6y ago
      What does it do to every other disease? Doesn't say much if it looks at a single factor outcome.
      - toxik 6y ago
        Suffice to say, if there were meaningful risks from drinking normal amounts of coffee, it would be known by now. Its main drawback is that it makes people nervous and jittery if taken in excess.
        ThrowawayP 6y ago
bosswipe 6y ago
mg/kg is a really weird unit to use without saying how many kg were consumed.
- carbocation 6y ago
  It's usually a unit of mg consumed per kg of body weight. (Hopefully 0 kg of which are being consumed.)
- detaro 6y ago
  When used in contexts like this, it's mg of substance per kilogram of body weight. (with the assumption that the effect on metabolism etc somewhat scales with body weight, at least for people that are otherwise similar)
  - bosswipe 6y ago
    Oh. Thank you that makes more sense.
erickhill 6y ago
If they truly had no caffeine tolerance, iirc back when I first started ingesting more than I was used to it would make me a bit sick to my stomach.
yellowapple 6y ago
> They must have been feeling extremely energetic. Perhaps even uncomfortably so: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qRuNxHqwazs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qRuNxHqwazs
enominezerum 6y ago
I quickly got addicted to Monster Energy drinks working at a Lowe's Hardware store across the street from a gas station; always been a caffeind. When the coffee ones came out I would do a 2 for and drink two during a break. Anyway, at 21 I decided to use Jack3d, back when it was damn near Meth, it had DMAA in it. I didn't know this but being the 250lb 6' guy I was, slinging grills and landscaping stuff all day, I bucked up and took the "max dose" of it the first time. Shit, I hit the gym, did extreme cardio on an elliptical for over an hour, lifted weights with some random ripped bros, and when my girlfriend came after work I stayed and ran further on the treadmill than her and her friend. Just the readouts from the elliptical and treadmill were almost 2200 calories. Even afterwards when we went home I couldn't wait for us to shower before laying into her I still was so wired. A year later she was talking about that night... Yea, I bet like hell someone that hasn't ever messed with stimulants can be turned sideways by them.

watwut 6y ago

Yet another question is, whether or is even healthy. It might just be that not burning that fat more quickly can be healthier then drinking so much coffein.

snarfy 6y ago

3mg/kg for an average weight man is about 3 cups of coffee.

themolecularman 6y ago

Interestingly I've heard about a strong relationship between heart attacks and consumption of energy drinks like Monster/Red-Bull. I used to drink a lot of Red Bull and stopped as a result. But I sometimes think one of the reasons I haven't put on weight despite my lifestyle is because of my caffeine habits.

SkyPuncher 6y ago
Most energy drinks include other energy additives, which I think is where the dangers come from. I can no longer drink red bull because it gives me really bad heart palpitations. Meanwhile, I can pretty much drink coffee all day without issue.
- retrac 6y ago
  Caffeine, at least in large doses, is somewhat stressful on the heart by itself. It increases respiration and blood pressure and heart rate. A strong cup of coffee can give me minor palpitations.
SkyMarshal 6y ago
Back in the late 00’s I discovered Redbull really helped me overcome after-lunch food-coma. I’d drink one right after lunch to help me get back to work and focus for the rest of the day. After about 6 months of this, one day I was sitting at my desk having just finished my afternoon Redbull, and felt my heart skip a beat, literally. Like a little mini-heart attack. Scared the shit out of me, and I quit Redbull cold turkey that day. At the time I was really into cycling, riding about 100 miles per week (50 on the weekend plus daily bike commute). I was in tip-top shape, with no family history of heart problems, and an otherwise normal, low-sugar, whole food diet. Never experienced that since, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are studies that find a link between super-high caffeine energy drinks and heart or other health problems.
- dbsmith83 6y ago
  Ah, this is called an ectopic heart-beat (usually harmless). Back when I drank too much coffee and didn't sleep in my last year of college, I got a few of these. Now I'm a one-cup-a-day kind of guy, and it hasn't happened much anymore.
krtkush 6y ago
I was diagnosed with high BP very early in my life (23-24 yo). The doctor said it is okay to have everything in moderation but asked me to not touch energy drinks.

lmilcin 6y ago

I am pretty sure that not sleeping at all also increases fat burning as body uses less energy when asleep The fat burning might be from reaction of organism that is not used to a lot of daily caffeine ingestion. For example, when I don't use caffeine for a long time my heart rate increases when I increase amount of coffee I drink. But then goes back after some time (presumably when my body gets accustomed to it again). Also, this kind of research must be read with a little bit of scientific background. It is easy to get an impression author wanted to establish causation, but in reality this research only shows correlation, and correlation does not prove causation.

sjg007 6y ago
Poor sleep is associated with weight gain.
- umanwizard 6y ago
  I wonder if that’s because sleepiness is associated with poor impulse control. I know when I’m super tired I tend to eat whatever I want the next day.
  - luxuryballs 6y ago
    That and you may be having an extra meal whereas you otherwise would have been asleep.
  - toyg 6y ago
    There is that and there is the “enforced fasting interval” that sleep is.
    - moron4hire 6y ago
      The first meal after sleeping through the night is called "break-fast", after all.
  - readme 6y ago
    it's because sleep regulates the hormones that control your appetite if you mean poor control of your body's natural drive to eat which is imperative to our survival, then sure very few people can consistently control this "impulse" -- the best way to control it is to get adequate sleep and regulate your hormones

raverbashing 6y ago

Yeah one can is my limit (let's say, for a 4h period). I can't imagine what would feel taking the equivalent of taking that amount all at once. Probably the usual effects (headache and severe dizziness) That being said, caffeine is a good pre-workout.

perrylaj 6y ago

Seems like a lot when put in terms of Redbull, but isn't really in the context of athletes and performance. 5mg/kg is a common number as a pre-event dose for endurance athletes, and science seems to be mixed on ideal due to large individual variation in tolerance, response, and metabolics[1]. There are many 'thermogenic' fat loss supplements that have 150mg+ per dose taken multiple times a day. Cyclists I know commonly take 400mg before a race to training session, and often top up over the course of the event if it's more than a couple hours. So I don't think the numbers reported are high, unless casual coffee is your basis comparison. But in the context of caffeine for fat loss, where supplements have high amounts, the numbers seem in line with common use. 1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5752738/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5752738/

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
The subjects were caffeine-naive non-athletes. They had zero caffeine tolerance. 500mg is a huge amount for a caffeine-naive person, no matter how you look at it. No one goes from drinking zero caffeine to 6 Red Bulls per day without experiencing abnormally high stimulation.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  I'm not sure you two are disagreeing?
- Balgair 6y ago
  As someone that quit caffeine over quarantine, I cannot even imagine slurping half a gram of pure caffeine. I probably wouldn't sleep for a few days and I'm certain my teeth would chatter my filings out. I know it's an experiment and the people were consented, but man, that seems a bit ... mean. There's no way I can see having that much caffeine nowadays and not be a total wreck.
SkyPuncher 6y ago
> Seems like a lot when put in terms of Redbull, Redbull doesn't actually have that much caffeine. A typically, 8oz cup of coffee has more caffeine than a redbull. In fact, most "energy drinks" don't have that much caffeine. They have other ingredients that also provide energy.

bluedino 6y ago

240mg is pretty common for the canned energy drinks

carbocation 6y ago

Extrapolating from your comment, I guess we'd kind of want a blocked design that is placebo-vs-caffeine and exercise-vs-none. That would tell us whether there is just an additive effect of high-dose caffeine and exercise, or if somehow the caffeine is interactive with exercise (i.e., has a bigger effect in the exercise group than in the rest group).

sinsterizme 6y ago

A tall (smallest size) pyke roast from Starbucks is 235 mg of caffeine. A venti (what I normally get) is 410 mg.

dragonwriter 6y ago
The smallest size at Starbucks is “short”, it's just not listed on the menu.
- noobrunner 6y ago
  Haha, I just learned this recently. It's on the menu in their app. I always order short now when I am in a mood for "unhealthy" drink

Godel_unicode 6y ago

A grande (16oz) drip coffee from starbucks is over 300mg of caffeine. The problem with Red Bull is the sugar.

thinkingemote 6y ago
How about sugar free energy drinks?
- bserge 6y ago
  Just use caffeine pills.

ApolloFortyNine 6y ago

It's odd they didn't speak of caffeine itself as a supplement, and instead mentioned coffee. Caffeine is a pretty common ingredient in any pre-workout, and you can get 200mg pills online cheaply.

thinkingemote 6y ago
Not that odd if you consider science writing should appeal to as many as possible. The study itself used these workout pills you mention which were made from green coffee beans: https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-020-00400-6#Sec2 https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-020-...
yellowapple 6y ago
It's also relevantly the "C" in the ECA stack (ephedrine, caffeine, aspirin), which is a well-known supplement mix for bodybuilding - one specifically intended for fat burn.

hombre_fatal 6y ago

Almost seems like you're trying to sensationalize it by changing it to Red Bull, something that's actually pretty low in caffeine once you put marketing aside. How about comparing it to Starbucks' regular hot coffee sizes? - Short - 180 mg - Tall - 260 mg - Grande - 330 mg - Venti - 415 mg Is drinking a 12oz Tall at Starbucks really dropping your jaw?

have_faith 6y ago
It drops my jaw that anyone drinks that regularly.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Well, this massive million drinker meta-analysis of coffee consumption (high levels, 5 cups a day) shows it significantly improves cardiovascular health. [1] > A nonlinear association between coffee consumption and CVD risk was observed in this meta-analysis. Moderate coffee consumption was inversely significantly associated with CVD risk, with the lowest CVD risk at 3 to 5 cups per day, and heavy coffee consumption was not associated with elevated CVD risk. [1] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/circulationaha.113.005925 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/circulationaha....
  - nwienert 6y ago
    What does it do to every other disease? Doesn't say much if it looks at a single factor outcome.
    - toxik 6y ago
      Suffice to say, if there were meaningful risks from drinking normal amounts of coffee, it would be known by now. Its main drawback is that it makes people nervous and jittery if taken in excess.
      - ThrowawayP 6y ago

bosswipe 6y ago

mg/kg is a really weird unit to use without saying how many kg were consumed.

carbocation 6y ago
It's usually a unit of mg consumed per kg of body weight. (Hopefully 0 kg of which are being consumed.)
detaro 6y ago
When used in contexts like this, it's mg of substance per kilogram of body weight. (with the assumption that the effect on metabolism etc somewhat scales with body weight, at least for people that are otherwise similar)
- bosswipe 6y ago
  Oh. Thank you that makes more sense.

erickhill 6y ago

If they truly had no caffeine tolerance, iirc back when I first started ingesting more than I was used to it would make me a bit sick to my stomach.

yellowapple 6y ago

> They must have been feeling extremely energetic. Perhaps even uncomfortably so: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qRuNxHqwazs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qRuNxHqwazs

enominezerum 6y ago

I quickly got addicted to Monster Energy drinks working at a Lowe's Hardware store across the street from a gas station; always been a caffeind. When the coffee ones came out I would do a 2 for and drink two during a break. Anyway, at 21 I decided to use Jack3d, back when it was damn near Meth, it had DMAA in it. I didn't know this but being the 250lb 6' guy I was, slinging grills and landscaping stuff all day, I bucked up and took the "max dose" of it the first time. Shit, I hit the gym, did extreme cardio on an elliptical for over an hour, lifted weights with some random ripped bros, and when my girlfriend came after work I stayed and ran further on the treadmill than her and her friend. Just the readouts from the elliptical and treadmill were almost 2200 calories. Even afterwards when we went home I couldn't wait for us to shower before laying into her I still was so wired. A year later she was talking about that night... Yea, I bet like hell someone that hasn't ever messed with stimulants can be turned sideways by them.