Transcript
Your genes could impact how fast your body processes caffeine, and whether it can help or hurt your workouts. Do you have that one friend who could down three cups of coffee at 8 p.m. and still manage to be asleep by 10, but you have one cup by two and you're up all night? We all have an enzyme called CYP1A2, a bit of a mouthful, and it helps our body break down all sorts of chemicals, ranging from hormones like estrogen and melatonin, to toxins from cigarette smoke, to drugs like Tylenol and ecstasy. And it's responsible for most of our caffeine breakdown. The most studied gene affecting it is this guy. And there are three camps that you could fall into, fast metabolizer, or a fast metabolizer, medium metabolizer and slow metabolizer. In this study, researchers took 101 male athletes, and over four visits they gave them a small caffeine dose, a large caffeine dose, or a placebo, and then had them bike 10 kilometers. The results were fascinating. For the fast metabolizers, the more caffeine they had, the faster they biked. Makes sense. But for the slow metabolizers, the caffeine actually slowed them down. At the higher caffeine dose, their average cycling time was increased by two and a half minutes. And for the medium metabolizers, there was barely any impact of caffeine at all. I looked at my genes in my 23 and me data Which, if you know me, makes sense. Where do you fall? Next up, how caffeine in genetics impacts your blood pressure.
Additional notes
Do you feel like caffeine helps or hurts your workouts, and are you a fast or slow processor? BONUS Question: Do you have ADHD? (This study didn’t look at that, but other data indicate it could influence things! Study: Caffeine, CYP1A2 Genotype, and Endurance Performance in Athletes DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000001596 #science #genetics #learnontiktok #tiktoklearningcampaign
References
- Caffeine, CYP1A2 Genotype, and Endurance Performance in Athletes. DOI: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000001596. Source: https://doi.org/10.1249/MSS.0000000000001596