Optimize Your Hydration: Caffeine
Written By: Courteney Benjamin, Head of Product at sum. and Assistant Professor at Samford University, 5/1/2024
Caffeine is by far one of the most well-studied and documented performance-enhancing supplements on the market. Whether you get your caffeine from coffee, an energy drink, or a caffeine supplement, understanding how caffeine has the potential to impact your hydration and performance is critical.
The first item to put to rest is this myth: caffeine does NOT cause dehydration. If any of you had an experience like me, you were told at some point in your life by your parent or sports coach that you were not allowed to have caffeine or coffee on game day because it would “dehydrate” you. Thankfully, science has provided substantial evidence that this is simply not the case.
“caffeine does NOT cause dehydration”
In a review paper that was published in 2008, the authors found 41 studies that investigated the impact of caffeine on hydration status and concluded that caffeine intake up to 400 mg per day was not associated with dehydration, even when participants were involved in exercise. Caffeine plays virtually no role in your hydration status. In fact, the fluid you consume with your caffeine is contributing to your overall fluid intake.
Now that we know that caffeine doesn’t cause dehydration, how do we determine how much caffeine to consume to improve cognitive or physical performance? The research is pretty clear that the optimal range of caffeine consumption is 3-6 mg/kg of body mass of caffeine about 45-60 minutes before your workout.
The sum. app has simplified the caffeine intake recommendations as much as possible by providing you with recommendations based on body mass on the app interface.
“the optimal range of caffeine consumption is 3-6 mg/kg of body mass of caffeine about 45-60 minutes before your workout”
References
Sport Nutrition. Third. Human Kinetics; 2019.
Kerksick, C.M., Wilborn, C.D., Roberts, M.D. et al. ISSN exercise & sports nutrition review update: research & recommendations. J Int Soc Sports Nutr 15, 38 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12970-018-0242-y
Guest NS, VanDusseldorp TA, Nelson MT, Grgic J, Schoenfeld BJ, Jenkins NDM, Arent SM, Antonio J, Stout JR, Trexler ET, Smith-Ryan AE, Goldstein ER, Kalman DS, Campbell BI. International society of sports nutrition position stand: caffeine and exercise performance. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2021 Jan 2;18(1):1. doi: 10.1186/s12970-020-00383-4. PMID: 33388079; PMCID: PMC7777221.