It might be hard to resist having a tasty cup of coffee when it comes to our daily routines but having some coffee after drinking pre-workout formula can have dangerous effects on our health. Pre-workout supplements have extreme caffeine levels! If you drink the pre-workout formula and follow it with a cup of coffee, you could have a caffeine overload!
The safety of drinking coffee after pre-workout supplements is affected by crucial issues like age, body weight, fitness, genetics, and the time between consumption. It can lead to anxiety, insomnia, high blood pressure, bladder irritation, headaches, and stress. Decaffeinated drinks are safer.
If the combined effect of the caffeine from coffee and pre-workout is dangerous, why do some people feel comfortable enough doing it? Is it because they need the boost in energy so severely that they don’t mind the danger, or is it because they researched it sufficiently? Let me show you what research indicates, the variables in safety, and the pros and cons?
Can You Safely Have Coffee After Pre-workout Supplements?
There might be many brands of pre-workout with great variance of ingredients. It is best to check the labels on the containers and do some comparative analysis to match what works for your exercise and coffee consumption routines.
Consult a medical practitioner referencing the ingredients and quantities to confirm product safety in the context of your health and the long-term issues. Timing your consumption is a significant issue.
Having food and timing it for effect is not always part of amateur development, and manufacturers may not necessarily include these timeframes for best results on their packages. A pre-workout consumption timeframe might mean 30 minutes, while in another, it might mean 10.
There are also ways to lose energy before you start your workout. You might have to drive to the gym or do other physical labor, burning calories. That might be a little warm-up for some. Contextualizing those processes is essential. Some might use their pre-workout formula to supplement their diets.
Mixing a little formula with your coffee enhances its taste and nutritional value. Loading your system according to manufacturer instructions is essential, but in some senses, the way that people expend energy depends on more than their innate design.
Having a highly varied set of routines, with many changes to your day, can lead you to eat less food. In that context, consuming coffee after waiting quite a while might be beneficial when the peak of the caffeine effect occurs. Using formula can enhance those daily calisthenic-related muscles.
Timing The Effect Of Caffeine And Arginine In Pre-workout
All of the time-oriented references in this article relate to the dosage, your metabolism, sensitivity to the ingredients, the nature of your workout sessions, and the crucial factors mentioned earlier.
Pre-workout will be essentially efficient between 30 minutes and 2 hours. The caffeine formula peak effect occurs after about 60 minutes and with arginine between 60–90 minutes.
Arginine widens blood vessels, increases blood flow, and has a 30 to 120-minute half-life. The caffeine half-life is about 5 hours. The most intense effect is usually after one hour, with an overall time frame of between one and a half and nine and a half hours.
These two different half-lives give an overall effect of about 30 minutes to 2 hours. If you have had the supplement and want to have a cup of coffee, you have to time it safe enough for when the peaks happen.
However, coffee is most effective after about 60 minutes, as well. Finding the right balance depends on whether you need to have a compounded effect for some reason. Maybe you mistimed your supplement dosage and missed the peak effect when your workout started.
If you intend to exercise longer or take a break, referencing the one-hour peak in coffee and caffeine-focused supplements can be practical.
These kinds of drops in caffeine level might justify having some coffee. Using coffee and a supplement might be safe enough if the latter has little or no caffeine, but most supplements have caffeine as an integral component.
Compounding Caffeine Intake Can Hurt You
We have to be careful not to have coffee with high caffeine pre-workout soon after because it can lead to caffeine toxicity. Caffeine levels in coffee are much lower and safer than in most pre-workout. Studies also show that lower body weight people might be at higher risk.
When Is It Safe To Have Coffee After Pre-workout Formula?
- Confirm whether all the ingredients are listed and what the exact serving sizes are
- Research the ingredients and verify any health-related threats
- Do not use supplements with blends that have proprietary names but no listing of those ingredients and grams per serving
- Use products that have third-party validation by Labdoor, Eurofins Scientific, or another organization
- Consult a doctor
- Only have one serving per day
- Do not use more than one supplement containing caffeine
- Always follow the instructions
- Use 3 to 6 milligrams per kilogram of your body mass.
What Doctors Say About Pre-workout Supplements
The primary issue is that supplements like these have not undergone sufficiently intense research to identify long-term effects. Ingredients in the supplements may have adverse side effects when combined with caffeine, but not enough information exists for better government control over the usage.
It is legal for manufacturers of these products to add whichever ingredients they want, provided that they are not banned substances. Companies can legally make claims about the product, as long as they do not state that it cures, treats, or prevents specific illnesses which it cannot.
Yet, government agencies that test these supplements do exist. It’s much safer to restrict your buying to the products tested by NSF International or U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP).
Mixing Caffeine, Artificial Sweeteners, And Sugar Alcohols
Even if the supplement does not have high caffeine, artificial sweeteners and sugar alcohols are often present. Toxic substances like these can be harmful to the consumer, causing abdominal discomfort, flatulence, and diarrhea, much as caffeine does.
The combined effect of first consuming a low or zero caffeine supplement, followed by drinking coffee, will not solve the problem unless the supplement does not contain the wrong ingredients. Therefore, it is better to check with a medical practitioner for the safest answer.
Is It Better To Use Decaffeinated Coffee With Supplements?
Decaffeinated coffee usually only has 2 mg of caffeine, while regular coffee has 97 mg. It is government approved in the context of issues that might trouble people, like whether solvents in the processing are making the product
unsafe.
You could also use decaffeinated pre-workout supplements instead. The ingredients may work differently per brand and person, but the health benefits are ultimately valuable.
Conclusion
It can be highly unsafe to use coffee too soon after taking pre-workout supplements because pre-workout has extremely high caffeine levels. However, if the pre-workout ingredients are not toxic, you could still use coffee or formula with lower caffeine.
References
- https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/coffee-before-workout
- https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspor.2020.574854/full
- https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness/how-long-does-pre-workout-last
- https://greatist.com/fitness/coffee-before-workout
- https://www.cnet.com/health/nutrition/is-coffee-a-good-preworkout
- https://www.ncausa.org/Decaffeinated-Coffee
