Coffee Lessens the Pain of Exercise

I found this story on the 53x11 Coffee website and though I should share with the masses.
That cup of coffee that many gym rats, bikers and runners swill before a workout does more than energize them. It kills some of the pain of athletic exertion, a new study suggests. And it works regardless of whether a person already had a coffee habit or not.
Caffeine works on a system in the brain and spinal cord (the adenosine neuromodulatory system) that is heavily involved in pain processing, says University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor Robert Motl. And since caffeine blocks adenosine, the biochemical that plays an important role in energy transfer and thus exercise, he speculated that it could reduce pain.
So the researcher, a former competitive cyclist, divided 25 fit, college-aged males into two distinct groups: subjects whose everyday caffeine consumption was extremely low to non-existent, and those with an average caffeine intake of about 400 milligrams a day, the equivalent of three to four cups of coffee.

Unexpected results
After completing an initial exercise test in the lab on a stationary bike to determine maximal oxygen consumption or aerobic power, subjects returned for two monitored high-intensity, 30-minute exercise sessions.
An hour prior to each session, cyclists - who had been instructed not to consume caffeine during the prior 24-hour period - were given a pill. On one occasion, it contained a dose of caffeine measuring 5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight (equivalent to two to three cups of coffee); the other time, they received a placebo.
During both exercise periods, subjects' perceptions of quadriceps muscle pain was recorded at regular intervals, along with data on oxygen consumption, heart rate and work rate.

"What we saw is something we didn't expect," Motl said. "Caffeine-naïve individuals and habitual users have the same amount of reduction in pain during exercise after caffeine (consumption)."
The results are detailed in the April edition of the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. Co-authors included Steven P. Broglio of the University of Illinois and Sigurbjorn A. Arngrimsson of the Center for Sport and Health Sciences, Iceland University of Education.
"Clearly, if you regularly consume caffeine, you have to have more to have that bigger, mental-energy effect," Motl said. "But the tolerance effect is not ubiquitous across all stimuli. Even brain metabolism doesn't show this tolerance-type effect. That is, with individuals who are habitual users versus non-habitual users, if you give them caffeine and do brain imaging, the activation is identical. It's really interesting why some processes show tolerance and others don't."
Regarding the outcome of the current research, he said, it may be that tolerance to caffeine plays no role in the way it diminishes pain during exercise.
Motl said one of the next logical steps for his research team would be to conduct studies with rodents in order to better understand the biological mechanism for caffeine in reducing pain.
"If we can get at the biological mechanism, we can begin to understand why there may or may not be this kind of tolerance."
Will it help you win?
Motl previously has conducted other studies on the relationship between physical activity and caffeine, and considered such variables as exercise intensity, dose of caffeine, anxiety sensitivity and gender. A future research direction might be to determine caffeine's effect on sport performance.
"We've shown that caffeine reduces pain reliably, consistently during cycling, across different intensities, across different people, different characteristics. But does that reduction in pain translate into an improvement in sport performance?" he said.
Meanwhile, the current research could prove encouraging for a range of people, including the average person who wants to become more physically active to realize the health benefits.
"One of the things that may be a practical application, is if you go to the gym and you exercise and it hurts, you may be prone to stop doing that because pain is an aversive stimulus that tells you to withdraw," Motl said. "So if we could give people a little caffeine and reduce the amount of pain they're experiencing, maybe that would help them stick with that exercise."

Jeremiah Study

As we near the end of our study in Jeremiah, there have been a few things to keep in mind. We started off in a pretty strange way by getting the understanding of how we are to live. Jeremiah 12: 5 really gives us a good idea of what God want from not only Jeremiah, but from us as believers in Christ as well: How can you compete with the horses if men have worn you out? Looking at the first twelve chapters, understanding God’s point of view here may be a little harsh. Jeremiah was being attacked physically, mentally and spiritually. Why would our heavenly father treat him in this fashion? For the simple fact that Jeremiah needed to be in God’s will for the long haul. Paul tells us that we need to run the race as if to win the prize and not all are willing to do that (2 Cor. 9:24).
Jeremiah learned much about doing things God’s way not by depending on his own strength. Not only did he follow God’s will, but we also found out there were “friends” who would look after him. Jeremiah knew when to accept help from others. The Egyptian, Ebed-Melek, came to Jeremiah’s aid at just the right time and was eventually rewarded for his efforts in saving Jeremiah (Jeremiah 39:16-18).
Jeremiah was not just a preacher, because he actually believed what he was preaching (Jer. 32). We wonder all the time what it would be like to hear the voice of God. Would we know it was really Him? Jeremiah had the type of relationship with God that at times was frustrating. We can see at time he does indeed get anger with God, but he never stays there. He was always willing to trust. Think back to when God told him to buy his uncle’s field in Anathoth. It seems like the perfect time to not buy real estate, but here is Jeremiah doing just what God told him to do. No matter what the circumstance (prison) or what was sitting on the land (Babylonians), he was willing to go with God’s plan and not his own.
We also had Jeremiah’s big show in the Temple (Jer. 35). The time God told him to go out and invite the Rekabites over for dinner and offer them wine to drink. Now the Israelites knew all about the Rekabites and wondered what Jeremiah was up to bringing them into the Temple to eat. But it was very much Jeremiah’s style to go big or not at all. One of the Rekabite ancestors told them not to drink wine, so they didn’t. When it comes to the Israelites, God’s word told them exactly how to live, yet they decided it wasn’t good for them and went their own way. The Rekabites were a great example of doing the right thing because they were told to do the right thing.
My favorite image from Jeremiah is when he was told to go to the Potter’s house and see what was going on there (Jer. 18). Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in My hands, house of Israel (Jer18: 6). Just because we make a mistake and don’t do what God best is for our lives doesn’t mean that it is over. Just as the potter did not throw away the malformed clay, God will not give up on us. Romans 8:38-39 tells us: For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We can rest on this understanding.