The Effects of Low Dose Buccal Administered Caffeine on RPE and Pain during an Upper Body Muscle Endurance Test and Lower Body Anaerobic Test.

AbstractTo date there have been a number of studies that have assessed the effects of caffeine on Rated Perceived Exertion (RPE) and Pain Scale scores during continuous exercise. Presently there is little information about the effects of caffeine on RPE and Pain Scale scores during short term, anaerobic and muscle endurance activity. The purpose of the present investigation was to assess the effects of low-dose caffeine administration on RPE and Pain Scale scores after the one-minute pushup test and the Wingate Anaerobic cycling test. Ten college-aged males were recruited to participate in the investigation. The subjects were given either a piece of caffeinated chewing gum designed to deliver 100 mg of Caffeine in a buccal manner, or a placebo gum with identical shape and flavoring in a double-blind, placebo controlled, repeated measures design. The subjects chewed the gum (caffeine or placebo) for five minutes to allow for caffeine absorption and subsequently performed the one-minute push-up test followed by the Wingate anaerobic test. Subjects responded to the standard Borg RPE scale and the Mosby 10-pt pain scale immediately after each test. The results of the study did not demonstrate any significant difference in performance on either assessment, nor in the responses to the pain scale or RPE scale (p>0.05). It appears based upon this data that low-dose buccal caffeine is neither an effective ergogenic aid nor analgesic for muscle endurance or anaerobic efforts.Keywords; physical exercise, supplementation, ergogenicCaffeine, the most widely used drug in Western society, is an easily accessible central nervous system stimulant that has minimal negative side effects and high social acceptability (Bellar & Judge, 2011). These factors, combined with the elimination of caffeine from the World Ann-Doping Agency's prohibited substance list on January 1 , 2004, have made caffeine quite popular amongst athletes competing in a range of sports (Desbrow & Leveritt, 2007). As a result, numerous investigations have examined caffeine's effect on athletic performance (Doherty & Smith, 2005; Graham, Hibbert, & Sathasivam, 1998; Van Soeren & Graham, 1998). The effects of caffeine have been reported to delay time to exhaustion at 70-85% of V02 max (Graham, et al.,1998; Van Soeren & Graham, 1998), lower scores of perceived exertion at submaximal aerobic exercise intensities (Doherty & Smith, 2005) and decrease time to complete set distances (Bridge & Jones, 2006). Although there is some debate as to the exact mechanisms responsible for the above cited ergogenic effects of caffeine on athletic performance, the most commonly established is adenosine receptor antagonism, which has been proposed to result in a range of effects both central and peripheral, such as augmented neurotransmission and diminished perceptions of fatigue and pain (Sinclair & Geiger, 2000). Caffeine has been hypothesized to have peripheral analgesic effects post exercise through the antagonism of adenosine receptors (Bellar, Kamimori & Glickman, 2011). In addition to inherent analgesic properties, caffeine has long been used in conjunction with other analgesics as an adjuvant (Renner et al., 2007; Sawynok, 2011). It has been shown to be an effective adjuvant analgesic with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) but to also have some intrinsic analgesic properties (Sawynok, 201 1). Caffeine has also been shown to have ergogenic effects for both endurance sports (Desbrow et al., 2011) and more intermittent and sprint based sports (Davis & Green 2009; Doherty, Smith, Hughes, & Davidson, 2004; Lee, Cheng, Lin, & Huang 2011). There have been a number of hypotheses offered to explain the possible mechanism behind the reported ergogenic effects of caffeine including increased calcium release from the sacroplasmic reticulum, phosphodiesterase inhibition and increased mobilization of free fatty acids (Davis & Green, 2009; Magkos &Kavouros, 2005). …