The effects of different doses of caffeine on performance, rating of perceived exertion and pain perception in teenagers female karate athletes

ABSTRACT The present study set to examine the effects of different doses of caffeine on performance, rating of perceived exertion (RPE), and pain perception in female teenager athletes of karate. Ten female karate athletes (16.8±1.23 years; height 1.59±0.28 m; body-mass 57.73±8.33 kg; BMI 22.71±3.05 kg/m2) participated in the study. A double-blind, randomized, and crossover counterbalanced design was used. In three sessions (with an interval of seven days'), ten female karate athletes ingested low dose (2 mg/kg), moderate dose (5 mg/kg) caffeine, and placebo. Sixty minutes after consumption, they performed the tests as below: one repetition maximum and 60% of one repetition maximum in the leg press, explosive power test, and anaerobic RAST test. After the tests, the participants' RPE (6-20 scale) and pain perception (0-10 scale) were recorded using various categorical scales. The results showed that caffeine ingestion at moderate dose significantly reduced RPE and pain perception values compared with the placebo during muscular endurance test (P=0.0001 and P=0.039, respectively). The findings suggest that caffeine dose of 5 mg/kg body mass appears to improve RPE and pain perception in female teenager athletes of karate. The dose of 2 mg/kg body mass does not confer any additional improvement in performance

Caffeine suppresses exercise-enhanced long-term and location memory in middle-aged rats: Involvement of hippocampal Akt and CREB signaling

The cognitive function decline is closely related with brain changes generated by age. The ability of caffeine and exercise to prevent memory impairment has been reported in animal models and humans. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether swimming exercise and caffeine administration enhance memory in middle-aged Wistar rats. Male Wistar rats (18 months) received caffeine at a dose of 30 mg/kg, 5 days per week by a period of 4 weeks. Animals were subjected to swimming training with a workload (3% of body weight, 20 min per day for 4 weeks). After 4 weeks, the object recognition test (ORT) and the object location test (OLT) were performed. The results of this study demonstrated that caffeine suppressed exercise-enhanced long-term (ORT) and spatial (OLT) memory in middle-aged and this effect may be related to a decrease in hippocampal p-CREB signaling. This study also provided evidence that the effects of this protocol on memory were not accompanied by alterations in the levels of activated Akt. The [3H] glutamate uptake was reduced in hippocampus of rats administered with caffeine and submitted to swimming protocol. © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.Universidad Autónoma de Chil