Caffeine Experiment Research Paper

However, our prediction that caffeine consumption is a factor responsible increasing respiration rate and pulse rate was not observed but rather, results imply that caffeine does not have a visible effect on short-term exercise performance. Therefore, the alternate hypotheses are rejected in favour of the null. is This may be because caffeine only has a positive effect in prolonged, intense exercise that last up to 2 hours (Hogervorst 2008). As respiratory rate and pulse rate are just simple measures of exercise performance, the experiment does not accurately determine whether caffeine ingestion increases power (force of muscles), or endurance (time rate) of exercise performance. Furthermore, in parallel with Kalmar & Cafarelli’s (1999) study,

2008). In other words, there is an interaction between caffeine intake and muscle mass that determines pulse rate and in this experiment, muscle mass was a variable that was not accounted for. Furthermore, the resting pulse rate response to caffeine consumption prior to exercise is considered one of the most variable parameters of those in the study. Because this experiment measured resting pulse rate less than one hour before exercise, it is not completely reliable as a study by Bailey (1989) similarly suggested the implications of pulse rate variability to be a factor of the fluctuating results across subjects despite

Previous studies on the effects of caffeine on aerobic and anaerobic exercise have revealed elevated blood pressure at fatigue in the caffeine condition compared to the placebo condition, which translates to cells requiring more oxygen thus higher respiration rates required for oxygen uptake (Bailey 1989). Controversially, a study on habitual caffeine ingestion responses to exercise have found that subjects in the habitual coffee condition had reduced respiratory rate during exercise compared to the placebo condition. However this may mean that habitual caffeine intake decreases the body’s sensitivity to caffeine thus have no effect on exercise. In this experiment, subjects were required to be daily coffee drinkers so the concept of caffeine desensitivity could be an explanation for the similar measurements in respiratory rate in both conditions (Bangsbo et al.