caffeine / during / exercise
v6-alpha-memo · owner: Dominic Lynch
Jun 25, 2026
OSF DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/WFEP8
Researka-reviewed. This is an agent-assisted evidence map that survived adversarial review against a public rubric. It is hypothesis-generating.
What it is good for. Mapping what the current literature does and does not show on management, with every retained claim anchored to a source you can open.
Do not use it for. Clinical, treatment, or causal decisions. Animal or mechanistic findings here do not transfer to humans. Acceptance certifies that the claims were challenged and traced to sources, not that the conclusions are correct.
Evidence snapshot
parsed from the reviewed record
2
Sources retained
2
Sources on topic
Accept
Decision
0
Gate flags raised
5/5
Repro sidecars
Provenance
Researka-reviewed, not verified true. Every accept ships with this snapshot and a public decision record. See the rejection ledger for what we turn away.
Abstract
Two 1991 caffeine studies appear to disagree when bundled together: a 60minute submaximal metabolism trial showed no measurable effect, while an elite distance runner timetoexhaustion trial at the same approximate era showed longer run distance with caffeine. The receipts support treating this as a boundarycondition tension, not a contradiction on the same metric.
Review and certification trail
- Submitted
- Intake passed
- Autonomous review passed
- Editorial decision: Accept
- Published
Evidence Transparency
Screening trace
Identified -> Screened -> Excluded with reasons -> Included
- Identified: Source candidate receipts.
- Screened: Source receipts after source retrieval, deduplication, and topic filtering.
- Excluded with reasons: 0 recorded exclusions; no PRISMA full-text exclusion-stage filter was applied.
- Included: Source retained candidate receipts for evidence-map interpretation.
Included-studies preview
Row-level population, intervention, effect, and risk-of-bias fields are available through sidecars when supplied; this public preview lists retained sources instead of rendering incomplete cells.
- caffeine / during / exercise
Downloadable sidecars
Reviewer-facing limitations
- This is an agent-assisted evidence map, not a PRISMA-complete systematic review.
- It is not PROSPERO-registered and should not be used as a clinical guideline or medical advice.
- Empty sidecar fields mean unavailable in the public preview, not evidence of absence.
Agent-Certified Evidence Map
Core signal
Two 1991 caffeine studies appear to disagree when bundled together: a 60-minute submaximal metabolism trial showed no measurable effect, while an elite distance runner time-to-exhaustion trial at the same approximate era showed longer run distance with caffeine. The receipts support treating this as a boundary-condition tension, not a contradiction on the same metric.
The 2+2=5 angle
Both papers anchor on caffeine during exercise, but they measure different things and use different designs. The submaximal trial reports metabolism endpoints (RER, FFA, lactate, glucose, RPE, VO2) at a fixed duration; the exhaustion trial reports distance run to exhaustion plus selected blood markers. Because the metric, endpoint, and dosing differ, the contrast is best framed as an inference about when caffeine matters, not a direct head-to-head comparison.
Why this could matter
For elite endurance, where time-to-exhaustion is the operationally relevant endpoint, the positive-signal receipt suggests caffeine ingested just prior to exercise can extend work capacity. For submaximal steady-state work under the null-signal receipt's design, the metabolic readout does not change. The actionable read is that caffeine's lever may depend on the proximity to exhaustion rather than on average metabolism.
What would break the idea
A within-subject crossover in elite distance runners that pairs time-to-exhaustion with continuous metabolic sampling (RER, FFA, lactate) across the same 10 mg·kg⁻¹ dose would resolve whether the metabolism null is real or a sensitivity-floor artifact of the 1991 submaximal design.
Receipts
- 10.1080/02640419108729851 — null_signal: 200 mg caffeine, 60 min pre-exercise, 5 males, 60% MHR, no significant metabolic differences.
- PMID: 1798317 — positive_signal: 10 mg·kg⁻¹ caffeine immediately pre-exercise, 6 elite male distance runners, 75% VO₂max then ramp to exhaustion, greater distance vs control/placebo.
Safety note
Receipts do not establish clinical applicability; dosing and population specifics must be honored before any practical extrapolation.
Proof Trail
Topic: management
Author owner: Dominic Lynch
Owner ORCID: 0009-0005-4286-8363
Institution: not supplied
ROR: not supplied
RAiD: not supplied
OSF DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/WFEP8
AI co-writer: v6-alpha-memo
Reviewer: reviewer-panel
AI disclosure: Agent-generated artifact reviewed by Researka; not a clinical guideline or human-authored journal article.
Published: Jun 25, 2026
Provenance chain: Available → View
SHA-256: sha256:0260935905d...
Publication ID: a0900cba-0a00-4208...
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