we know more about the molecular structure of caffeine than the surface of our skin no that totally made that up but we do know a ton about caffeine it's one of the most studied ergogenic AIDS if not literally the most studied we've been looking at it for decades and we know that it has positive impacts and we know how it works but what can we add to it to make it even better to make it better for cognitive function to make it better for fat burning to make it better for energy let's just jump right
into it the first one is one that's talked about a lot but it's kind of a misnomer because people look at the wrong way adding fats to caffeine so adding fats to your coffee like adding butter to your coffee or whatever the idea behind making a bulletproof coffee is simple like it's supposed to give you more energy supposed to be more cognitive whatever but if you just add butter to coffee all that's really doing is slowing down the potential absorption of the caffeine which has an impact but by and large the main effect you're getting
from a bullet proof coffee or adding fat to coffee is the MCT oil MCTS are rapidly digested which means it's quick energy without a glucose Spike it's a shorter chain fat which means it breaks down super fast in fact it absorbs directly into the portal vein and goes directly into the liver so you get immediate energy from it it absorbs so fast that it actually causes an adrenaline Spike caffeine causes an adrenaline Spike so you get a double whammy adrenaline Spike which can a help you burn fat but B makes you alert and makes you
ready to rock that's why they work so synergistically but don't just take my word for it there was a study published in the international Journal of obesity and related metabolic disorders that had subjects consume one of two diets both diets were 40% fat but one diet was 67% MCT oil and the other diet was largely longchain triglycerides coming from Tallow so saturated fat now both groups had decent results overall but with they found is that the MCT oil group had an increase in energy expenditure they overall burned more calories and the calories that they burned
were much more from fat they had a major increase in fat oxidation caffeine mobilizes fat if MCT oil helps us use fat better that is a tremendous Synergy not only for weight loss but also for using fats effectively and getting that mental feel that we want so it's a great combination with minimal calories the next one is carnitine this is really cool cuz carnitine gets thrown under the bus way way way too much say we don't need it because we produce it and we have enough that's false most of us that are exercising deplete our
carnitine stores and even if we have them there might be some metabolic dysfunction that's making it so we're not using it properly the cool thing is carnitine has a very synergistic effect with caffeine because once again caffeine mobilizes fat carnitine shuttles the fat into the cell so you have lipolysis mobilization and oxidation burning there's a study published in the journal nutritional sciences and vitaminology I didn't even know that was a word but apparently it is and what they did is they took a look at caffeine ingestion then separately carnitine ingestion and then separately co-ingestion caffeine
and carnitine they found that carnitine alone improved endurance performance but then when they looked at aine and carnitine co-ingested it was really really cool they actually had improvements across all the different things that they looked at improvements in endurance improvements in fat oxidation they also had improvements in cognitive there was a lot of cool stuff and they saw there was an increase in non-esterified carnitine and total carnitine in the urine which suggests that carnitine was helping the body utilize more fat because you dispose of the non-esterified carnitine after it's kind of been used as a
transport system so what this implied was that when caffeine and carnitine were mixed it increased the amount of fat getting shuttled into the cell to be used as fuel which absolutely explains why the endurance group had success with carnitine because endurance work is predominantly fat-based work so the carnitine improved that caffeine and carnitine double whammy you're increasing the mobilization of the fat and increasing the oxidation of it who doesn't want that then there was a separate study published in clinical medicine that found that carnitine alone actually improved cognitive function especially in those with neurod degenerative
conditions so it's good for the brain even by itself this next one is really wild and you're going to hate me for saying it because it goes against the grain of some of the stuff I've talked about before when you're looking at sweeteners to put in your coffee typically we opt for zero calorie sweeteners we probably go for like a Splenda or an aspartame or a Stevia or a monk fruit or maybe we go for cane sugar or AI or something I'm not saying you shouldn't have the stevia or shouldn't have the monk fruit I
think the non-nutritive sweeteners like that are probably the best case but believe it or not adding honey has some additional benefits that are starting to shine through in really new research there was a study that was published in the journal nutrients and it was a big review of a lot of different papers and I'm going to read you an excerpt from the abstract so you just know how clear it is honey enhances insulin sensitivity that further stabilizes blood glucose levels and protects the pancreas from overstimulation brought on by insulin resistance in other words the antioxidant
effects from the honey actually had a positive impact on insulin sensitivity and improved insulin resistance now not all honey is created equal okay you can get garbage honey that's pure sugar but you can also get higher quality honey like Manuka Honey or some of these other just better wild Honeys that have higher antioxidant profiles I think we undervalue the importance of antioxidants and polyphenols and whatnot in our food and how that impacts glucose it's not just about the sheer macronutrient for what it's worth I put a link down below for Thrive Market they're an online
membership based grocery store and that's a 30% off discount link for your whole grocery order even if you want to get $500 worth of Honey or something but then it gets delivered to your doorstep you can do the rest of your grocery shopping 30% off plus a free gift when you use that link down below free $50 gift so it's down below first line of the description this next one is my personal favorite it's one that I've used for a long time and you have to get the ratio right so it's theanine and if you
have green tea there's naturally occurring theing in it however it's not quite enough to really get a huge benefit uh you could add it to Coffee in a powder form you could just take a capsule but here's how it works theing does a couple things for one it sort of inhibits the glutamatergic response so it makes it so the brain doesn't get over stimulated kind of almost numbs the brain into stimulus in some ways but the other thing is coffee and caffeine in general constricts our vessels so we have Vaso constriction where we have decreases
in blood flow while theanine is a vasodilator so it counteracts the effects of that now additionally if you suffer from messed up sleep as a result of having even too much caffeine early in the day it's a very real thing it can affect your slow wave sleep theanine could come to the rescue theanine seems to counteract the negative effect of caffeine on your slow wave sleep you can't have 500 Mig of caffeine and then take athine with it right before bed that's not going to do anything I'm talking about if you have a bunch of
caffeine in the morning and then you have theanine at night it can help counteract it but you can also take theanine with caffeine to increase your tolerance so it makes it so you don't develop a tolerance so you don't have to keep increasing your caffeine content it's pretty wild but now let's get to the cool research that was published in nutritional Neuroscience that looks at the co-ingestion of caffeine and theanine so they gave gave participants caffeine or caffeine plus theanine 50 Mig of caffeine 100 Mig of theanine they found at 60 and 90 minutes caffeine
increased subjective alertness no surprise but they found at 60 and 90 minutes that caffeine plus theanine improved not only subjective alertness but it also improved task switching now additionally they found that there was a significant decrease in the susceptibility to distraction at 60 and 90 minutes so caffeine plus theanine means laser focus ability to switch tasks and not have distractions bother you it's a very real thing so what I recommend is for every 50 milligrams of caffeine have 100 milligrams of theanine so if you have a cup of coffee have about 200 if you have
a Monster energy drink with 200 milligrams hope you don't do that because that stuff is junk but if you do add like 400 Mig of theanine that is kind of the nice ratio there sort of a 1 to2 caffeine to theine ratio the last one I want to talk about is cinnamon and this can be added in along with any of these cinnamon is not going to increase the fat burning effect but it's going to decrease the negative aspects unfortunately there's a lot of research out there that is kind of suggesting that too much caffeine
can decrease insulin sensitivity it's a real thing and we do need to accept it too much caffeine is a problem but what's cool is that there's some research surrounding cinnamon there was a study that found that 500 Mig of cinnamon reduced insulin resistance lowered glucose lowered your hba1c and reduced body fat as well as visceral body fat so not only are there blood markers but body composition values that improve as well so maybe adding cinnamon to your coffee because of the antioxidants and anti-inflammatory effects maybe it's having this effect in the short term too in
vitro studies are demonstrating that cinnamon has an anti-inflammatory effect which is probably what is responsible for all these benefits that we're seeing in this other study so as always you can level up your coffee you don't need to just have it straight black you can do some really cool things to get more out of it I'll see you tomorrow
