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Comment by perrylaj | Hacker News Reader

Seems like a lot when put in terms of Redbull, but isn't really in the context of athletes and performance. 5mg/kg is a common number as a pre-event dose for endurance athletes, and science seems to be mixed on ideal due to large individual variation in tolerance, response, and metabolics[1]. There are many 'thermogenic' fat loss supplements that have 150mg+ per dose taken multiple times a day.

Cyclists I know commonly take 400mg before a race to training session, and often top up over the course of the event if it's more than a couple hours. So I don't think the numbers reported are high, unless casual coffee is your basis comparison. But in the context of caffeine for fat loss, where supplements have high amounts, the numbers seem in line with common use.

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5752738/

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> Seems like a lot when put in terms of Redbull,

Redbull doesn't actually have that much caffeine. A typically, 8oz cup of coffee has more caffeine than a redbull.

In fact, most "energy drinks" don't have that much caffeine. They have other ingredients that also provide energy.

In the industry the other ingredients are called “pixie dust”.

The heavy lifting is done by the caffeine.

And anyone without a shockingly low caffeine tolerance also knows that one of the main ingredients in energy drinks is marketing.

Red Bull does nothing to most people that a cup of black coffee wouldn’t do. But the placebo effect is a helluva drug.

Are you sure about that? I drink coffee all day long and in the evenings too. Doesn't affect me much. But some of the energy drinks gets me completely hyper so that I can't sleep.

The subjects were caffeine-naive non-athletes. They had zero caffeine tolerance.

500mg is a huge amount for a caffeine-naive person, no matter how you look at it. No one goes from drinking zero caffeine to 6 Red Bulls per day without experiencing abnormally high stimulation.

As someone that quit caffeine over quarantine, I cannot even imagine slurping half a gram of pure caffeine. I probably wouldn't sleep for a few days and I'm certain my teeth would chatter my filings out. I know it's an experiment and the people were consented, but man, that seems a bit ... mean. There's no way I can see having that much caffeine nowadays and not be a total wreck.

I'm not sure you two are disagreeing?

Yes, this is absolutely a normal amount. I'm an amateur/hobbyist marathon runner, and I usually take about 300mg pre-race in the form of coffee, and top up another 100mg in the form of a gel about once per hour. This is roughly in line with the amounts that are recommended by most race-day nutrition plans.

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