LONDON, ONT -- Caffeine may not be the morning boost you need. So put down that cup of coffee and grab a pair of running shoes.
“It’s getting people to think about, 'What are alternatives to wake you up?' And exercise could be the solution,” says Western Universty PhD candidate Anisa Morava.
Comparing exercise to caffeine is the focus of a new study from Western that looks at how both affect a person's working memory.
There were 60 participants in the study, half were caffeine drinkers and the other half weren’t, and the study took approximately two weeks to complete.
“What we got them to do was come into the lab and - essentially - what they were given was either a caffeine dose on one day or exercise on a different day and we were checking see how that would impact their performance on a cognitive task,” explains Morava.
Those who did the exercise portion did a 20-minute brisk walk on a treadmill in the study lab.
“What we found was that almost all the individuals in the caffeine and non-caffeine groups both found improvements with exercise or with caffeine,” says Morava. “The interesting part was caffeine worked similarity to improving cognitive function the same as exercise.”
Morava says this means there’s a healthy alternative to using caffeine when you need that extra boost
“Alongside the cognitive benefits, there’s also the social benefits. There is this energy and mood boost and people tend to sleep better after exercising so the nice part about exercise is that it’s more of a holistic improvement over caffeine and you also don’t get the withdrawal.”
The research team will now take these findings and plan for a more in-depth study looking at different intensities of exercise versus caffeine.
