Does Caffeine Cause Muscle Cramps

Audio Transcript

Coach Laura McLean: Hey everyone. I’m here with you for this latest episode of Extra Kick brought to you by Runners Connect. Thanks so much for joining me today.

If you have a question that you’d like one of our expert coaches to answer in an upcoming episode, you can submit it at runnersconnect.net/daily.

We’d love to help you train smarter and faster, so please don’t hesitate to ask whatever has you curious.

Today’s question comes from George in Northern Ireland. He says, “Have you come across any research that suggests the connection between intake of caffeine and muscle cramps? I’m asking because in October I ran a marathon.

My tune up races and my early pace suggested that I was set for a personal best time. Twice in the race I got severe cramps in my leg.

The cramps in each case started about 15 to 20 minutes after I had taken a caffeinated gel. That was about an equivalent of two shots of expresso.

Each time the cramps started after I took the gel and after about three miles of running, the cramp passed over and I got back to normal speed.

At the time I didn’t connect it with the gels as I thought it was a misfortune, but looking at the details Strava records afterwards, I could see the cramps were synchronized with the intake of the gel and [and it seemed to be plausible that as the 00:02:48] caffeine passed out of my systems, the cramps stopped.

I take it that the caffeinated gel was the one different thing I did in that marathon compared to different marathons.

Laura: Hey George. Sorry to hear that your experience and cramping in the marathon. It is a tough and long event and many things can go wrong, so I am sorry that your experience that.

It does sound to me like this marathon was the first time I’ve ever taken a gel with caffeine, so I am going to make that assumption in answering this question.

It does stick out to me as something that may have caused the cramping, considering they started at the 15 to 20 minutes after you took the gels and then and another three to four miles the crap and wore off.

Studies show that the effects of caffeine can be felt after 10 minutes and peak caffeine concentration takes 45 minutes, so the timing seems right.

Of course, it could be a coincidence. It could have been weather or dehydration. It could have been the course conditions you are adequately trained for or your body rebelling for some other of numerous reasons. Let’s continue to explore caffeine and muscle cramps.

Caffeine increases body temperature. An overdose of caffeine can cause muscle cramping twitching and involuntary contractions. It also leads to increased urination which can cause dehydration, but it doesn’t sound like you needed to stop for a pee and it probably wouldn’t cause dehydration that quickly.

How your body reacts to caffeine is individualized and different for every person. Many studies show that caffeine has a positive effect on insurance training by lowering perceived exhaustion. Therefore, they make the products like the gel you took with caffeine in them in the first place.

These studies however, use a lot of caffeine. One study showed a zero point three to two percent improvement of time in a ten K. which accounts for 4 to 24 seconds but that study had athletes take 5 to 6 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight.

If you weigh 60 kilograms that’s 300 to 360 milligrams of caffeine. When you say that the gels that you talk have the amount of two expressos you took two of those gels, that’s the amount of four expressos.

You may have had a coffee before the marathon with your breakfast, but since you didn’t mention it for simplicity sake, let’s imagine you didn’t. Two ounces of espresso has about 80 milligrams of caffeine.

That means that you took at around 160 milligrams. That’s half the amount of caffeine that was used in the study that showed a 0.3% to 2% improvement of time in a 10K.

Based on the information you’ve provided me, to me it sounds like the risk of using the caffeinated gels it outweighed the benefit.

I would avoid trying anything new on race day. I would be interested though, if you decide to train for another marathon to see if you experience the cramping again on one of your really long runs by taking the same gels. It would be interesting for us to see if it was in fact the caffeine that had a negative effect on you on race day.

George, I hope that that provided a little bit of information for you in seeing if it was or was not the caffeine that caused the cramping. To me it sounds like it probably was but I guess until you try that product again on a long run we may never know.

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