Official arguing about caffine thread

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The studies I've linked state that there is a dose-dependent performance boost with caffeine. So, the "impact" of caffeine is whatever you want it to be. It isnt 5% or 100%, its related to how much you take.

Just like steroids.

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Ok, break time's over. Girls are in bed...

You believe you can improve your recall 100% by taking caffeine. Show me some proof of this. As a matter of fact, show me ANY percentage or improvement that you believe to have taken place.

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Dude, come on, I obviously dont think that.

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you get 100% returns with steroids?

the only thing from keeping me from being a dominant lefthanded starter is steroids?

man if I knew I could turn my 65mph fastball to a 130one with some steroids

[vhawk01]

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Also, strength and hand-eye coordination are two entirely different skills that allow you to hit a home run. What you are saying is that, since steroids only help with the strength aspect, they arent really doing anything you couldnt do otherwise merely by hitting the ball PERFECTLY SQUARE every single time by improving hand-eye coordination. So they dont really help.

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Obviously that doesn't make much sense. Both coordination and strength are extremely significant. I'm saying that the pre-test skills (studying to retain to memory, etc) are 100 times more important than the retention/test-taking aspect. The retention skills are important, but the variance between caffeine taking and not taking are small compared to the difference between steroid taking and non-taking.

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Except the material in medical school is really easy. Seriously, its not that hard to read a chapter on how the 5 leading causes of coronary artery disease are ABCD and E, or that first-line treatment for asthma is X, and if that doesnt work Y and maybe Z. The actual material is simple. There is just a TON of it. So it takes a lot of time to read it all, and it takes a lot of energy and focus to recall it.

Bear in mind I'm mostly talking about medical school itself here. This applies less to actual medicine, since by the time you get through residency and a few years of practice, most of the stuff you need to know is rote. You've done it so many times that you dont need to work that hard to recall any of it. But in medical school its very different. Basically, you are abused and pressured and get your ass kicked all day long every day for 4 years with 100X more information than you could ever possibly learn and then they test you on like 1% of it. Recall>>>>any other skill in medical school.

[vhawk01]

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The studies I've linked state that there is a dose-dependent performance boost with caffeine. So, the "impact" of caffeine is whatever you want it to be. It isnt 5% or 100%, its related to how much you take.

Just like steroids.

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Ok, break time's over. Girls are in bed...

You believe you can improve your recall 100% by taking caffeine. Show me some proof of this. As a matter of fact, show me ANY percentage or improvement that you believe to have taken place.

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Dude, come on, I obviously dont think that.

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you get 100% returns with steroids?

the only thing from keeping me from being a dominant lefthanded starter is steroids?

man if I knew I could turn my 65mph fastball to a 130one with some steroids

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Although honestly, the idea behind a dose-dependent relationship (which several of the papers mentioned has been demonstrated) is that as you increase the dose, you increase the effect. So, at some dose of caffeine, you get X% increase, at a higher dose you get X+10% increase, and so on. While there is very often some pharmacological or physiological limit to this type of response, I have no idea if it is possible to get a 100% increase in any of these categories like concentration or coordination.

Its worth mentioning that the adverse health effects also show a dose-dependent relationship. So, at the doses at which caffeine is most beneficial for test-taking it is also most harmful for health (or at least is becoming more harmful). This is probably similar to in steroids.

The one interesting point that I am not sure about is whether the peak, optimal "beneficial dose" overlaps into any of the severely negative "adverse dose" ranges. I know that the LD50 of caffeine is something like 100 cups, but I'm talking about the doses that lead to hypertension and cardiovascular problems, not just imminent death. Comparing this potential overlap to the one for steroids would be interesting.

BSF, have you got any good date for me on the therapeutic range of steroids versus the toxic range? I'd be interested to see if the doses professional athletes take to hit home runs coincide with the doses needed to cause cardiomegaly and such.