Barbell Shrugged - The Truth About Energy Drinks w/ Flavia Pereira, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash #811

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

Flavia is a passionate CISSN nutrition coach, full-time Exercise & Sport Science faculty member, and beach volleyball strength & nutrition coach. She has been teaching and coaching for the past 18 years. She graduated with a B.S. and M.S. in Kinesiology - Exercise Science and is pursuing her Ph.D. in Health & Human Performance. Flavia is part of the Rapid Health Optimization team as a nutritionist and a research team for the International Society of Sports Nutrition, participating in different projects related to ergogenic supplements.   Flavia has been involved in athletics as a volleyball athlete, coach, and fitness enthusiast. She attended the University of Arkansas and Georgia Southern University on a volleyball scholarship for her B.S. and received her M.S. as a graduate assistant at FAU. Outside of work, Flavia is a mom to Leo (9 years old), and Maya (a 6-year-old golden retriever), and some of her hobbies are playing beach volleyball, working out, traveling, walking Maya, and being a soccer mom. Work With Us: Arétē by RAPID Health Optimization Links: Flavia Pereira on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family this week on Barbell Shrug, Coach Flavia, is coming back. And today we're talking about the truth about energy drinks. So grab yourself a big old monster, sit back and enjoy the show. And guess what? Travis Mash probably had like six monsters right before he started doing this. So if you love them, it's okay. We're just going to tell you the truth about what's happening inside your body. When you hammer all 24 ounces of that thing, first thing in the morning, friends, as always,

make sure you get over to rapid health report.com. That's where Dan Garner, Dr. Andy Galpenter, doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis, and you can access that at rapid health report.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Strug. I'm Anders Barner, Doug Larson, coach Travis Mash, coach Flabia hanging out today.

Today on Barbell Strug, we're going to be talking about energy drinks. And I'm starting this off because you have a lot of research to get into, but can you just tell me what is the main difference? between Coach Masch's favorite monster energy drink and my most basic black cup of coffee. Why does there seem to be such a giant gap between those? Yes. Great first question. Thanks for having me, guys. Yeah, that's the main and first question we address

on our paper, common questions and misconceptions about energy drinks. And I'm sorry to tell you. you mash, but there is not a big difference, okay? Oh. Other than, and when I say that, I mean, in terms of ergogenic benefits, as long as you match the caffeine. So energy drinks will have anywhere between 150 to 300 milligrams of caffeine and a regular cup of coffee will have maybe, you know, depending on what kind of coffee you drink,

maybe 70 to 100 milligrams. So you're kind of drinking two cups of coffee. together. And energy drinks have, of course, other ingredients. They're like the most common being B vitamins, thorine, sometimes sugar, sometimes Guadana. But because there are so many brands of energy drinks, the market is insane. More than 500 brands, it's difficult to really tell you if the mixture of those different ingredients with caffeine make any difference. So because of that, we have done some studies with specific energy drinks and have tested only a few things.

And we're interested more in the ergogenic benefits like performance benefits or maybe muscular endurance or reaction time. And the three studies we did with the gorilla mind, energy. drink, the Zoha, which is still about to be published, and the ghost energy drink, we did not find, we did not find any difference between the matched amount of caffeine versus the energy drink on some of those measures, like reaction time, sustained alertness, a number of push-ups, a hand-grip strength, memory tests, and things like that. Hold on. Caffeine, though, is like a universally, I think everybody says, that's a good one for you. It's a good problem. What about all the other ingredients that I can't pronounce inside the energy drinks?

Yeah, I mean, like, what about the negative effects is what he's saying? Like, you know, I know performance wise. Yeah, yeah. So caffeine is definitely the biggest ingredient there. and then we have different brands, different proprietary blends. And like I said, we looked at 75,

like the top 75 energy drinks in the market. And like I said, they're over 500. So it's hard to tell you exactly. But out of those top 75, Torin, B vitamins, vitamin, sugar, like those are the main ingredients,

sometimes green tea extract. But other, other energy drinks will have like alpha gpc or will have healthy anine so or vitamin d or foley so it's really whichever blend they decide to add there um you know they may think that because I'm adding althianine maybe the jittery will be less or maybe because I'm adding uh Guadana you'll have more energy than just drinking you know caffeine um and there is a possibility but honestly it's just very hard scientifically to prove that because there are so many

things mixed in the drink so we would have to do like let's do just caffeine let's do just guadana let's do just you know really how do you define like or how do you uncover a proprietary blend just n equals one me sometimes when i drink these things they feel not like caffeine they feel a lot more like Adderall. I don't recommend anybody do that either, but they feel a whole lot more like Adderall than caffeine. And it freaks me out when I just see the word proprietary blend without having any knowledge of like what's going into that.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question because really nobody does. I don't either. And I'm sorry, I don't have an answer. But they are not required to explain the, individual amounts on this proprietary blend. For example, Guadana is stronger than coffee beans, and they don't have to put the amounts of Guadana in the drink. So if you have 200 milligrams of caffeine,

but you have an extra 100 milligrams of Guadana, you're kind of doubling that caffeine without knowing. And again, it just says Guadana as part of the blend. We don't know how much. We just know that Guarana, like green tea, have this, like, energy and motivation and arousal kind of effect. Yeah. Wait, can you explain more about that? Like, you're Brasilera.

That's way more common in Brazil than is in the United States. Can you talk a little bit about what that is? Yeah, so Guadana was used by the indigenous tribes. Brazil a long time ago. I haven't researched too much about specifically Guarana, but yes, it's very common there. We have sodas with Guadana or we have teas with Guarana. And they used a long time ago with the goal of improving energy, alertness, reaction time, cognitive function, everything that we do nowadays when we drink energy drinks. So supposedly Guadana is stronger than coffee beans.

So if you take like a one-to-one, I believe that Guarana is almost like a two-to-one in terms of potency. So it could... Yeah, so it could give you a lot of energy. And the fact that, you know, and I looked more and more, like I triple checks. It's like, I really did not putting in how much Guadana

and they don't. It's just like Anders were saying, it's just part of the blend. So you don't know how much is in there. So it might be why you're getting this effect and there's that you said of, like, high focus, high energy. But it could be because of other things too. For example, touring with caffeine or althianine with caffeine is supposed to help with this more, less jittery type of focus. So when you have those blends, and I wish we had drinks that were only those two blends that we

could really test. But again, because they have torrent, caffeine, and then 15 other things, it's hard to pinpoint, like, oh, yeah, it's only the thorine, it's only the Lthianine, you know. But those two together have been studied with caffeine, and they are two compounds that are supposed to help with the jittery. So if you have a lot of coffee and you feel a little bit, you know, jittery, anxious, the Lthianine and the taurine are supposed to help with that. What are the benefits of just throwing all that in there? Why wouldn't you just put in three ingredients, a nice, clean mixture? Look, why do they do that?

Yeah, that's a great question. If I had an energy drink company, I think I would do only caffeine and maybe one or two more ingredients. I think a lot of that I think, what ingredients would you put in? Yeah, what a, that's a great question. I'd imagine part of this is that, like, there's 500 energy drink brands that you just mentioned, like, everyone's trying to stand out amongst the crowd so everyone's trying to do all kinds of unique things to make them distinctly different even if really the vast majority that's like you get some sugar and caffeine and now you have energy good to go but then you got to like stack on a bunch of other shit just so people buy your drinks over over everyone else's drinks exactly it's a business thing yes I think it's a business and a marketing thing where then they can say like oh you know electrolytes so they add sodium potassium in there and then they say something about B vitamins. Oh, you know, providing you with vitamins.

So they add, you know, B vitamins. But in reality, the purpose of drinking energy drink is to increase energy, right? Or maybe focus or maybe get you through the day if you're working and you're exhausted or for performance benefits. So, yeah, I would probably just have caffeine and maybe taurine or caffeine and altheonine. I wouldn't have all of the B vitamins. I mean, you can get that from food or a different supplement. You know, taking B vitamins in an energy drink is not like you're going to drink the B vitamin and have that energy right away. B vitamins are supposed to help you with converting energy from foods, converting foods into usable energy at a cellular level.

So it's not that we can take a B vitamin pill and go running like, oh, now I can run faster. you're going to have the food to go well it's necessary for glycolysis etc but it's not it's not giving you instant energy the same way that having caffeine all of a sudden like 15 minutes later an hour later like you feel like you're like a little bit high like you're buzzing exactly yeah yeah but what are the regarding yeah go ahead about paul is regarding amounts like the vast majority of research that I've ever read on caffeine has been specifically to like endurance performance and if I remember correctly it's been years since we've looked into this like between and eight milligrams per kilo seems to be like the range for endurance athletes. And when I was like not ever competing, but like I ran a couple of longer races for fun. And we took kind of the upper end of that. We took around around eight milligrams per kilo. And it felt great as long as you're running a marathon.

I don't think I'd want that much caffeine just walking around. I sit at my desk just shaking while I'm trying to type. But as far as focus, cognition, energy, but then also like the mental performance, What seems to be the healthy range there? Yeah, so the healthy range for not just aerobic performance, anaerobic performance, cognitive is 3 to 6 milligrams is the one most used. And some energy drinks may have less than that because, you know, if we're comparing me 60 kilograms versus you 100 kilograms, you know, I may not be heating. the three milligrams per kilogram if I drink like a Celsius. I mean, I will, but you will not. So you have to keep that in mind. So three milligrams is kind of the minimum. And really the timing is

important as well. You want to drink 30 to 60 minutes before the activity. And there are some studies also done with longer duration aerobic exercise like you were saying in a marathon where maybe an hour, an hour and a half after the race, you take a little bit more caffeine, you know, caffeine and hopefully some carbohydrates too. And that helped them, you know, improve speed or time to finish the race and things like that. But, yeah, that's definitely the dosage, three to six milligrams. And you want to think about, you know, a few different things is the person used to drinking caffeine, you know, if Anders drinks three coffees a day, you know, and they are 100 milligrams

each, maybe 300 milligrams for him might not be ideal right away. We can start maybe on the four to five milligrams per kilogram versus like, I never drink an energy drink. I only drink coffee. So if I drink three milligrams. You actually did that? Moral high ground, I never do. this only coffee yeah i saw that i felt that that's good i don't do energy drinks i mean even on

the studies i'm like okay let me try and it's just too much i feel like jittery is just too much at once i love coffee i could drink two coffees a day sometimes three but a small amount i don't do the energy drinks anymore but the pre-work i still do i still dry scoop that yeah yeah the beta i'll I try to scoop that. I do that. I do. I do. Dry scoop it.

Yeah. I do. Max, I love Corey Gregory's stuff. Results right there. We've been reached free workout. Yeah. As soon as we're done, I'm working out.

I'm going to take it to the dome and then crush it. Shout out to Corey G. Yeah. Corey Gregory. So, like, what is the negative? Like, you know, you, in the past, I've heard so much, so many negative things. about energy drinks, about, you know, not being good for you, causing heart attacks potentially, like, are there any truth to that?

Yes, there is, but there are nuances with it. You have to think about context a little bit here. Yeah. So if the person has any cardiovascular issues to start with, then they should avoid energy drinks because, again, it's just like they're drinking three cups of coffee at the same time. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the Artee program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garne and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers,

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So if you already have an issue, you're just kind of increasing the chances of something else happening. So it is a cardiac stimulant. And people with, you know, maybe arrhythmias or high blood pressure, they should avoid as well as pregnant women. It seems obvious, but, you know, it's important to know since now, like, okay, pregnant women can have some caffeine, but we have to keep in mind the other ingredients on the energy drink have not been studied with pregnant women. So, I definitely would recommend pregnant women to avoid energy drinks. And teenagers as well, young adults and teenagers. And I know this population uses a lot, like I see sometimes on the fields,

like they're just, you know, getting a monster and all drinking before practice. That's Paul won. He's the cool guy that's making the energy drink. What's his prime? Yeah, he's killing it. My gosh. Dude, friends are in the cash right now. Every 18-year-old, they sell it at Costco.

You can buy Costco-size prime. They just took off out of blue, too. It was crazy. Yeah, yeah. The Rock has an energy drink, right? Zowa, which we tested. Didn't even know. Yeah, I think everyone has an energy drink now.

Messy maybe has one. I don't know. Sears book are super popular. But then, I mean, beyond that, just like at the most basic level, like, unless you're doing some type of physical activity, then you're also just pounding needless sugar. Like, like, if you're just sitting in class and you're in first period, you're in high school, you're just like smashing 35 grams of sugar for no reason. You're just going to be sitting for the rest of the day. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

That can be good. The other thing to think about is the crash that happens with it, right? And how fast you metabolize caffeine. So we have fast metabolizers versus low. metabolizers. I don't know if you guys know which one you are, but I'm definitely a slow, so I have to stop drinking caffeine maybe by 10 a.m. 11. Usually the caffeine half life is, you know, four to six hours, the average, but it could be anywhere between two to 12 hours. So if you're a slow metabolizer and you're having an energy drink, which is like three cups of coffee,

high school in the morning, let's say 9 a.m., you might still have some effect at 9 p.m. So it might be hard to not even close yeah I'm just upping the dosage and your body will adapt

yeah yeah yeah yeah I'm fast fatalyzer more of those more babies

and you'll be fine I could chug three cups of coffee and go right at bed yeah yeah

sadly that's sad I'm not bragging yeah yeah but but maybe I am yeah

and with that too I mean if in other times people take before workouts, like MASH mentioned, like a pre-workout type of thing or just an energy drink to help them. You know, I'm tired after work. I'm going to have Celsius and go workout. And yes, there is some evidence that it does help with maybe muscular endurance. Like, it will help people perform a few more reps than they would without the energy drink. But

then if affects their sleep, the fact that they did a couple months, more reps on the bench press on that workout and we're able to get through you know we know how important sleep is and then they didn't recover well so what are really the benefits of drinking that if you're working out in the afternoon you know so there are a lot of things to think about with that there's all there are also some claims or people ask me this a lot like does it help with weight loss weight management like body composition and there were a a lot of studies, not a lot, but at least enough studies that showed on increasing resting metabolic rate. So we do burn a few more calories, like acutely, like up to two, three hours after. But that

was not enough to really conclude that, yes, energy drink directly causes weight loss. I mean, exercise causes weight loss or, you know, good nutrition, caloric deficit, not necessarily the energy drink. I wonder if it like if it curves just your the appetite level, you know, like, satiety levels. Like does it, does it curve those? I know like if I'm taking, if I'm drinking coffee, I'm not as hungry, you know, like, whereas if I'm not, you know, I'm probably going to.

What about, have there been any studies on caffeine's effects of people's hunger levels? Yeah. So I agree with you. On this particular studies, we did not look at that or we did not address that. That's an interesting question. I would like to know if energy drinks, I know that caffeine, yes, will suppress appetite. But I wonder if energy drinks will do the same. I imagine that it would for a couple hours.

And then, you know, once you're crashing, you might be even hungrier. Yeah. So that would you have to look at that as well. Yeah, yeah, I don't have the science. And also keep in mind, a lot of things. energy drinks have sugar so um you know it helps with that boost up energy in the brain and overall but then adding calories so that's a that's a good that's a good point there are there no like I was just going to say like you know like you know a lot of times I'll tell people

if they're trying to lose weight you know obviously protein helps with like hunger levels but then I'll say you know coffee or extra caffeine helps me as well but that is that it's completely anecdotal. I didn't know if there was any research to back up my anecdotal, you know, thoughts on that. Yeah. In January, those, but I can't really say the same for energy drinks. Yeah, no. I don't know. That's a good point. You know, mainly coffee is what I think of just trying to lose way. I'm thinking coffee. I never think I don't think drink energy drinks. I think trying to lose weight. Yeah, it's tough when everything's a proprietary blend. Obviously, there's been lots of research specifically on caffeine and there's lots of research on even just

like pure sugar and performance and endurance training and green post workout, et cetera. For things like you mentioned earlier, you mentioned like al-theonine or alpha-GPC or any of these other things that are commonly in energy drinks, can you go through maybe a short list of instruments that are commonly found in energy drinks, but maybe they're just like in low enough amounts where you don't get the effect. Maybe alpha-GPC is an easy example. I know there's good research that shows that it has some benefits. benefits for cognitive performance, but I don't really think about Alpha GPC really being in energy

drinks, but I guess you said that you have seen that before. What are the other supplements that are in this category that individually at high enough doses really do have a positive effect on cognition or on physical energy? Yes. So to answer this question, I'm going to talk about alpha GPC first. So the only energy drink that I saw Alpha GPC on was the guerrilla energy drink, which was a study we did. So I really look into their ingredients, but Alpha GPC was not listed in the 75 most popular energy drinks. Alpha GPC was not one of the ingredients, but I agree with you.

Alpha GPC does have some good research in focus, and I do use that depending on the type of athlete I'm working with, but the amounts in energy drinks are hard to, like a dosage of Office of a GPC that you would take for focusing cognition, I would much rather have you just take that separately because the dosage in the energy drink is so small compared to the dosage that, you know, and the dosage that you can give to the client or the athlete is relative to their body weight and their needs,

and the energy drink is just a general dose. Right, right. Yeah, so the, I mean, again, this list here has Elthianine, Torein, ginseng, Guadana, that I mentioned, vitamin B, B, 12, B6, B3, some vitamin D, D, vitamin A, Foley, and carnitine, and magnesium. So not really a lot of other supplements. Yeah, so the most common ingredients, other than caffeine and energy drinks, are definitely B vitamins, torrine, sugar, you know, just general vitamins, sometimes vitamin A and vitamin D, vitamin C.

However, in terms of more like supplements, I mentioned Alpha GPC, which I agree that it has good research to back up for focus, cognition. However, the amounts that I see on energy drinks are not enough to elicit this orgogenic benefits. So if I'm working with an athlete, I would put them on Alpha GPC separately. instead of, you know, just giving them an energy drink that has some alpha-GPC for that purpose. Yeah, and I think the altheonine and the toering are the chew that are most common there with caffeine in terms of supplements that would help with that jittery aspect.

The rest is mostly just vitamins or, like, electrolytes. Is there anything bad in there? Like, you know, you always, like, forever, I feel like the energy drinks were getting such a bad rap. Like, people were talking about how they're causing heart attacks, blah, blah. But in those proprietary blends, do you ever find anything that shouldn't that is, like, maybe deadly? I don't think anything deadly specifically, but maybe the compounding effects of those ingredients together could be too much for a person that is maybe not. used to it or maybe an adolescent who still has like nervous systems still developing and then it's just pounding monsters through the day and the heart and the nervous systems are not able

to take that and also anyone like I mentioned before that has any cardiovascular disease or any type of high blood pressure or heart arrhythmia I would stay away from it but I cannot tell you like one single ingredient there they're like oh this should never be there is deadly hopefully they wouldn't allow that i think it's more the combination and like i said for example guadana and ginseng increase energy as well and we don't know how much is in that bland uh plus the caffeine so you're just getting like a huge boost of energy in a can and that at once can be too much you know for the heart to take yeah yeah are there any like government regulations around it i know every time like the the supplement conversation comes up and everybody goes oh none of

this is like regulated and people it's going to be harmful to you but those people probably love some energy drinks too like are there any rules around this stuff or do they kind of fall into the supplement category where they can just write at the bottom. None of this has been FDA approved. Drink at your own risk. Yes. From my understanding, energy drinks are classified as functional beverages. So they're not classified as supplements. So, yes, can. What else is a functional beverage? I've never heard that before. A beverage with a different, with a different, with specific benefit other than water, you know. So it kind of falls within supplements, I guess, but not the same regulation. Supplements are regulated. So that was a great paper recently

published on that, but that's a different podcast and conversation. So supplements are regulated. However, energy drinks, from my understanding, they can put in things that are not deadly like mesh asked however until something happens they are not really fully investigated so let's say if someone died from drinking monster now the fda is going to look into it but there is no way they really looked into every single blend on those 500 energy drink companies and said yeah those are all perfectly healthy go ahead everyone and drink them you know um it's just like okay it's caffeine and but and vitamins here so yes it's free for all um but yeah they are not strictly regulated unless again something happened and then they go and really

look into it from my understanding wait so you you've actually done the research on the energy drinks right yes i've done three research uh projects on energy drinks two are just, were submitted for publication recently, and that's with the Zoha and the ghost. But the one that has been published about a year and a half ago was the guerrilla energy drink. And the purpose with that was to see for specific performance outcomes like pushups, hand grip strength, reaction time, sustain alertness, do the same amount of caffeine.

If we match the caffeine amount, so we did a pill of caffeine with crystal light as a placebo. So it tastes it kind of similar to the flavor of the energy drink or the energy drink. We randomize people. They drink that 45 minutes after they did those tests. And it was a mood test, profile of mood, reaction time, sustain alertness, hand grip, a minute pushups. and then one week washed out, they came back the next week and they had the opposite drink.

And what we found was that the caffeine group and the energy drink group, we saw improvements in reaction time and mood after, you know, from before drinking to after drinking, but we didn't see any differences between the caffeine group versus the energy drink group. So for those specific things that we measure, you could just drink the same amount of coffee and it would see the same benefits was basically our conclusion. But let's say you don't like coffee and you want to drink half of a can of an energy drink of your choice. I'm not promoting here, but then, you know, you might have those benefits as well, like better

reaction time, cognitive function or whatever the purpose is. The ones that you have tested, what do you feel like is kind of like the, the, kind of like that, like, jitteriness, like the most aggressive energy drink and then the closest to like a cup of coffee, like the least aggressive? Yeah, so since I haven't tested too many, I would just say based on the amount of caffeine that they have, Red Bull seems to have the least amount. I think is around 80 to 100 milligrams. So that's like a cup of coffee. I cannot speak for the other. Yeah.

That's wild that you would say Red Bull. I feel like Red Bull still is like significantly more aggressive than a cup of coffee. but you mentioned Celsius earlier and that one feels like meth like it makes my skin crawl having it sometimes it's like it's hit or miss it's like sometimes you can drink it's like

yeah it is very aggressive and then good friends love them but focus aid is one of the most terrifying ones that exists like that's up oh my gosh Travis it is one of those things bright and early you'll get through six podcasts in a day and you don't even have to think

what you're just Now, you're just guaranteed I'm going to get some focus aid now. Oh, dude. Have two in a day and see how you. You're like 16 brand new programs that you never even thought there was a goal for. Okay. For sure, call a focus aid. For any science, follow Anders.

That's why I said in your opinion. That's all I got. Zero published papers, lots of opinions. That's how we got here. That's what matters. I mean, your opinion comes before. for science, always. Science is always later to come.

It's never first. Yeah, but so I, and again, I have not done a research on Red Bull. So I have a friend who works for Red Bull, so she hears this podcast, is going to be like, what? You know, but Red Bull, in terms of caffeine, is 111 milligrams, which is lower than the others. But it could have other things like Guadana. Oh, good. But Bang has 300 milligrams of just. caffeine. I've heard it's a

gangstrap. Yeah. Yeah. And the other ones, we tested like Gorilla, which was the one that you know, we finished the paper and published last year, has 200 milligrams of caffeine. So that's another thing that we have to think about when we look at the results of the study. Because 200 milligrams may not be the 3 milligrams per kilogram

for most people. So we did that math and it was below that for most people. And that could also be the reason why we didn't see improvement on those other things like strength, push-ups, you know, and reaction time. But, yeah. How much caffeine is in like a Coke? Do you know how much caffeine is in like a Coke or a Diet Coke? Yeah, I thought my head.

I think it's like 30 to 50 milligrams. It's never very much. I think it's like half a cup of course. coffee, but don't quote me on that. I don't drink Coke and I don't prescribe to any code. I'm just the hierarchy together right now if you can't tell. It's not like my daily needs. Lobby said, I should. 34 is what Google blows up. 8 ounces? 12 ounce can of Coca-Cola contains approximately 34 milligrams of caffeine.

Yeah, that's mellow. You can do that. Oh, God. Here we go. More science. yeah you can drink 10 of those in a day you be fine yeah you won't get everybody here wants a hierarchy if you wake up and you feel a tough little diet coach get the big day off eat a little more juice hit the hit the hit the coffee from there gorilla Celsius is getting to the top bang energy hold on PR day game on let's go yeah exactly to the hospital after but based on your research Flavia, so would you, let's say that you were going to recommend, you know, somebody said, hey, should I, should I drink the energy drinks, or should I drink coffee before working

out, what would you tell them? What do you recommend? I bias towards coffee. However, again, there are some athletes, for example, at my university, the soccer athletes, they get Celsius and, you know, and they drink before games. And there is evidence that improves soccer performance, meaning aerobic performance or the ability to run at faster speeds for longer. So there is an ergodogenic proven benefit, and they like it better than coffee. And we're talking about athletes that are really concerned with their performance,

then yes. But if I'm talking about a general population person, then I would definitely say, yeah, just drink coffee. That would be my choice. Got it. It's like the most pure. Exactly. You just have to know what you're getting.

Travis, have you ever had the diesel coffee from caffeine in kilos? Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, my gosh. I love it. Really true. I don't know what bean they use, but it really is significantly more aggressive. Man, I miss my caffeine. I used to get, I need to start that back up.

I love my caffeine in kilos coffee. Yeah. Significantly more aggressive. I don't know what type of bean they use in that, but there's got, there's a giant difference between your regular cup of coffee and that. They work really hard at like sourcing the best beans. I mean, I will, Danny is the man when it comes to that. It sounds like a double caffeine blend, right?

I mean, is the bean they sourced like the specific, I think it's a little bit of both. I think they sourced a specific bean and then, yeah, they doubled it up. It was just like awesome. Flavia, do you got any more energy drink research in your future here? What's like the next step? Yes, well, I'm currently trying to survive my dissertation phase. So I'm doing creatine research at the moment. Oh, yeah.

We actually have a calm and clever. supplement research that we're doing and also lion's main mushroom so this year we're kind of pushing the the energy drink studies maybe next year um i do enjoy those because it's it's nice to test each individual brand against caffeine and see and just let people decide for themselves like hey if this has similar benefits you know if you don't like it drink it if you don't like the taste drink the other. Yeah, but I'm researched out this year, I think.

I mean, I feel like, I loved what you what you've said today. I mean, I've heard in the past, I've always heard people talk so much junk about energy drinks, as if they're like poison or, you know, you drink those and it's so much worse than if you just drink coffee. But here you talk, as long as you know

get the right kind, I guess. Like, it's not that big of a difference. So. Yeah, another important point. is caffeine used to be like oh it's so unhealthy it's terrible for you and now we see there are benefits of drinking caffeine and again as long as we stay within that range of two to four cups is kind of like the healthy recommended range so that's what you have to keep in mind with energy drinks again the caffeine I'm biased towards that because like Anders said it's more

pure but if you're not if you don't like caffeine and you're not going to drink two, three cups of caffeine before a soccer game, maybe just drinking one energy drink for performance, as long as you're not having more than one and not going over that dosage of 400 milligrams of caffeine a day, then I don't see like that, you know, this huge villain, like, oh, don't drink it. Like, it's terrible for you.

It's just not as pure and it has more caffeine, so it have to be aware. Watch out for that proprietary blend. I can't believe people get away with that. It's like our ideas. So special, we can't tell you what you're actually ingesting right now. But let me add one more question, but like, do you have those energy drinks out there? Like, you know, obviously in the pre-workouts, you have some people who are like, you know,

they're putting ingredients in there that shouldn't be in there. They're going to test you positive as an athlete. So, like, why are the energy drinks able to be, you know, so much more reliable than the, you know, the pre-workout? That's why I like Cory Gregory's because he guarantees that there's no contaminants in there. Yeah, I don't know fully how to answer your question. I don't know why they, the FDA just say, like, energy drinks are in a category that we trust them. I'm not sure I think because

they list ingredients and even the proprietary blends are usually herbs they probably have to list the proprietary blends to the FDA or you know it has to be listed somewhere

in their company but they don't have to put exactly in the can yeah so I'm not sure but I'm with you they should list everything in there the amounts and the effects

or at least, I don't know, have a QR code that we can go and look it up, something like that. Yeah, because I've had phrase of mine, luckily none of my own alleys, but phrase of mine, you know, like been banned for a year, but because they took a pre-workout and they have them to have like a, you know, what is it, one of those, like DMHA or DMAA, you know, one of those basically like a, you know, methamphetamine is what did it? Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, and so he's had like a little bitty dose of that next to you know they're popping. Yeah.

Well, they should go to the enhanced games. Yeah. That's right. I kind of forgot about that. I haven't heard anything about it. I mean, he went off with almost like no popularity. It was just terrible. Oh, so did it.

I saw a picture of one swimmer that won the gold medal and then got you yo. But nobody paid it. attention. I saw a couple pictures. I can't even tell you how many world records were broken, but I saw one picture of a guy that went from like skinny swimmer to just like Mr. Olympia, like

just savage looking. But yeah, I don't think I got the I'm wondering if it didn't get the press because it didn't go and like shatter every single world record that that happened. I don't think it did a good job marketing.

I mean, I didn't see it anywhere hardly. It's hard. to market steroids. Everybody wants to watch natural, but everybody wants to believe it's clean even if they know. Even deep down, they know it's not. It's like why Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa were so

popular. Everybody knew. You can't look like that, hit the ball that hard. They wanted to believe. They wanted to believe it. If it's on the, if it's on the tagline, it says everyone's on gas, it's just it doesn't, everyone's like, nah, we don't have to believe

anymore. Man, there was a survey done of baseball fans, and I mean, an overwhelming majority could care less of the baseball fans. They want to see bombs. When I go watch a baseball game, I want to see someone hit it out of the orbit. You know, I don't care what they're taking. That home run derby was so said McGuire. When McGuire hit over the mass pike, you were like, whoa.

It was like nine or ten years old when that happened. It was like, holy crap, this is a monster. I got to go on the field when I lived in San Diego when McGuire was the hitting coach for the Padres. And I looked over the dugout and I was like 10 feet away from him. I had no idea it was him because I'm going to juiced out old man. I love that era of baseball. Everybody did. That was the best era of baseball.

Anyone who says different is lying. Yeah. I mean, I watched Barry Bonds get a home run, and it got, it was like this. It was like, it was just, it was gone, like one second. It was awesome. Yeah. I mean, Barry Bonds was just, very, Bonds came in, like, after McGuire and SOSEM was just, like, so much better at it. He was like, oh, you guys, you guys introduced this to the sport.

Watch this. You know, and add some. He said, watch this. Yeah. I'm about to take this to the next level. Loved it. He had some energy drinks. That's kind of like enhanced games when everybody knew.

And then it was like, oh, you're too good at it. Like, you perfected the drugs. And now we know. He was drinking those ghost energy drinks. Yeah, that's it. That's all. Yeah. Flavia, where can the people find you?

At coach. That flavia on Instagram. Coach Try to Smash. Go to maschleet.com. Spaghetti, Gold's Gym tank top you got on. Mashelie.com. I'm selling picks. I'm kidding.

For everybody that is listening to their car, Travis Mass just broke my computer screen with a double bicep pose and a spaghetti tank top. I'm going to do it as long as I can do it. Yeah. Tell the people. Go ahead.

Mashelate.com where you can go to Instagram, Mashleet Performance. Doug Larson. On Instagram. I'm Douglas E. Larson. And I am Anders Varner at Anders Varner. And we are Barbell Strugged at Barbell underscore Strugged. And make sure you get over to Rapid HealthReport.com.

That's where Dan Garner, Dr. Andy Galpin, are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis. You can access that over at Rapid HealthReport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.