Smart Drinks: Caffeine and Tyrosine Equals Better Performance
In the old days, a drink high in caffeine and sugar was enough for an athlete or regular office worker to stay awake or alert. These drinks, usually a cola drink or coffee, came with unwanted side effects like the jitters or increased trips to the toilet. Some even resorted to caffeine pills.
Along came a new breed of drinks comprising of caffeine and Tyrosine or Taurine which were classified as “mental alertness†or “neurotransmitter†drinks.
Why are they called neurotransmitter drinks? Tyrosine blocks the release of Tryptophan in your brain, which is the amino acid that gives you the sleepy or sedative feeling during a near-maximal effort, usually after 20 seconds of exertion.
Tryptophan is also found high in turkey meat and warm milk, both of which can make you sleepy after a huge Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Whether or not it can cross the blood-brain barrier is another open topic for discussion.
Here is a summary of selected drinks to give you energy, stay focused and be mentally awake! They can be consumed by an ordinary office worker, or used as a pre-competition drink to an athlete.
Some of the items on this list may only be available in North America in this highly competitive market. Some even include ingredients such as ginseng extract or gingko biloba to label itself as a “healthy†alternative.
Monster drink by Monster Beverage is also good at a fraction of the price of Red Bull. It used to taste like stale lemonade! Monster has been reformulated with an improved taste. Ingredients: carbonated water, sucrose, glucose, citric acid, taurine, natural flavors, sodium citrate, l-carnitine, panax ginseng root extract, ascorbic acid, caffeine, sodium chloride, niacinamide, riboflavin, guarana seed extract, inositol, glucuronalactone, pyridoxine hydrochloride, cyanobalmin
Full Throttle by Coca-Cola. Ingredients: caffeine, ginseng extract, guarana extract, carnitine fumarate, B Complex vitamins B3, B6, B12
NO-Xplode by BSN. An all-in-one pre-workout supplement designed to address all 4 of these critical issues simultaneously: energy, mental focus, work intensity, and maximum pump.
Disclaimer: Consult your physician before altering your diet or taking supplements. It is your responsibility to evaluate the accuracy, completeness and usefulness of any information, opinion or advice contained in the above article.
A new series of studies is being launched by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, exploring insight knowledge on how laboratory measures of moral qualities, such as compassion, relate to real-life behavior. Founder of the UW's Center for Investigating Healthy Minds (CIHM), Dr. Richard J. Davidson at the Waisman Center, was awarded a three-year, $1.7 mil […]
The February edition of Neurosurgery reports that animal experiments in brain-injured rats have shown that stem cells injected via the carotid artery travel directly to the brain, greatly enhancing functional recovery... […]
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's troubled Olympus Corp said on Sunday it will hold an extraordinary shareholders meeting on April 20, when it is expected to seek approval of a new management team. The maker of cameras and medical equipment is struggl... […]
Germany, holding up better than its eurozone partners in the current debt crisis, is battling the increasingly widespread phenomenon of "burnout" which it says is costing its economy billions of euros (dollars) each year. […]
