Live Well Vitamins & Lifestyle Guide

Energy Boosters: Can Supplements and Vitamins Help?

Energy Supplements: Stimulants continued...

If you’re feeling groggy after lunch, what you really want is a stimulant.  And for all the exotic herbs and amino acids sold as energy supplements, one of the most potent stimulants is also the most familiar: caffeine.

“Caffeine is a common ingredient in just about any product marketed for energy enhancement,” says Coates.  And while an energy drink might have 25 other ingredients, the one you really feel is likely to be caffeine.  “The amount of caffeine just swamps everything else,” Coates tells WebMD.

So how does caffeine work? “Caffeine and similar compounds do step up the metabolism temporarily,” says Roger Clemens, PhD, spokesman for the Institute of Food Technologists.  “That can make people feel better.”

Shao says that there’s pretty good evidence that caffeine can temporarily improve mental focus and, in athletes, help stave off exhaustion.

Although some products are seen as natural alternatives to caffeine, many actually contain caffeine itself or similar chemical substances that have similar effects. These include kola nut, yerba mate, and guarana. Green tea also provides a dose of caffeine and a related compound, theophylline, as well as the antioxidant epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG.)

Ginseng is not a caffeine derivative, but it may also serve as a mild stimulant. Will it help boost energy? “There’s a lot of historical use of the different species of ginseng as a tonic,” says Coates, but not much scientific evidence for two of the three species. The effects of Siberian ginseng (Eleutherococcus senticosus) were studied in the Russian cosmonauts. The results indicated that there may be some benefit to stamina and “physical” energy. Capsaicin -- the ingredient that makes chili peppers hot -- is also sometimes used for its purported stimulant properties.

Bitter orange is another energy supplement unrelated to caffeine.  Though it hasn’t been studied much, some experts are concerned about potential risks.  Its active ingredient – synephrine – is chemically similar to ephedrine, the active ingredient in ephedra, which was pulled off the market in 2004 because of its life-threatening health risks.  Coates says that bitter orange may prove a less harmful successor to ephedra, but more research needs to be done.

Bottom line: Will these supplements boost energy? Yes.  Stimulants like these will probably rev up your metabolism temporarily and give you a lift.  Are their effects superior to -- or even different from -- what you’d derive from a cup of coffee? Probably not.

Energy Supplements: Substances that Affect Energy Metabolism

• Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10)
• B vitamins, like vitamin B6, vitamin B12, folic acid, thiamine, niacin
• Amino acids, like creatine, carnitine, tyrosine, phenylalanine, taurine
  

Many energy supplements are derived from the nutrients, proteins, fats, and amino acids that are already in our bodies or that we get from food.  And they do work – in a sense.  “Research has clearly shown that these compounds support the energy metabolism process,” says Shao.  They affect how the body processes the nutrients we eat and converts them into energy.