Comment · Tue, February 6, 2018 · Ceretropic & Nootropics Depot
Cordyceps and Caffeine
Original post in this thread
NippleSauce · 8 points
Hello all,
I’ve been looking into cordyceps for quite a while now as I figured it might be worth a shot as a libido booster. Unfortunately, I am an avid coffee drinker and I’ve seen many people mention that you should not be consuming caffeine while taking cordyceps.
From the looks of it, the primary argument is that cordyceps binds to the adenosine receptors which causes an upregulation of the StAR enzyme (which transports cholesterol into the mitochondria where it is cleaved and thus can eventually lead to steroid/testosterone synthesis). Caffeine, however, is an adenosine inhibitor and thusly would obstruct the cordyceps from binding to the adenosine receptors, thereby rendering the supplementation useless.
While this makes sense, the confusion starts to come into play when we look at caffeine’s affect on testosterone. I’ve stumbled across numerous studies that mention caffeine increasing testosterone levels in males when taken before exercise. In some cases, this caffeine supplementation lead to a testosterone increase of around 14%!
This is intriguing because of caffeine’s adenosine inhibiting ability. Shouldn’t cortisol levels spike and cause testosterone to d…
What they were answering
JesleyH · 4 points
MYASD is an avid user of both so he should be able to give you a good answer, especially as he knows the chemistry involved more than average user here.
u/misteryouaresodumb
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic & Nootropics Depot
Cordyceps has a complex relationship with testoserone, and is likely a lot more involved than just adenosine/StAR. Studies have found that normal dosages of cordyceps increased testosterone, while increasing the dose from there actually brought it back down to normal levels. So it has a very bell-shaped dose/response curve. There is either a mechanism that can modulate both up and down, or there are other compounds in cordyceps that start to counteract the adenosine effects that happen at normal dosages. Other studies have shown that it increases aldosterone, and they postulate it is due to modulating PKC. There is even a study showing that there is a cAMP-independent and StAR-independent pathway for regulating steroidogenesis.
So I am not quite sure at the moment. I always take cordyceps with caffeine, personally. I am not doing blood tests to measure T levels, though. It would be an interesting experiment to do some back-to-back testing in a naive state, then with cordyceps alone, and cordyceps with caffeine.