Neuro-acoustic music

Stronger than espresso

One thing the COVID-19 pandemic has taught me is just how reliant I have been on caffeine to perform for the last 2-3 years.

The fact that I would regularly down a 350ml pour-over (approximately 250mg of caffeine) of black coffee or double-shot of espresso (~100mg of caffeine) prior to my late-afternoon workout and face no sleep latency issues around 10pm spoke volumes to this.

Caffeine has a half-life of 5 hours and with two 100mg espressos in a day, the amount of caffeine circulating in my blood around 10pm must have been pretty darn high, ~60mg conservatively. As a point of comparison, a can of red bull has 80mg of caffeine.

Over the past year, I’ve transitioned to a single caffeinated espresso per day (sometimes I treat myself to a decaf espresso in the afternoon), pegging me at a much lower 14-15mg of caffeine in my blood around my 10pm bedtime.

The major drawback of a single espresso per day has been my lower level of mental acuity in the early evening, relative to my highly caffeinated baseline.

Over the past several weeks, I found a great remedy - performance-oriented music., specifically the Ignite product from Solace Biosciences (also the makers of Nucalm, which I previously wrote about).

If I feel an early evening (or early afternoon) energy slump, I pop on the Ignite “legendary” track for 14 minutes and instantly snap into the zone with none of the sleep-disrupting consequences of caffeine intake later in the day. It’s a pretty awesome feeling.

Looking forward, I plan to use the Ingite neuro-acoustic music to push through moments of fatigue or mental murkiness. I am also excited about using Ignite during fasting for a coffee-free fasting experience.