Caffeine has almost no calories, but it gives us energy. Where does this energy come from? Is caffeine making the body use its stored fat?

Question

Caffeine has almost no calories, but it gives us energy. Where does this energy come from? Is caffeine making the body use its stored fat?

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

People are getting different mechanisms confused and mixed up.

Caffeine stimulates dopamine and adrenaline, which makes you more alert and that’s why you feel like you have more “energy”. The actual energy would come from stored glycogen reserves and fat reserves if required.

>The accumulation of cAMP then stimulates the release of hormones such as dopamine, epinephrine, and noepinephrine.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8202818/

Everyone else is mixing this up with the fact caffeine can delay sleep by blocking adenosine receptors, but that’s a seperate mechanism and something completely different.