By Zane Bell

In January 2017, Patrick Harty (then a student in Lindenwood’s Health Sciences graduate program) began planning a study that would examine the effects of caffeine on muscle performance in the lower body. An article on the study, which was conducted in Lindenwood’s Exercise and Performance Nutrition Laboratory (EPNL), has recently been published in Frontiers in Nutrition and is one of many articles produced by Harty during his time with the EPNL.

Titled “Caffeine Timing Improves Lower-Body Muscular Performance: A Randomized Trial ,” the article details how Harty, along with EPNL director Dr. Chad Kerksick, conducted the lab research over the course of a couple semesters. In that time, participants in the study visited the EPNL multiple times to take caffeine before being tested for how it affected “strength and power” of the lower body.

“We did what’s called a crossover study design, which means that every person that was in the study came back to the lab on multiple different times and completed all of the different time points for all of the different interventions,” explained Dr. Kerksick. “All of the supplements were double-blinded, which means the participants didn’t know what they were taking. The researchers didn’t know what they were taking.”

The entire project served as a part of Harty’s thesis for his graduate degree and  spanned the course of three years. Even as he began working on his doctorate in Health Sciences at Texas Tech University, Harty continued working on the paper that would eventually become the Frontiers in Nutrition article.

In this regard, Harty described the nature of the relationship between the two schools: “We were very fortunate in that we were able to have a collaboration between the labs at Texas Tech and Lindenwood University. My current instructor [Dr. Grant Tinsley] knew about the study and was able to get Texas Tech involved with analyzing the studies.”

The study and most of its data collection had been conducted completely at Lindenwood. “The project itself was something that Patrick and I came up with based upon some other papers that we had written together,” said Dr. Kerksick. “He did a really nice job…. He designed the study himself, wrote a grant, got his own funding… and just got published. It was kind of a perfect scenario of how the process should go.”

In fact, the article is one of 23 published by Harty, and 14 of those are from his time at Lindenwood University. “My very first article was published in 2018 while at Lindenwood,” Harty said. “I’ve been very fortunate to be involved with very productive labs. Five to ten articles per year is not the norm.”

That, however, is not the only manner in which Harty claimed to have benefitted from this particular research project. “As a whole, it’s transformative,” explained Harty. “Coming into the master’s program, this project has been with me every step of the way… as I’ve learned about the trade and publication process…. I can’t speak highly enough about the facilities and mentorship. Dr. Kerksick says that the best learning tool is the research process. It really is just a tremendous learning experience.”

Congratulations to Patrick Harty on his article being published in Frontiers in Nutrition!