Jolt Energy Gum Review

I recently purchased some Jolt Gum as a Christmas gift for a friend. Why? He read that caffeine is the best energizer out there for a pre-workout boost but he didn’t want the sloshing-around feeling you would get from drinking an energy drink or coffee before hitting the gym and thought maybe gum would do the trick.

I looked at the choices that Amazon had to offer, paying careful attention to the reviews. Most of the negative comments out there on caffeinated gum revolve around how awful it tastes – sort of like chewing No-Doz, I reckon. The Jolt Gum comments didn’t seem to be dominated by these issues so I bought a couple of cases. Jimmydunes was gracious enough to throw me a couple of packs and I gave it a whirl that same day.

The front of the package says that two pieces have the same caffeine content as a cup of coffee. It’s got guarana (for the caffeine, I guess) and ginseng (for the magic, I guess) in it. The back of the package says “Yes, we are THAT Jolt, the same Jolt as in Jolt Cola.” Neat.

I popped a couple of pieces as I sat down at the barber shop waiting to get my haircut. Yeah… I didn’t think that one through very well. What I failed to take into account is that this caffeine instantly hits you by being absorbed through your gums and whatnot instead of needlessly lollygagging around in your digestive system getting all diluted and stuff. In retrospect, I suppose I could have picked a worse time to try the gum if I was, say, headed into the O.R. to perform surgery and ended up going all “sushi chef” on someone’s appendix instead (I am a three-cup-a-day coffee and occasional energy drink drinker, FWIW. Your mileage may vary.).

So I sat and vibrated quietly to myself while I enjoyed the minty flavor of the gum. It tastes just like a regular piece of mint gum with a hint of a sharp overtone that might be the caffeine, some other ingredient, or just my imagination.

I was able to pull myself together enough to survive the haircut so I then went to the gym. I was about 28 minutes into my one-hour treadmill routine before it occurred to me to look down at the timer – something I usually do about every sixty seconds or so. Cool. Since I hit my “target heart rate” about the time I was telling the stylist that I wanted my sideburns a little shorter it is not clear if I technically had a “good” workout or “bad” workout, but it felt awesome, nonetheless.

There was no “sugar crash” and coming down off the caffeine rush was gentle.

You can order it through Amazon, of course, but you can also order it directly through the Jolt Gum site. If you buy the Support Our Troops packs, they will donate 7% of the sales to charities that help wounded or fallen members of the military or their families. That’s awesome, but, as of this writing, they appear to be out of stock on that item. I think that really, really sucks. I hope they decide to make internal substitutions so that the intent of the donation thing is met instead of throwing up their hands in mock helplessness because the “fancy art packs” are held up at the printers or whatever…

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. I seem to have noticed a pleasant, minor secondary effect from the gum that I am not going to go into here. See, I am in the process of performing a single-blind study on this effect and I don’t want to taint the results (just yet). It might just be my imagination, but, if I am interpreting what I think I experienced correctly I might be giving up Red Bulls forever in favor of this gum. I can’t exactly rule out “placebo effect” on myself, so if you have tried it and have noticed “nothing” or “something” let me know.

Nothing creepy, please.