Caffeine and how it works; a blog that might actually be helpful or educational
For the people who love a second cup
“Coffee is bad” idiot healthy gurus who don’t know shit about shit.
Does coffee sometimes make me shake nervously in my already anxiously primed body? Okay yeah a little. Does that mean I am going to stop? Fuck no. Here is a piece on the cups we put into our mouths with joy. The key players we will be looking at here are caffeine and adenosine.
Don’t want to read this? Here you go.
Don’t drink buckets of coffee or you will feel shitty
If coffee makes you feel shitty don’t drink it
Last cup should be at least 5 hours before bedtime
Your 900 calorie soy mocha Frappuccino isn’t what the fuck I am talking about here. That shit is a whole other high calorie blog post
How it works
Enough about me let’s talk about caffeine.
Caffeine is known as a Nootropic. A nootropic is something you ingest primarily for its effects on the brain.
Other nootropics include:
Drugs, all the fun ones
Creatine
Ginseng
Ginkgo Baloba (what happened to Ginkgos PR team, they were all the rage back in the day)
Nicotine
Caffeine is the most widely consumed psychoactive drug in the world, largely due to its mood-enhancing and stimulatory effects. 64% of American adults wake up and are like, “give me that hot sexy cup of drugs to start my day!” (myself included)
It comes mainly from coffee beans but can also be made in a lab. Lab made caffeine is the one found in most energy drinks, pills, and supplements.
A quick note on adenoise
Adenosine is one of the best-known sleep-regulating molecules. Located in your central nervous system, it acts as a central nervous system depressant and causes sedation and relaxation; basically, all the good night-night feels you want in the night and not in the morning when you wake up.
Adenosine is like a key that opens up a variety of locks in the brain with the locks actually being receptors.
There are a host of different receptors in your brain, so different ones have different effects. The one we’re interested in here is the A1 receptor. Once adenosine locks with the A1 receptor, it promotes muscle relaxation and sleepiness, which is why people get tired as the day progresses - that and also life, am I right?
What caffeine does is it antagonises adenosine receptors, blocking them. Stimulating you or rather not letting you not be stimulated.
A quick note on duration of caffeine in your system
Caffeine acts quickly, and many people notice the effects within minutes. They last until the body fully metabolizes the drug. This duration depends on several factors. Why? You are special and Dave is special and you both process it differently.
Caffeine has a half-life of about 5-7 hours. Someone who consumes 40 milligrams (mg) of caffeine will have 20 mg remaining in their system 5 hours later.
This is where sleep issues come into play. If you have 100mg of caffeine at 5pm, at 10pm you will still have 50mg floating around your brain to keep you thinking about Gina in accounting and how you said “I have read a lot of books” and how dumb that statement actually sounds and you’ve thought about messaging Gina after the statement to clarify you too know it sounded dumb so we can laugh together not behind my back, and please don’t put it in the newsletter this month… Hypothetically.
Levels of caffeine peak in the blood within about 15–45 minutes of consumption. They are then quickly metabolized by the liver.
Peaking is when you feel the strength of 5 ponies in your system, and you may also have to pee. This sudden burst of new pony strength may cause unrest resulting in anxiety. Once the liver starts to break it down these symptoms usually subside.
How much is in stuff
One cup of coffee: 95 to 200 mg (250mls/8oz)
One shot Espresso 64 mg (30mls 1oz)
Decaf 5-25mg (250ml/ 8oz)
Matcha 75mg (250ml/8oz)
One can of cola: 35 to 45 mg (350mls/120z)
One energy drink: 70 to 150 mg (350mls/ 12oz)
One cup of tea: 14 to 60 mg (250mls/8oz)
Chocolate 43 mg per 100g
Benefits
Keep that body tight by tricking yourself into starvation!
Increased athletic performance
Cognitive ability
It tastes fucking delicous
Could keep you from living that Notebook life (not the like lifelong love thing, the Alzheimer's bit [is Alzheimer's possessive grammatically? The blue line on this document is suggesting so but it feels weird to me. This is a genuine question])
Fat-Loss
Now, caffeine itself does not cause you to lose fat. The only thing that causes you to lose body-fat is being in a calorie deficit, please don’t argue with me on this point. It's like the one thing I know.
Caffeine does help you get there in three ways (hehe three ways)
One: it suppresses appetite making you less hungry (eating less calories).
Two: it can increase athletic performance and intensity (increasing calories burned during a workout).
Three: Increased Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT), the energy expended for everything we do that is not sleeping, eating or sports-like exercise. When you are all jittery and hyped the fuck up from a few extra cups you end up moving more and…. (I am just putting this in brackets because the other ones where but it feels weird this time. Burn more calories)
So this is why a lot of weight loss pills and powders usually have caffeine, and why when you are behind in an assignment you can pop a couple caffeine pills and really power out some heavy results at the small cost of sweat, the unshakable feeling we are all going to die, and b- work.
Increased athletic performance
This one leaves me very much with a chicken and egg vibe. Again does it do shit? Or does the extra pony strength increase your stamina, therefore increasing your progressive overload therefore making you strong like a pony (I don’t know why everyone is all “strong like a bull;” Ponies are mad strong, I was bucked off a pony when I was 8, her name was Pepper and she was an asshole, but after I was bucked off you didn’t see me walking up to punch Pepper in the not-quite-a-horse face. Why? Because she had already kicked my ass once that day and I know when to call it)
ANYWAY…People use caffeine to enhance their gym workouts all the time. Pre-workout is a very common supplement used. There is usually around 300mg of caffeine in pre-workout, the equivalent of the powder version of 3 very strong cups of coffee. I would need to run it out like a toddler at his first birthday party or I would have a panic attack, but that’s me and I encourage you to listen to your body.
It does work, I will say that to conclude this mostly rambly section on athletic performance there is abundant research around it.
Cognitive Ability
So the study I found is referring to 300mg of coffee while talking about benefits.
It states that “caffeine doses, alertness, vigilance, attention, reaction time and attention improve, but less consistent effects are observed on memory and higher-order executive function, such as judgment and decision making.”
So you can do shitty things very quickly?
There is other research that claims its abilities to help you focus
Two studies on old people showed that caffeine improved their attention spans (So they enjoyed their programs and butterscotch candies even more than before.) ((Was that tacky? It felt tacky?))
The participants also enjoyed feelings of well-being. I am 33 while writing this and life has fucked me in the ass enough times to know sometimes you need to take a break. Some good ol’ fashion pony strength could be a pretty nice bump in you day (I am also wondering about cocaine at this moment, and how that would fair in elderly populations.)
In younger folks (18-37 years), caffeine also proved to improve performance during distraction during simple tasks. (Now I’m also wondering about cocaine for everyone…?)
These studies seem to suggest that caffeine may help to reverse the effects of cognitive aging by stimulating the energy resources of elderly subjects.
Another study improved simple and choice reaction times, but again whether or not the right choices were being made wasn’t recorded.
Reduced risk of Alzheimer's, cirrhosis, and liver cancer.
Caffeine is a powerful stimulant, and it can be used to improve physical strength and endurance. Honestly that’s all I feel comfortable saying about that. It may be imposter syndrome, like this shit is too real to weigh in on!
Or more likely, laziness. Maybe if I have another cup of coffee I would dive into this and make this a well rounded piece of writing… (Or cocaine, or meth! I feel like if I did meth this would be a much longer piece.)
Draw Backs
Sleep, motherfucker
Anxiety
Building a stronger adenosine army
Sleep
A single eight-ounce cup of coffee contains between 95-200mg of caffeine.
Remember Adenosine, the go night-night chemical? Normally, adenosine builds up in the brain the longer we’re awake. The more it builds up, the sleepier we become. When caffeine blocks this process, we remain alert and vigilant. Now I am no expert but alert and vigilant isn’t a part of any lullaby I heard as a kid.
Research has also shown that caffeine interferes with circadian melatonin rhythms, delaying the onset of sleep if consumed close to bedtime. If you don’t know about circadian rhythms yet you need to take a long stare into a well lit mirror and sort your shit out. (Also never mind, it’s a great idea for me to write about it so just keep chilling in your too bright room [you’d get that joke if you knew about circadian rhythms]).
Remember that peskie half life of 4-6 hours? This can vary for different folks. You all know that one dick who can have an espresso after dinner and then sleep like a non-caffeinated baby a few hours later.
Things that affect the caffeine half life are being knocked up and smoking.
Nicotine reduces half life. (Maybe this is why coffee and smokes go so well together?! Nature is magic isn’t it?) It can increase half life speed to around 2 hours.
Preggers folks have the opposite effect. It prolongs the half life, and from what I heard, mommies are already pretty sleep deprived so I guess don’t, but I am also not about telling women what to do with their bodies unless they are paying me so... Don’t? I don’t know.
It says if you are pregnant, caffeine can be absorbed by the placenta and through breast milk so you should not have it. But like having a crazy fast speedy baby might impress the other babies, and set your baby up for a life of success only being the fastest scooter could provide... Just a thought*
One of the main issues with a lack of sleep is the increase in adenosine molecules making it hard to be a regular person for a whole day without the aid of some kind of nootropic (#callback), coffee being the most common but cocaine working very well also.*
Combat this bitch by developing healthy sleeping environments, and generally fixing your whole fuckin life. All this shit is connected. Seriously get it together, or don’t; YOLO.
You build up a tolerance
Drug Dealers..
Your adenosine is sneaky and strong and starts pumping iron when you start blocking its chemical entry into the brain. Meaning you can build up a tolerance to it and then you need more coffee to get that same sexy pony feeling that you are used to. The thing is though, adenosine is also very forgetful and just one day of fasting caffeine can reset your adenosine starting you back at square one and saving you venti cups of cash because coffee bills add up yo.
The issue with a coffee fast (for me) is that you feel like you are going through a terrible hangover without the fun part of shananagin filled evening of throwing frisbees in bars and climbing palm trees (hypothetically).
This hangover has the added bonus of including a very Garfield-esque fuck you attiude that definitely spills all over the people you love the most. (This could be potentially soothed by lasagne, but this hyothesus has not yet been tested.)
Anxiety
I honestly don’t even want to write this section because it happens to me and I am currently sitting here drinking coffee and would like to avoid an anxiety attack if possible…
No you want more? Fine, fuck you, I am sending you the bill for therapy this week.
Here goes. It’s thought that a combination of environmental and genetic factors are likely to increase a person’s risk for developing an anxiety disorder. Experts also say it may be because people who are sensitive to the effects of caffeine may simply metabolize it more quickly than others. (I hope this made you feel a little good, like “yeah I am just better at metabolizing than you, sorry I’m sooo good at biology or whatever.” )
Maybe if you meditate hard enough you can still have the second cup.
Caffeine being a stimulant can mean bad news for the anxious folk. You walk a fine line between increased alertness, cognitive function, laser fucking focus and finding the biggest sweater in the house and sitting on the floor until the dog goes and gets a real adult.
In research the amounts of caffeine associated with anxiety range from 50-400mg. (Thanks a butt load science, so you’re saying any amount, basically… nice.)
Where people start to grab random dogs for comfort is more commonly around 400 mg.
The natural effects of caffeine stimulate a host of sensations, such as your heart beating faster, your body heating up, your breathing rate increasing…
All things that mimic anxiety. It’s difficult to decipher anxiety and effects of caffeine because it fucking feels the same… (Again, thanks sceince!)
Caffeine induced anxiety is even its very own sub-category in the melange of anxiety disorders. So yeah.. It’s a fucking thing.
Also many health experts say “just don’t” but like fuck you, you don’t know my life.
Tips from me to you
When it comes to anxiety, know your dose and fucking stick to it. The second cappuccino is not worth the unavoidable feeling of death tickling your amygdala.
You can make a mix of caffeinated and decaf because full decaf is for fucking losers and tastes like real coffee someone has spit back into a cup.
Keep it before noon. After 12pm swap to decaf but I still wouldn’t have a decaf after 3pm.
Get to know your sources, a friend of mine doesn’t feel anxious when he drinks energy drinks but does when he has coffee (energy drinks taste disgusting so I don’t know why he would do that), but I’m not here to judge his psychotic behavior.
Try to coffee fast at least one day in the month. Tell people this is happening. Make sure they know to stay away. Go to a cave if you can.
*also meth! But for the record I don't recommend anyone using any noorotprics to get through the day chronically. (That means all the time). Sometimes if you meet a weird person and it’s keeping you up all night, or you just kept having dreams about time traveling to the 70’s to stop big agriculture you need a cuppa to get you through the next day. But I would avoid this as a long term solution.
*For the record and legal reasons I don’t recommend dosing up your baby with performance enhancing drugs of any kind. I said it was just a thought people sheesh
References
https://www.coffeeandhealth.org/topic-overview/neurodegenerativedisorders/
https://examine.com/supplements/caffeine/
https://examine.com/nutrition/how-caffeine-works-in-your-brain/
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321784#how-much-caffeine-is-in-each-product
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/285194#benefits
https://www.caffeineinformer.com/caffeine-in-workout-supplements
https://www.everydayhealth.com/anxiety-pictures/7-surprising-causes-of-anxiety.aspx
https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/7/305/305ra146
https://www.health.com/condition/anxiety/how-coffee-increases-anxiety