Many people in today’s society consume caffeine, whether it be in the form of drinking coffee or eating foods containing caffeine such as chocolate. However, many people consume caffeine without knowing the transactions caffeine does to your body and even the consequences that result from having too much caffeine. Thus, this research article will talk about how our body consumes caffeine, how caffeine affects us, and what we can do instead of consuming it.
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About Caffeine
Caffeine is xanthine alkaloid(C8H10N4O2) that can be found in nature, especially in seeds, leaves, and fruit of several plants and trees. In this nature, caffeine in coffee plants is used as a natural pesticide to ward off insects that would otherwise feast on their leaves and beans. In the human body, caffeine acts as a stimulant for the central nervous system and thus causes many effects in our body.
Physical Effects of Caffeine
Feeling sleepless
Caffeine keeps us awake by blocking one of the body’s key sleep-inducing molecules, adenosine. Adenosine is an organic compound activated when breaking down a high-energy molecule called ATP. Neurons in our brain have receptors perfectly tailored to adenosine, and when adenosine binds into the receptors, it activates a cascade of biochemical reactions that cause neurons to move more slowly and slow the release of important brain-signaling molecules. In other words, it makes you feel sleepy. However, caffeine is an adenosine receptor antagonist that derails the process of slowing your neurons by blocking the adenosine receptors. This is possible as caffeine has a similar molecular structure to adenosine allowing it to move into the space of the receptor, but not enough to activate it. Since the receptors that cause you to feel sleepy are not activated, you won’t feel sleepy.
IMG Credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7NhQYgeCkA
Rise in body temperature
Once caffeine is consumed, it takes about 5 and a half hours to be absorbed inside our bodies. The short term effects that occur once consuming caffeine is an increase in breathing and heart rate, mental alertness, and physical energy. However, your body starts giving signals when you consume too much caffeine. One of these effects is a rise in body temperature. A lower core body temperature and a narrow distal-to-proximal skin temperature gradient is known to be good for sleep. However, drinking coffee increases your CBT that causes sleep deprivation once you consume caffeine.
Frequent urination and dehydration
Another physical effect of caffeine is frequent urination and the feeling of dehydration. Caffeine is considered a diuretic. This term refers to your body sending signals to your pituitary glands that inhibit the production of the ADH hormone. ADH hormones have a role in controlling the amount of water in your body. Thus, caffeine sends signs to your body, restraining the creation of ADH hormone, which then causes your kidneys not to reabsorb water. This metabolism causes you to urinate after having coffee. This effect in turn impacts your body by drinking lots of water. However, studies have shown that dehydration is not a significant cause of drinking coffee, and you need to consume at least 500 mg of caffeine to feel dehydrated.
Insomnia
Another effect of drinking caffeine for a consistent period of time is insomnia. This effect occurs as your brain adapts to the regular consumption of caffeine. If your adenosine receptors are perpetually blocked, your body will generate extra receptors for adenosine. This will then again signal your body to go to sleep, leading you to need more and more caffeine to feel alerted as time passes on.
IMG Credit: https://labpedia.net/antidiuretic-hormone-adh-vasopressin-arginine-vasopressin-hormone-diabetes-insipidus/
Mental effects of caffeine
Boost positive feelings
In some neurons, the adenosine receptors are linked to receptors for another molecule called dopamine. The role of dopamine is to promote the feeling of pleasure inside the brain. However when adenosine binds into one of the receptors, there is not enough space for dopamine to fit in. However, when caffeine takes adenosine’s place, dopamine is able to fit into its receptor and release chemicals that make the person feel happy.
Blue hexagon - adenosine, yellow square - dopamine
Orange hexagon - caffeine, yellow square - dopamine
IMG Credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foLf5Bi9qXs
Headaches, tiredness, depressed moods
Once you quit caffeine after consuming consistent amounts, you might feel headaches, tiredness, and depressed mood for a certain period of time. This is because plenty of receptors were created due to making receptors for adenosine, and once you stop consuming caffeine, there are too many receptors with no competition. This will lead to adenosines working overtime and symptoms such as the ones mentioned above.
Other than the effects mentioned above, caffeine also leads to alerting the brain, decrease in suicide risk, rapid heartbeats, muscle aches, diarrhea, fertility and pregnancy issues, increased blood pressure, confusion, headaches, irritability, decreased risk of oral cancer, heartburn, nausea and vomiting, and jitters as though they are mentioned in the image below.
Conclusion
As there are lots of dangerous effects related to caffeine, there can be ways to prevent ourselves from drinking so much caffeine. These ways include drinking chicory coffee, golden milk and Chai tea which will allow you to use as much energy without consuming caffeine.
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