The world's most popular psychoactive substance, caffeine, enjoys unprecedented popularity as a stimulating beverage in the form of coffee, tea and in a wide range of "energy drinks," the latter of which are hitting the market in rapid succession.

Even drinks targeted at younger markets, such as Mountain Dew and Coke, contain reasonable levels of caffeine - enough to warrant concern from various health authorities.

In the USA alone, the equivalent of 168mg of coffee per person, or a cup and a half for each of its 275 million inhabitants, is consumed every day. Of course, many drink significantly more than this. Given caffeine is a drug, which makes it an addictive substance, are we getting too much of a good thing when we insist on our several morning coffees, and other caffeine containing products throughout the day?

It is hard to say exactly what the long term consequences of sustained caffeine use are, but one thing is fairly obvious: society in general, it seems, has formed a reliance on this 'worlds most preferred drug of choice' and its energizing effects.

What Is Caffeine
And How Does It Work?


History:

It could be argued that caffeine, in addition to being the worlds most heavily used stimulant, was one of the first drugs to be used by a mass scale. Indigenous to Ethiopia, coffee began its climb to popularity in the Middle East in the fourth century AD.

The Chinese began tea-drinking thousands of years ago, and the Sufis of Yemen used it in the form of coffee in the 15th century as an aid to staying awake for their prayers - one legend has it that Bodhidharma, the 28th Patriarch of Buddhism in India, upon cutting his eyelids off to stay away longer for meditation, flung them to the ground upon which, on the exact same spot, the first tea plants grew.

Coffee houses spread to Istanbul, Cairo and Mecca in the 16th century. One hundred years later, coffee houses opened for the first time in Europe. As a popular substance, especially in its beverage form, caffeine, it appears, has sustained civilizations as they have grown and prospered.

Stimulating Effects:

The attraction to caffeine - medically known as a trimethylxanthine (a xanthene alkaloid) - probably stems from the energizing, and stimulating effects it has on the brain - more on this later. Although it is taken in a variety of ways, many of which are pleasurable to the taste buds, pure caffeine in its isolated form actually has the appearance of a white, crystalline power, and tastes very bitter.

Before being used for commercial production, or sold in its natural state, caffeine is taken from, or found in, a variety of sources:

Tea
The coffee tree
Guarana berries
Kola nut
Cocoa
Yerba mate
Essentially a central nervous system stimulant, caffeine is used medically to stimulate cardiac function and as a mild diuretic (to produce urine production and help with water excretion from the body by inhibiting the reabsorption of sodium and water from the kidneys). However, its main use, as alluded to earlier, is as a recreational energy booster, which increases feelings of alertness.

Just How Much Caffeine Are You Consuming?


As mentioned, caffeine can be found in a variety of products. The quantity of caffeine found in these products can vary markedly, with many popular drinks containing staggering levels of caffeine compared to the average cup of coffee, which contains around 100mgs per eight-ounce cup. As shown below, caffeine can be found in many popular drinks, snacks and stimulant products.

How Does Caffeine Stimulate The Body?


Caffeine stimulates the body by activating the sympathetic branch of the central nervous system (CNS), which leads to an increased heart rate, improved blood flow and blood pressure to the muscles, a release of glucose by the liver and a decreased blood flow to the skin and inner organs.
The CNS is stimulated by the hormone epinephrine (adrenaline), which is released from the pituitary gland, usually in response to a perceived threat.

An effect called competitive inhibition, which causes an interruption to a pathway that normally serves to regulate nerve conduction (by suppressing post-synaptic potentials), occurs when caffeine, which is structurally very similar to the molecule adenosine, binds to the surface of adenosine receptors without actually activating them.

Adenosine plays an important role in sleep and wakefulness. Caffeine, by attaching to the adenosine receptors, prevents an over-accumulation of adenosine in the cells and, as a result negates its sleep promoting effects. This process is what ultimately causes the release of epinephrine and central nervous system stimulation.

Viewed in this light, caffeine could be described as a substance that thwarts one of the main processes by which the nervous system is calmed, not an energy producer in it own right.

Also, in our cells we have a molecule called cyclic AMP (a molecule that acts as a second messenger, which carries signals from the cell surface to proteins within the call) that serves as a messenger in the epinephrine release process. Caffeine causes Cyclic AMP to store in the cells, thus blocking its removal. This, in turn, intensifies and prolongs the actions of epinephrine.

Caffeine acts as an erogenic (it improves ones capacity for physical and mental work) based on its previously described effects, as well as the actions of its various metabolites (smaller molecules that serve various biological functions as products of metabolism). Caffeine's metabolites and their respective actions follow:

1. Theobromine:

Theobromine increases oxygen and nutrient flow to the brain, serving as a vasodilator.

2. Theophylline:

Theophylline relaxes the smooth muscles (most notably the bronchioles) and increases heart rate efficiency.

3. Paraxanthine:

Paraxanthine aids lipolysis (the breakdown of fat for energy).



STAY STRONG~~!!!
IPL