Wake up, check messages, make coffee. Does that sound like your morning ritual? Are you that person for whom life can’t begin, without that first cup of tea or coffee in your tummy? Well, to be honest, I am. And turns out, this pattern is so prevalent there’s even a word for it – procaffeinating! Short for postponing everything until after that morning cuppa. And it’d all be fine, if it didn’t feel like an addiction. I’m sure you’ve heard it too – people calling coffee a ‘drug’. And I’m sure you have friends trying to quit tea and coffee. So what is it? Is caffeine a curse or a blessing? How does caffeine work its magic? Is it a great, natural productivity hack or an addictive, psyco-active drug? And is it like a ‘drug’ drug, or is it something you can manage and use to your advantage? I’ll decode the science, explain the mechanics, and leave you with tips to use caffeine to your advantage – in today’s video or TWTA.
Before I begin – pls do hit that subscribe button and follow our channel. We’re a small food startup and we spend all our marketing budgets in making this content and keeping it free….and it’s your love that keeps us going. Ok, back to caffeine. Firstly, caffeine is a chemical found in coffee, tea, colas, chocolates, energy drinks and even cocoa. Unfortunately because it sounds like coffee, and because coffee has a high concentration of caffeine, people use coffee and caffeine interchangeably. But know that even green tea and hot chocolate have caffeine.
Just in different quantities. More on this later. First, let’s understand How does caffeine work? You might have heard that caffeine is a stimulant. Because hey, it jolts you and stimulates you to get up and get going. In scientific terms though, caffeine is a psychoactive substance. Psychoactive because it can actively alter your brain, alter your mood, and alter the way you perceive the world around you. If your morning cup of coffee suddenly makes you a much more likeable person, I don’t need to tell you what I’m talking about. And you’re not alone. Apparently, caffeine is the world's most popular psychoactive drug! Over 80% of the world’s adults consume caffeine in some form everyday.
Wow, talk about coffee making the world a better place! But how does caffeine work its magic? Why do we feel all energetic and ‘oh i’ll go conquer the world’ after our morning cup of joe? Well, to understand why we feel energetic, we need to understand why we feel tired. And for that, we need to meet – Adenosine Our body makes a substance called Adenosine which is a central nervous system neuromodulator. Ok, in simple words, it is a chemical that binds to certain receptors in the brain, and slows down brain activity, making us sleepy.
You can think of adenosine as our body’s mechanism to signal ‘tiredness’ to the brain. Now, as the day goes by, our body creates more and more adenosine. So basically the longer that we’re awake, the more adenosine our body makes, the more the brain gets this ‘im tired’ signal from the body, and the sleepier we get. Now here’s the fun part. Turns out the chemical structure of caffeine is very similar to that of adenosine. Hence – when you put caffeine in your body, it shoves adenosine away and instead goes and binds itself to the adenosine receptors. And because caffeine- a stimulant is now bound to these brain receptors, the signal your brain gets isn’t ‘i’m tired’. It’s ‘I'm wired, let’s go’. Fantastic, right? What a hack! Well, here’s the bummer.
Just because adenosine isn’t getting to the brain, doesn’t mean it isn’t being produced. In Fact it’s still continually building up in your body. And it’s just waiting there, waiting for the effects of the last cup of coffee to start wearing off, before it hits you with full force….and you experience that famous ‘coffee crash’…that leaves you more tired, irritable and grumpy than ever. That’s why a lot of experts refer to the energy you get from caffeine as borrowed energy or false energy. Oh btw, adenosine is also responsible for maintaining a steady heart rate and blood flow. That’s why, when caffeine pushes out adenosine, we experience that high heart rate, jitters and sometimes even anxiety. And our solution to all this, many times, is to have a second cup of coffee or tea. Which brings me to our next point: Amount of caffeine Remember I told you that tea, coffee, colas, cocoa – all contain caffeine. Just in diff amounts. Well, here’s a chart of caffeine content in all these foods.
As you’ll notice and understand now, the higher the caffeine content- the stronger the crash. Basically the more “energy” you get from a coffee or tea, the worse the effect after that high dies out since there’s a higher build up of adenosine, waiting to take over. Now India's favourite drink – tea, has varying levels of caffeine depending on the type of tea! White teas are typically lower in caffeine at 13mg per cup and black teas are at medium level of about 40-80mg depending on the blend i.e.
Assam tea, darjeeling tea etc. But even though teas, gram for gram have more caffeine than coffee – we only use a handful of tea leaves while for coffee a lot more ground beans are used! A typical cup of coffee contains about 60-120 mg of caffeine…depending on how many espresso shots your poured into it. .One cup of instant coffee contains 60-80mg of caffeine. Ofcourse these are broad figures and they vary by bean type and brew method and even whether the coffee is brewed hot or cold. But you get the range. Now, the FDA states that anywhere upto 400mg of caffeine a day is safe for most humans. But “most humans'' is a vague term, and the best way to tell if you’re over-consuming caffeine, is to listen to your body. Jitters, insomnia, anxiousness, headaches or nausea after consuming caffeine? Chances are you’ve maxed out. Ideally 200-250mg of caffeine per day is where one should draw the line, just to be safe.
Ofcourse, even then, the inevitable crash will still occur. But it’ll be manageable at these levels. Esp if you smartly manage your Time of consumption Yes, being smart about when you load up on caffeine, can help you maximise the upside and manage the downsides quite effectively. All you need to do, is understand how caffeiene gets absorbed in the body. You see, Caffeine consumed in the form of tea and coffee gets absorbed into your system via the GI tract. And it’s in the highest concentration 30 – 60 minutes after consumption.
So first up, it’s about 30 mins after you’ve had your coffee, that you experience its full effect. So, if you want to be wired for performance at the gym or for a meeting, time your coffee accordingly. Secondly, Caffeine is a diuretic. Which means it makes you pee more and leaves you dehydrated. And in the morning, you as it is wake up de-hydrated – because you haven't had any water for over 8 hours! So, if you can, drink a litre of water before consuming caffeine. Or atleast a cup. Whatever you can manage – it’ll help a LOT. Third: caffeine has a half life of about 5-6 hours in the human body. What that means is that 50% of the caffeine you consumed, is still available in your body, 6 hours later. So, if you consumed one cup of coffee with 100 mg of caffeine at 8 am – 50 mg of caffeine is still in your system at 1:30 pm and 25 gm of caffeine is in your system at 7 in the evening. Which is why it’s best to consume coffee before 1 pm and tea before 4 pm since it's lighter on the caffeine content.
Drink a whole cup of coffee at 5pm, and at 10pm, when you’re planning to go to bed, you still have over 50mg of caffeine in your system. No wonder you can’t sleep! And for those people who can fall asleep after consuming copious amounts of caffeine, maybe that’s because you’re exhausted but tell me…do you get good quality sleep? Or do you keep waking? And for anyone who experiences digestive irritability or gas after consumption of caffeine – try eating a little something before you consume your coffee or tea – it’ll do wonders to your gut health! Aaand that’s it. Those are my tips to managing your caffeine intake so that you get the best of it, not the worst. To summarise. Caffeine isn’t a magic drink. It’s a stimulant and it tricks your brain into thinking you aren’t tired, when you are.
Once the effect of it wears off you're left even more tired…that is.. have a caffeine crash. And the more you consume the harder the crash. So monitor your consumption. 200-250mg is more than enough for most of us. If you’re an anxious person, switching from coffee to a lower caffeine content beverage like white teas is ideal, as it won’t affect your pulse and heart rate as much. Coffee has a half life of 5-6 hours. So have your last cup before lunch. Any later and you’re putting you chances of sleep to rest. Before I sign off, allow me to accept that I too am addicted to my coffee. I used to need my 3 cups everyday, but researching for this topic made me realise I should cut it down to two. I’m trying to. If you are too, do tell me in the comments how it’s going for you – I’d love to know.
Oh and don't forget to hit subscribe so you never miss any episode of TWTA. Happy procaffeinating and ciao for now!
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