Caffeine in its numerous forms ranging from coffee, energy drink, tea, cola, cocoa, guarana, yerba mate, have been on increase demand over the years. In an abstract to an article which I read, it showed that in western society, 80 percent of the adult population take excessive caffeine which could have effect on their brain.
https://www.maxpixel.net/Caffeine-Cups-Coffee-Beans-Coffee-Cafe-Drink
Caffeine is one of the most commonly used psychoactive substance in the world, in fact, I remembered that my sister bought a pharmaceutical grade pure caffeine last week, and I decided to take a shot of it, to show you that people could consume caffeine in different ways. In this post, I will look into how caffeine works in the body, and if we should be worried about taking caffeine.
Image taken from phone
Caffeine is a chemical compound part of the alkaloid methylxantines, which is found in over sixty plants. Caffeine is toxic to a lot of insects and herbivores animal, but stimulate the central nervous system (the Brain and the Spinal Cord).
In the brain, there are brain cells called Neuron which has a cell body, the dendrites that collect information from other neurons, and Axon which take information away from neuron to other neurons via the Axon terminals. In the Axon terminal is the Synaptic end bulb where components of the neuromuscular junction, which changes neuron information to chemical messages. Caffeine is a potent antagonist of adenosine receptors, since it blocks adenosine receptors in the cell membrane in the neuron of the brain. Adenosine is an inhibitory neurotransmitter in the Central nervous system that suppresses the activity of the neuron, causing tiredness, fatigue, and possibly sleep. Caffeine blocks the Adenosine receptors, preventing it from being activated, thereby still making the body feel energetic, and less sleepy.
A lot of research done on caffeine containing contents have given lots of results that can be overwhelming. According to a certain Research, taking coffee could reduce the risk of having liver cancer, another research showed that caffeine has an enhancing effect on long-term memory. Also, caffeine is said to improve the mood, reasoning, and attention of people. I also saw another research that talked about Caffeine reducing the risk of all forms of mortality, but I cannot really say much on that.
The expected amount of caffeine to be taken to be as appropriate for safety is within 37.5–450 mg but as people keep taking caffeine, the body starts to build tolerance causing the individual to take more caffeine. With Upregulation in the neuron, the number of adenosine receptors increases, which would cause the amount of caffeine needed to block the receptor to increase.
Caffeines affect the cardiovascular system, and before I explain this, My sister took an overdose of the caffeine she bought. In the instruction, one tablet has equal amount of caffeine as two cups of coffee, the day she took an overdose, she took 4 tablets. At first, she was very alive and active, she worked like she never needed sleep, and oh, I was jealous because I was feeling sleepy and needed to write a post but just didn't want to take anything that contained caffeine that day, I just wanted to rest and wake up to the work. Only about one to two hours, she came to me, telling me her heart was pounding, and she could feel pains. She wasn't herself for the rest of the period, when the caffeine tablets worked. Well, ever since, she has stuck to the usage and never tried to overdose just to keep herself awake. Back to the effect of caffeine in the heart, it can increase the systolic blood pressure of the heart, which could lead to high blood pressure and increased heart rate, and heartbeat. All through that day, my sister was agitated. She was jittering around and was using the toilet to ease her bladder more often.
Caffeine could be regarded as addictive, but it is usually not placed in the same category as nicotine. Unlike Nicotine which is categorically regarded as bad, it is very difficult to draw a line of good and bad in caffeine seeing that it has been proven to do good and fewer cons in the body.
Overtime, not taking caffeine anymore could lead to symptoms or attributes that you were previously trying to eliminate such as fatigue, headache, depressed mood, tremors, low energy, anxiety, poor concentration and so on.
Conclusion
Caffeine cannot be seen as bad or perfect, the body tends to adjust to its intake and whatever effects gotten could become less than the body adjust to become used to it. While there are people who take caffeine, there are others who do not take it all, while people can withdraw from taken caffeine easily. Caffeine intake should be reduced for hypertensive people as it could increase the heart rate.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9889511/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/methylxanthine
https://www.news-medical.net/health/What-is-Adenosine.aspx
https://www.kenhub.com/en/library/anatomy/the-neuromuscular-junction-structure-and-function
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/271707
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4462044/
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2789026
https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3623
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30977056/
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/what-is-caffeine#mood-brain-function
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK202224/
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/caffeine-withdrawal-symptoms