Approximately 90 percent of adults and 76 percent of children consume caffeine daily in some form, according to CBS News.
Coffee reigns number one in most caffeine infused households, controlling 55 percent of the 90 percent, with the other 35 percent coming from tea, soda and energy drinks such as Monster, Red Bull, NOS, Rockstar, AMP and so on as well as anything that contains Red Dye No. 40. These are most common in kids and teens with coffee being rooted as the number one adult energy source, according to Science Direct.
Recent research has shown that coffee in particular may help boost our concentration as well as our memory, which is what we as college students look for when pulling an all-nighter.
This boost is partly due to the fact that coffee beans are considered seeds according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). And like all seeds, coffee beans are loaded with protective compounds.
“Coffee is an amazingly potent collection of biologically active compounds,” Walter Willett, M.D., of the Harvard School of Public Health, told the NIH newsletter.
But you must remember that caffeine is a drug, says Steven Meredith, a researcher in behavioral pharmacology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
“While low to moderate doses are generally safe, caffeine is addictive and users can become dependent on it and find it difficult to quit or even cut back,” Meredith says. “Anyone who’s ever quit cold turkey knows it can trigger pounding headaches, mental fuzziness and fatigue for a couple of days until the body adjusts.”
If you need to cut back on your caffeine consumption, do it slowly over several weeks, gradually adding more decaf to your regular brew or simply adding more water to your diet to help flush your system.
I recommend from experience not to go cold turkey if you are trying to cut back from caffeine or quit. I fell into an addiction for coffee in particular where I had to drink it on a daily schedule twice a day.
Because my body was so addicted, when I cut the coffee, I would get sick, experience intense headaches or want to sleep all day rather than study or be social. My body was used to the energy source and needed it constantly.
It took a lot to break the addiction. Constant water and prayer really helped the process though. I tried to go cold turkey but that only made it worse. Therefore, I had to gradually stop drinking it overtime so that my body wouldn’t go into shock and so that I could still be able to function as well as attend to my daily academic and social obligations.
Up to 400 milligrams of caffeine a day appears to be safe for most healthy adults, according to Mayo Clinic. That’s roughly the amount of caffeine in four cups of brewed coffee, 10 cans of cola or two ‘energy shot’ drinks. Keep in mind that the actual caffeine content in beverages varies widely, especially among energy drinks.
Barbara Crouch, executive director at the Utah Poison Control Center, says that unlike coffee drinkers, energy drink consumers like to chug down not just one, but two or three of these jolting beverages before a hardcore workout, sport game/practice or maybe to brighten your chances of an all-night cram-sesh.
“When you pound down more than one energy drink verses sipping a cup of coffee, you’re not metabolizing it the same way,” she says, adding that factors like size, age, gender, hydration levels as well as the amount of food in the stomach can mean different outcomes for different people when on a caffeine binge.
Coffee is a drug. It’s very difficult to quit once you start drinking it daily or more often than your body is used to. Don’t forget that many different foods contain caffeine so try not to run straight to coffee or energy drinks if you fear that addiction could haunt your future.
