If you drink a cup at 5 p.m., at 11 p.m., when you might be getting ready to settle down to sleep, half of the caffeine from that cup is still floating around in your bloodstream. But caffeine is not without its negative side effects.Ĭaffeine has a way of hanging around in your body. And yes, it seems to have a wide range of health benefits. Yes, caffeine makes you feel peppier and happier. And a recent study suggests that caffeine can not only protect you from developing Alzheimer's disease, it can reduce symptoms in people who have it. Just two cups of coffee a day reduces your chances of developing cirrhosis of the liver by 80 percent. Studies show that people who drink one or more cups of coffee a day have a reduced risk of developing diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, colon cancer, and gallstones. More dopamine equals more pleasure.Īnd that’s not all.

Like its distant cousins heroin and cocaine, caffeine slows down the rate at which dopamine is reabsorbed. If that makes caffeine sound like a drug, it is. Dopamine plays a major role in brain chemistry-it controls the brain’s pleasure centers. A number of headache medications, like Anacin® and Excedrin®, contain caffeine for this reason.Ĭaffeine increases the level of the chemical dopamine in your brain. Caffeine causes blood vessels in your brain to constrict. The caffeine molecule is able to fit into the same receptors in your brain’s nerve cells to which adenosine normally binds, and when caffeine blocks adenosine from attaching to your brain’s nerve cells, you don’t feel as tired.Ī headache can result from blood vessels in the brain becoming enlarged forcing them to close down can be a cure. The longer you go without sleeping, the higher the level of adenosine in your brain becomes, and the drowsier you feel. It’s your body’s way of reminding you to rest on a regular basis. While you’re awake, your brain produces a chemical-adenosine-that causes nerve cell activity to slow down. To understand why caffeine wakes you up and gets your heart pumping, we must first understand what makes you drowsy. Credible evidence shows that the Chinese were brewing tea around 200 BC, and certainly coffee and tea were popular in both Europe and Asia by at least the 17th century. The energizing and restorative properties of caffeine have been known for thousands of years. Let’s wonder a bit about the science of caffeine. What is it about that drug that makes us want it, need it, and become addicted to it? And make no mistake, caffeine, the chemical that gives rise to most of the body’s response to coffee, is most certainly a drug. “Have you had your coffee yet?” You’ve probably asked, or been asked, that question many times.

Illuminate coffee