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Hooked on the coffee buzz...

Hooked on the coffee buzz...

Who hasn’t at some point reached for an early morning cup of coffee in the belief that it will get you alert and started for the day? Depending on how much coffee you drink it might be that the first cup is in fact just getting back to normal rather than raising your alertness. What you may in fact be doing with that first cup of coffee is avoiding withdrawal symptoms like drowsiness and headaches that result when you come down from caffeine. 

To test the theory researchers asked some people to abstain from coffee for sixteen hours. This was not too difficult for some of the subjects as they were not coffee drinkers. A bit more than half of the participants however, were classified as medium to heavy coffee drinkers meaning that they drank at least one and up to six cups of coffee per day. On the morning after abstaining half of the participants were given a coffee containing 100mg of caffeine while the other half received a coffee containing no caffeine. The medium to heavy coffee drinkers who were given a no-caffeine drink experienced drops in alertness and more headaches. 

The coffee drinkers who got their caffeine hit retained their alertness and had no headaches. However, their levels of alertness were only the same as the non-coffee drinkers who got the placebo drink without caffeine. This suggests that coffee drinkers are only brought back to a “normal” level of alertness by their early morning “starter”. What that first coffee is really doing for a coffee drinker is reversing the fatigue effects of caffeine withdrawal. This research also found that a mild increase in anxiety may be a part of the “buzz” associated with coffee drinking. So all that morning pick-me-up is doing is picking you back up from where it pushed you down.

Starting next week ;-)  we're going to try and give up coffee at mypure HQ.  Some coffee alternatives we'll be testing include dandelion and chicory root…

Posted by Sarah Smith

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