If you care about your health and nutrition, you probably get confused by all the contradictory information you hear about various foods. First, scientists said that eggs are bad for you, but now eggs are good. Butter is bad for you. No, butter is good. Soy products are good, but maybe they’re bad. Every new study on a particular food seems to contradict the study before it.
The latest food that is receiving contradictory reviews is caffeine. Caffeine used to be Bad! Now caffeine is sort of good. Caffeine may even be really, really good! Who can you believe? What is the truth?
Caffeine is so pervasive in our culture and in many other cultures that we often forget it is literally a drug that affects our brain. Caffeine is present in coffee, tea, many cola drinks and over the counter medications.
The verdict on caffeine, particularly when taken in the form of coffee, really is mixed.
There are nutritional advisers who claim that drinking coffee will make us age faster, wear out our adrenal glands, and cause all sorts of untold damage to our cells. Other researchers claim that coffee, especially if it’s freshly roasted and ground, is full of antioxidants, and therefore good for us. Most doctors say that drinking one or two cups of coffee a day is probably not harmful. And of course there are others who say we ought to avoid caffeine altogether.
However, some studies have found that drinking a lot of coffee can reduce the chances of getting diabetes or Alzheimer’s disease.
Many of us feel that we cannot really get going in the morning until we have had our first cup of coffee or tea. We often continue to use it throughout the day whenever our energy appears to be flagging and our brain seems to need additional help to think more clearly.
Does caffeine really enhance mental performance, or is that just a myth? Yes, caffeine does give a temporary boost to brain cells. But the amount required to improve mental performance is not very high. Even half a cup of coffee will be enough to give your brain a boost that lasts several hours.
Oddly enough, more caffeine is not necessarily better. In one test done when high-level executives were given the equivalent of fourteen cups of coffee in a day, they made their decisions faster, but the decisions were not of very good quality.
Not every person reacts to caffeine in the same way. Some people experience greater mental clarity, alertness and productivity after a cup of coffee. Others become jittery, anxious, or depressed. Although caffeine will keep most of us awake if taken at night, it does not have this effect in everyone.
In some older people, coffee or tea can improve memory and alertness enough to partly offset the effects of aging on the brain.
It is true that caffeine is mildly addicting for most people. Some people can quit using caffeine with absolutely no withdrawal symptoms, while others will feel headaches, fatigue, and experience cravings for caffeine for weeks.
Caffeine works by blocking one of the neurotransmitters–adenosine which normally tells brain cells to calm down. Brain cells that have been affected by caffeine will remain excited and on high alert for several hours.
The most noticeable negative effect of caffeine is that it can interfere with sleep. In most people, drinking coffee, tea or cola in the late afternoon or in the evening will cause insomnia. The quantity and quality of sleep will be greatly reduced, setting in motion a vicious cycle, where the person affected will feel so tired all the next day that he drinks a lot more coffee in order to try feel awake.
If this is happening to you, cut back on the amount of caffeine you consume each day. You may experience fewer withdrawal symptoms if you cut down gradually. You may wish to substitute green tea for some of your cups of coffee. Green tea has some caffeine, but not as much as coffee.
Better yet, consider substituting exercise for some of those cups of coffee. If you can’t leave your workplace, at least get up from your chair periodically. Do a few stretches, walk around a bit, and jump up and down a few times. Take some deep breaths. A little exercise break can revitalize your brain without giving you the caffeine jitters.
Remember that your brain won’t really benefit from more than one or two cups of coffee in a day.
Perhaps the next study on caffeine will come up with the final answer about whether it is really good for you or really bad for you.
In the meantime, you will have to check your own reactions to this common drug, and make your own decision about whether you want to keep taking caffeine, or give it up altogether.
This article is taken from the new book by Royane Real title “How You Can Be Smarter – Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better, and Be More Creative” You can get the paperback version or download it at http://www.lulu.com/real
