“Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.”
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh, author and pilot
10/11/2024
Caffeine
1hr 17min
We kick this episode off by defining some terms and highlighting the fact that caffeine is not the same as coffee and tea. Caffeine is a psychoactive stimulant and is found in more things than just coffee or tea, such as chocolate. To get to the root of how caffeine works, we need to look at adenosine. Mr Beard gives a quick overview of ATP or adenosine triphosphate, and how our bodies use up ATM over the course of the day, releasing adenosine and leading to a ‘sleep pressure’. Caffeine interrupts the action of adenosine in the brain and staves off this sleep pressure to keep us awake.
Mr C goes on to go through some of the health benefits of caffeine, such as being linked to reducing the prevalence and onset of Alzheimer’s disease, certain cancers, diabetes, and even tooth cavities. And in more immediately apparent benefits, caffeine can boost muscle efficiency and reduce perceived level of effort when working out.
But as with most things in live, there are two sides to the coin, and there are health downsides to caffeine consumption as well. Caffeine can have a big impact on sleep. Even if you feel like you can fall asleep easily after drinking coffee, due to the half life of caffeine, the quality of your sleep will be impacted by caffeine in your system. Some tips from our hosts on how to balance your caffeine intake over the course of the day is to skip the first coffee in the morning and replace is with half a grapefruit. The compound naringin acts as a slow release on the caffeine to smooth it out over the day.
Our conversation moves on then to discussing the origins of coffee – check out the further reading points below for more info on this. Mr Beard floats the idea that coffee and it’s sobering and stimulating effects, replacing the ‘morning beer’ could have had a significant effect on the direction of human civilisation. One thing to come from this was Penny Universities, where all walks of life could pay a penny to enter coffee houses in the 17th centuries and engage in intellectual conversations and debate.
Mr C tells us of Malcolm Gladwell and Rick Rubin’s podcast where they went into the sleep patterns and caffeine use of orchestra players, and how the amount of sleep the musicians get on a nightly basis can be correlated to their proficiency and ultimate career success. And intertwined with this is caffeine’s effect on dopamine. Caffeine slows the reabsorption of dopamine, leaving more available in the brain which can help with memory and in particular learning new motor skills (such as those required when playing a musical instrument in an orchestra).
This brings our conversation to tea and its origins in China, and the 1840s when Robert Fortune working for the British Empire stole tea from China. Over the course of 3 years, this 6 foot Scottish botanist travelled around China (illegally) documenting the growing, harvesting and brewing techniques of tea. He then left the country with a ship full of tea plants and seeds, along with some local Chinese tea farmers, travelling to India where he set up plantations all with the aim of weakening the monopoly China had with the British Empire and the rest of the world when it came to tea. This chapter would pave the way for Britian flooding China with opium, getting at least 10% of the population addicted, a number of wars and even redrawing international borders (such as Hong Kong).
To close out this episode, both hosts recount their recent experiments quitting caffeine, both through the processes of going cold turkey and winding down over the course of a month. The withdrawal symptoms included persistent headaches, tiredness, body aches and pains, dehydration and irritability. Going back to coffee and tea after the experiment was certainly welcomed, but it provided a new and interesting perspective on caffeine. The overarching lesson learned (once again) was everything in balance.
Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant and is the world’s most widely consumed psychoactive drug. There are several ways that caffeine has an effect on us, the main one being its relationship with adenosine. Caffeine also stimulates certain portions of the autonomic nervous system, but this effect is reduced after regular use (ie. a tolerance builds up).
The autonomic nervous system is a control system that acts largely unconsciously and regulates bodily functions, such as the heart rate, digestion, respiratory rate, pupillary response, urination, and sexual arousal. This system is the primary mechanism in control of the fight-flight-freeze response.
Doses of about 10g of caffeine is toxic, and in it’s dried form (which is a bitter white powder) about one tablespoon would typically kill you. Whereas doses of up to 400mg are considered safe, which is about 4 cups of coffee. It also comes with some health protective benefits, and may help with a long list of serious aliments and diseases such as cancer, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, liver disease and so on. But we must remember the timeless adage – everything in moderation.
Found something interesting discussed in this episode? Chances are, we found it interesting too and we went off and did a bunch of reading online about it.
So why not dive further into the topic! Here are some handy links we think you might like.
The coffee bean originated in Ethiopia, where it was eaten, along with the leaves of the plant. In the 15th century, it was exported to Yemen where it was first brewed and consumed as a drink. From Yemen, it spread over the Middle East and North Africa. In the 16th century, it arrived in Venice, Italy.
The Catholic Church didn’t like it and considered it exotic and suspicious, calling it the “bitter invention of Satan.” The local clergy condemned coffee when it came to Venice in 1615. The controversy was so great that Pope Clement VIII was asked to intervene. He decided to taste the beverage for himself before making a decision, and found the drink so satisfying that he gave it papal approval. From there, it spread to the rest of Europe and the wider world.
For an animated history of coffee, check out this video.
Tea is originally from China and has a deep tradition there for the past couple thousand years. While tea was present in very small amounts in some other countries (such as India and in the Middle East), China was by far the biggest exporter of tea in the world.
That all changed in the late 1840s when Robert Fortune went to China to steal tea. This started a particularly ugly chapter in the international relations between Britain and China, which included a number of ‘opium wars’, the separation of Hong Kong from China (to being under British control), and eventually on a wider landscape the Boston Tea Party and the American War of Independence.
For an animated history of tea, check out this video.
The basic unit of energy for every cell in the body is called ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate). When you eat food, the calories from this food are converted into ATP, which is a form of energy that the cells can use for everything from contracting muscles, to proper function of your immune and respiratory systems. When this ATP energy is used by your cells, it releases the molecule adenosine. Adenosine binds to particular receptors in the brain and makes you feel tired and drowsy.
So over the course of the day, your levels of adenosine build up as your body uses energy and this is what makes you want to go to sleep at the end of each day. Caffeine is similarly shaped to adenosine and blocks it from binding with the receptors in your brain. This prevents your body from feeling tired.
For more information on adenosine and understanding your sleep drive, check out this article by the SleepFoundation.org.
Of course, sleep and caffeination are inextricably linked. There have been multiple meta-analyses conducted on the effect caffeine consumption has on sleep efficiency, latency (meaning how long the onset of sleep takes) and multiphasic sleep patterns. Over the course of our experimentation with caffeine reduction and withdrawal, interesting results showed an increase in REM phase sleep, and consequently more vivid and cinematic dreams. This being the dream state or final phase of our sleep cycle, a marked change in the recall of our dreams showed that by moderating caffeine consumption, a full restful sleep cycle can be achieved, which has multiple clear benefits across a host of functions in the body.
Additionally it is curious that caffeine actually has properties that help to reduce down by up to 48% the onset of brain related disorders like Parkinsons and certain cancers. The curious nature of this and its effect on sleep quality, generates more questions than answers. Sleep is essential to cleansing daily buildup of metabolic waste in the brain, and impaired sleep due to over stimulus using caffeine appears to set up a perpetuating and compounding cycle of sleep deprivation.
For more information on how your sleep can be affected by caffeine, check out this article by USA National Library of Medicine.
Johns Hopkins conducted a study that reviewed over 170 years of caffeine withdrawal research, and the researchers identified five clusters of common withdrawal symptoms: headache; fatigue or drowsiness; dysphoric mood including depression and irritability; difficulty concentrating; and flu-like symptoms of nausea, vomiting and muscle pain or stiffness. In experimental studies, 50 percent of people experienced headache and 13 percent had clinically significant distress or functional impairment — for example, severe headache and other symptoms incompatible with working.
Typically, onset of symptoms occurred 12 to 24 hours after stopping caffeine, with peak intensity between one and two days, and for a duration of two to nine days. In general, the incidence or severity of symptoms increased with increases in daily dose, but abstinence from doses as low as 100 milligrams per day, or about one small cup of coffee, also produced symptoms.
For more information on caffeine withdrawals and what you can to reduce them, check out this article by healthline.com.
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