Caffeine on the brain.

Is caffeine really that bad, doesn’t it just give us a much needed energy boost?

The common arguments for caffeine is that it’s fairly harmless and provides us with the energy we ‘need’ to operate, and helps us focus - but are these beliefs true? The short answer is no, it’s a psychoactive drug that isn’t beneficial to you, let alone your children (which unfortunately seems to be the current trend). The truth is that caffeine doesn’t sharpen our minds - our response systems are triggered by it as a physical threat would be and the heightened levels of stress and alertness that occur is mistaken for greater focus. What is really happening is that our limbic system is identifying caffeine as it would a threat and is reacting accordingly - the amygdala is activated by caffeine into a state of flight or fight that increases our levels of adrenaline which can make us feel pumped up and raring to go - because it is a survival instinct that has kept us alive since time immemorial - giving us the adrenaline needed straight to our limbs, ready to either confront the threat or run away from it. Our central nervous system is also stimulated via our hypothalamus, and hormones via our adrenal glands. What results is elevated levels of cortisol (the stress hormone). As if all this wasn’t enough caffeine also blocks the natural build up of adenosine by binding to the adenosine receptors in the brain, causing us to feel less sleepy. What we experience in these moments isn’t energy, its metabolic and neurological stress, and enough of this stress can cause long term damage due to a range of issues from insomnia, to obesity and even heart failure.

In the video below ABC’s Lisa Stark has just one cup of coffee then takes an MRI which shows that her brain has been restricted of blood flow by a whopping 40% from just 400mg of caffeine. Imagine this happening multiple times a day over many years, and how it must be to operate with only 60% of the blood flow to your brain.

We now know that stress contributes to a wide range of disorders, so anything that induces stress is responsible for a range of mood disorders which include anxiety, irritability, panic attacks, depression and anger. The continuous daily exposure to stress through caffeine intake builds up and combined with other forms of everyday stresses, becomes a chronic issue - an issue that Pharmaceutical companies swoop in to ‘take care of’ via a range of anti-anxiety drugs, which is a conversation for another blog.

“Caffeine from Monday to Friday to energize you enough to make you a productive member of society, and alcohol from Friday to Monday to keep you too stupid to figure out the prison that you are living in.” - Bill Hicks

That caffeinated coffee has been given the term ‘slave juice’ should tell us everything about its role in this and many other societies. Coffee is absolutely everywhere, in my own city there are too numerous coffee places to count and the number is only growing with the recent arrival of Starbucks. Caffeine is not only available at specific coffee places, but most cafes and supermarkets are always fully stocked with caffeinated products, especially those little fridges near the checkout that now include caffeinated sodas. Pick a popular movie or television show and chances are that coffee is mentioned within the first 5-10 minutes. The show ‘Friends’ is a great example as it is set in a coffee house, so are most sitcoms or movies that involve anyone working, particularly Women. Next time you watch these kinds of shows, keep a count of how many times coffee shows up, especially in the background. Given the extremely obvious agendas of Hollywood, many people have assumed and rightly so, that coffee is placed in shows repetitively in order to appeal to the subconscious and compel the viewers to mindlessly consume coffee so they can be good little workers. Even when actors are clearly drinking out of empty cups, the subconscious recognises that it represents coffee, that everyone is doing it and it is therefore the safest card to play, so out we go, not thinking twice before we go to grab a coffee with our friends, make sure we have a cup of coffee before we head off to work, or grab an extra cup if we are busy parents!

For more information about caffeine, give ‘Caffeine Blues’ by Stephen Cherniske, M.S. a read.

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