14 Surprising Facts About Caffeine, Explained by Science - PolicyMic

17. 3. 2014. 14 Surprising Facts About Caffeine, Explained by Science - PolicyMic

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14 Surprising Facts About Caffeine, Explained by Science

By Lucky Tran March 12, 2014

6 Comments|27418 Views

|35591 Shares

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For many of us, coffee is our best friend. It's there in our times of need, whether a cold weekday morning or during an all-nighter. Coffee is warm, reassuring and keeps up sharp. But do we really know what coffee is doing to our brains?

Fortunately science can tell us! Did you know that scientists are the biggest coffee drinkers of all? So scientists are bound toknow more than a thing or two about the magical effects of coffee.

Image Credit: I Love Coffee

Here are the essential scientific facts that everyone needs to know about drinking coffee:

1. This is what caffeine, the chemical, "looks" like.



Image Credit: Beautiful Brainiacs

The shape of caffeine is similar to an important molecule called "adenosine" that regulates brain function (pictured below).

Caffeine "mimics" adenosine and binds to the same targets in the brain.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

2. Caffeine looks like this when viewed from an electron microscope.

Via: Annie Cavanagh and David McCarthy

Caffeine naturally forms tiny crystals, about 0.0016 inch in size. This picture won a science photography award in 2012 for

creatively showing an "everyday thing from a different, at first unrecognizable, perspective."

3. These are the best times to drink coffee.



Image Credit: I Love Coffee

That's because we're all guided by a 24-hour biological cycle, known as the circadian clock. When you first wake up yourbrain is already flooded with cortisol, a natural chemical that helps to keep you alert. So although you might feel like acoffee, you don't actually need one. Best to wait until cortisol levels drop later in the day.

4. Once you do take a sip, it takes only 10 minutes or so for the caffeine to kick in.

Image Credit: Imgur

After as little as 10 minutes, the caffeine concentration in your blood reaches half the maximum concentration, which isenough to have an effect. The caffeine reaches maximum levels, making you most alert, after 45 minutes. Depending on howfast or slow your body's able to break down the drug, you could feel the effects of caffeine for 3 to 5 hours.

5. Caffeine works by blocking the effect of the brain's natural regulator, adenosine.



During the day, your brain naturally builds up its levels of adenosine. When they reach a threshold concentration, they bindto special receptors that react by start firing instructions to make your body sleepy.

Image adapted from animation by Alex Wong

Remember how caffeine has a similar shape to adenosine? This means that it can bind these very same receptors, blocking

the natural effect of adenosine. This allows the brain's stimulants to work unimpeded, keeping you up and alert.

6. Caffeine affects your brain much differently than beer.

Via: I Love Coffee

7. In addition to caffeine, there's lots of other stuff in coffee that may be good for yourhealth.



Via: Authority Nutrition

That's because coffee also contains hundreds of different compounds. These include many antioxidants that protect ourbodies from damaging chemicals called "free radicals." These molecules cause aging and are associated with illnesses suchas cancer and heart disease. NIH studies show that coffee drinkers have a reduced risk of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, type 2

diabetes and many other diseases.

There's a caveat: Many coffee drinkers are also heavy smokers, heavy drinkers and red meat eaters, all things that aredetrimental to your health. This means that the data above is adjusted for these risk factors, so you should avoid thesehabits if you want coffee to have a positive effect. Also, the research here isn't conclusive enough to prove a causalrelationship, but it's the best data we have so far. Overall, it's encouraging news for coffee lovers!

8. Bees also love caffeine, and it helps their brains too!

Via: Science

The nectar in some flowers has low levels of caffeine, which is used to attract bees by creating a drug-induced buzz that

keeps the bees coming back. The caffeine is good for the bees too. Recent studies have shown that caffeine can helpenhance the long term memory of bees.

9. Your brain can become unhealthily addicted to caffeine ...

As you might expect, the brain is clever and not so easily tricked. In reaction to caffeine blocking all of its receptors, the

brain makes even more of them so that adenosine is still able to bind its target. This means that over time, the chemistry ofyour brain changes so that you'll need to drink more and more coffee just to have the same effect.

10. ... Which means that you can have horrible caffeine withdrawals.

Via: Lifehacker



Caffeine is a stimulant to the central nervous system, and like other drugs, regular use of caffeine can cause a mild physical

dependence. Caffeine withdrawal is now recognized as a mental disorder. So consume carefully.

11. There are a whole bunch of side-effects.

Via: Wikipedia

Quitting caffeine suddenly can cause headaches that last up to nine days. For those who want out, doctors recommend

reducing consumption gradually over a period of four weeks.

12. Caffeine isn't too great for spiders either.

Via: NASA

In 1995 NASA tested the effect of various drugs on the ability of spiders to spin webs. As you can see the result is quite

striking. Spiders can't metabolise caffeine as well as humans, so they are much more affected by the drug.

13. Just don't drink too much ...

Admittedly 100 cups in four hours is more than a lot. Still, you've been warned.

14. And don't forget to watch those calories!

Image Credit: Information is Beautiful. Hover over to scroll.



Want the alertness, but not the extra pounds? Black ice coffee gives you the most bang for your buck.

All the mental, social and health benefits probably outweigh all the negative effects and make coffee worth it.

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Lucky TranLucky Tran is a scientist with a PhD in molecular biology from Cambridge, who has worked at the intersection of science

research, policy and education in the US, UK and Australia. As a science media maker, he is interested in how science and

...Follow @luckytran

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14 Surprising Facts About Caffeine, Explained by Science - PolicyMic

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