Posted by stan_the_man70 on February 20, 2015, at 4:57:09
In reply to Why is 20% of the population mentally ill ?, posted by stan_the_man70 on February 20, 2015, at 2:21:50
http://www.alternet.org/food/coffee-illusion-what-magic-brew-really-does-your-brain
-------------- quote referenceFood
The Coffee Illusion: What the Magic Brew Really Does to Your Brain
If youve been drinking coffee for a while, you arent getting nearly as much out of it as you used to. You're just curing an addiction.
By David McRaney / AlterNetFebruary 17, 2015
The Misconception: Coffee stimulates you.
The Truth: You become addicted to caffeine quickly, and soon you are drinking coffee to cure withdrawal more than for stimulation.
Mmmm, a warm cup of coffee with delicious cream, topped with a frothy head.
You smell it brewing and feel cozy inside as you browse cakes and brownies, scones and biscotti.
You get some of it in you, and you feel alive again you feel superhuman.
Suddenly, you feel like John Nash, you cant keep up with your own mind as geometric symbols float over the magazine articles in your lap. Someone strikes up a conversation about health care, and suddenly everything youve ever heard about the topic is at the tip of your tongue.
Damn, coffee is awesome.
Except, of course, much of this is an illusion.
The truth is, once youve been drinking coffee for a while, the feeling you are getting after a cup isnt the difference between the normal you and the super you, its the difference between the addict before and after a fix.
Ok, this is a very simplified explanation:
Caffeine is an adenosine antagonist. This means it prevents adenosine from doing its job.
Your brain is filled with keys which fit specific keyholes. Adenosine is one of those keys, but caffeine can fit in the same keyhole.
When caffeine gets in there, it keeps adenosine from getting in.
Adenosine does a lot of stuff all throughout your body, but the most noticeable job it has is to suppress your nervous system. With caffeine stuck in the keyhole, adenosine cant calm you down. It cant make you drowsy. It cant get you to shut up.
That crazy wired feeling you get when you drink a lot of coffee is what it feels like when your brain cant turn itself off.
To compensate, your brain creates a ton of new receptor sites. The plan is to have more keyholes than false keys.
The result is you become very sensitive to adenosine, and without coffee you get overwhelmed by its effects.
After eight hours of sleep, you wake up with a head swimming with adenosine. You feel like sh*t until you get that black gold in you to clean out those receptor sites.
That perk you feel isnt adding anything substantial to you its bringing you back to just above zero.
In addition, coffee stimulates your adrenal glands, which makes you feel like you could take a bullet and eat glass. When the adrenaline runs dry, you feel like youve been running a marathon, which leads you to look for more coffee to get those glands pumping again.
After a few rides on the adrenal roller-coaster, you crash.
You might think all of this probably takes a while, but it takes about seven days to become addicted to caffeine.
Once addicted, you need more and more coffee to get buzzed as your brain gets covered in receptor sites. Neurologists report seeing patients regularly who drink two or three pots of coffee in one sitting before starting their day.
Coffee also releases dopamine, the feel-good chemical in the brain which is released when you have an orgasm, win the lottery and shoot heroin. A similar addiction cycle with dopamine leads to depression and fatigue when you arent hitting the beans.
Finally, caffeine takes about six hours to leave your system. So if you drink coffee six hours or less before going to bed, you wont reach deep sleep as often. This means you wake up less rested, and need more coffee.
If youve been drinking coffee for a while, you arent getting nearly as much out of it as you did in the beginning. You are just curing an addiction.
The take home is that regular use of caffeine produces no benefit to alertness, energy, or function. Regular caffeine users are simply staving off caffeine withdrawal with every dose using caffeine just to return them to their baseline. This makes caffeine a net negative for alertness, or neutral at best if use is regular enough to avoid any withdrawal.
- Neurologist Stephen Novella from his blog, NeurologicaMind you, this is not a dependency. You will experience withdrawal symptoms upon cessation, but not like with amphetamines and cocaine.
Coffee doesnt seem to affect the dopaminergic structures related to reward, but before you breathe a sigh of relief, ask yourself how long youve been drinking it. Try and stop for two weeks and see how hard it is.
A cup or three will still give you pep, but as with all stimulants, over time you need more and more to reach that golden hum.
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URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20150129/msgs/1076929.html