It’s the 4 AM bar of neurochemical poseurs. But instead of sending your brain’s A1 receptor the memo that it’s time to conk out, as adenosine does, caffeine tricks you into thinking you’ve got more juice left in you-like that enabling friend who shoots you a late-night text to meet at the Continental. “Therefore, indirectly, caffeine increases the activity of the central nervous system and enhances alertness, concentration, and energy.”Ĭaffeine in fact mimics adenosine, a chemical the body produces that tells you to slow down. “Caffeine produces mild stimulant effects upon the brain and body by blocking the effects of adenosine,” says Childs. I don’t really get it, but how could I? Studies and common sense have revealed that coffee dupes you into craving it, not only through ritualistic allure but through physiological dependence. If each coffee drinker stuck to just two ten-ounce cups of Dunkin’ a day (which, let’s get real, is a drastic underestimation), that’s about what it would take to fill enough mugs to get you three-quarters of the way around the earth. And large doses of caffeine make me fucking crazy.Ĭlose to 80 percent of the country’s population consumes caffeine on a daily basis, and of all the caffeine ingested, 71 percent of it is coffee, according to research cited by the University of Chicago’s Emma Childs and Harriet de Wit, of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience. I’ve always maintained fond memories of the faint morning scent of boiling water passing through low-grade robusta beans-my dad downed that dreck every morning-but drinking the equivalent of what tasted like a stomped-on pile of damp leaves has always struck me as pretty objectionable. I’d sipped, I’d brewed, I’d sat in dank basement coffeehouses chain-smoking for hours with friends. Until about a month ago, I had never in my 31 years drunk a cup of coffee. Best of Chicago 2022: Sports & Recreation.Click here to join the Reader Membership Community today! Close
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