How does coffee affect your brain?
Coffee is one of the most significantly traded commodities on the planet. An average person consumes almost three hundred milligrams of coffee daily. It is a psychoactive stimulant known to fuel most of our work, and many of us rely on it to keep ourselves alert while having a lazy day.
We all know coffee makes us less sleepy, but how is that?
Adenosine is an organic compound found within the brain and, over the day, builds up and makes the human body feel tired and relaxed. The natural sleep process flushes this compound from the brain to eliminate the accumulated tiredness, giving us a refreshed feeling. However, adenosine is not completely flushed out of our system when this pattern is abruptly broken, which is why we feel tired, lazy, and sleepy.
As the human body ages, a measurable decline in our neurocognitive abilities is associated with normal aging and neurodegenerative disorders. However, the consumption of coffee can avert these neurodegenerative disorders. When we drink coffee, the caffeine enters the body and brain, which block the effects of adenosine, resulting in increased sharpness and alertness.
According to studies, the consumption of coffee has multiple benefits. It decreases the risk of suffering from Parkinson's disease by 25-30%, keeps type 2 diabetes in control, and reduces Alzheimer's dementia. According to a John Hopkins University research, participants who were given 200 milligrams of caffeine tablets were showing signs of enhanced memory.
"We've always known that caffeine has cognitive-enhancing effects, but its particular effects on strengthening memories and making them resistant to forgetting has never been examined in detail in humans," said senior author Michael Yassa, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University.
However, as you know, caffeine can also have quite an adverse effect on our sleep as it effectively blocks the accumulation of adenosine. Caffeine can highly downsize the time we spend in profound, restful sleep. If consumed close to bedtime, it can completely disrupt & imbalance your sleeping pattern, immune system, muscle repair pattern, creativity. Sleep deprivation leads to a deficiency in learning, problem-solving and emotional connection.
According to Matthew Walker, if the human body sleeps less than 6 hours per night, time to physical exhaustion declines by 10% to 30%, and aerobic output is consequentially lowered as well.
So how does one combat these adverse effects and reap their benefits?
According to a study, caffeine, when consumed 6 hours before bed, reduces a human body's sleep by 1 hour per night. So always remember that coffee is great for taste, increasing long-term memory, capacity to burn fat, and improving reaction time, but it should never come at the cost of your sleep. As a coffee fanatic myself, the sweet spot to sip coffee would be between 10 am to 2 pm.
