I attended the caffeine table talk on Monday, September 24, and it really opened my eyes about some of the myths and truths about caffeine and the side effects of drinking (or eating!) too much of it.

What I found really interesting was the science of caffeine, and how the molecule looks like one of our neurotransmitters that tells our brain when it’s tired. Caffeine takes the place of those neurotransmitters in our receptors, and thus the brain no longer is able to tell that we are tired. This means that caffeine doesn’t make us LESS tired, it just tricks our brain into thinking that we are not.

One thing that surprised me about that chat was that when we went around the table and talked about how much caffeine we all drank, a lot of the responses were a lot less than I expected. I myself don’t drink much caffeine, my main source is from green tea, but a lot of the people who attended the chat didn’t drink all that much either. I think on a college campus, we are constantly surrounded by people talking about “needing coffee,” listening to students talk about how little they slept the night before. We therefore forget that there are a lot of students who don’t drink caffeine.

I really enjoyed this event! It was my first table talk and I really liked how it was a casual conversation based event that made me feel comfortable and engaged.

(Sorry this was so late for some reason my earlier post didn’t publish properly and I didn’t realize until now!)

The table talk introduced me to the healthy consumption amount of caffeine a day (400mg). It is equivalent to ten cans of soda and two cans of energy drink. Most teas also have caffeine in it except the herbal tea.

My daily consumption of coffee changed after the fall semester begins. I started to drink half a cup of coffee daily by the second week of the semester. When the prelim weeks hit, I started to drink a whole cup of coffee daily. I found out my body reacts negatively. I get tired easily, and I have no energy throughout the day.  Is coffee really a booster then? I don’t think so.

I will start to cut down the consumption of coffee and manage my time better to get the work done without ruining my sleep.

Katie’s talk was very informative in terms of learning about the different health implications of drinking coffee as well as the chemical composition of caffeine. We never truly consider or take the time to think about what caffeinated drinks are made of – for instance, if we go to a Starbucks, we may not consider the ingredients in our drinks as well as the nutritional value of these beverages. I also never knew that decaffeinated drinks may still contain small amounts of caffeine. Personally, during my junior and senior years of high school, I used to drink coffee once in a while to stay awake for late night assignments. However, while it helped me finish assignments, it made me even more tired in the long run and caused me to crash the next day during classes. Though I was never much of a coffee drinker to begin with, I have stayed away from caffeinated drinks for a while now and will probably continue to.

I don’t drink coffee, nor do many of my friends, so my main objective at this table talk was to understand how coffee works and to gain insight into what it’s like to drink it often.  Although many of the table talk participants did not drink coffee often, I was still able to learn how it impacts you.  I did not know that the caffeine in the coffee only acts to mislead your brain and makes you think you’re not tired while your body is actually in need of rest.  As a result, getting a sufficient amount of sleep is preferable rather than drinking coffee and other caffeinated beverages that only trick you into thinking your exhaustion is alleviated.  In addition, I found it particularly interesting that caffeine can remain in your system for to five hours after drinking it.  This can lead to harmful effects on your sleeping patterns if you drink it at night as it can cause you to remain awake.  Although I don’t drink coffee, I have had an energy drink a few hours prior to going to bed and I was unable to sleep for hours as a result.  It was extremely detrimental to my sleeping schedule and my ability to function well the next day.  Ultimately, based on the table talk and my own personal experiences, it’s much more important to ensure that you get a good night’s sleep rather than drink coffee often and need it to function efficiently, especially as prelims are beginning.  

I’m not a big coffee or tea drinker so when I attended this Table Talk, I was curious as to how caffeine really affects me. The discussion circulated around what caffeine did to the mind. People tend to drink it when they’re tired, thinking that the caffeine would wake them up and reverse their exhaustion. However, what really happens is that your body remains tired after caffeine, but your mind is tricked into thinking it is not tired. The deprivation of sleep you get by drinking caffeine is very hurtful to your body. Additionally, decaffeinated does not mean that your drink has no caffeine. I found that to be the most surprising fact from the table talk. As prelims come around, I realize the best strategy is to stay away from caffeinated drinks, whether it be coffee or soda, in order to really listen to the signals your body is telling you. If you are tired, the solution is not caffeine, but sleep.

Coffee has been a part of my daily life in the last few years. Not only for helping me to focus or “wake up” in tiring moments, but also because I simply enjoy its taste. Although I’m not addicted to it or anything like that*, I do drink quite a reasonable amount. However, even if coffee has been present in my life for quite some time, I had never stopped to think about caffeine itself too carefully before. It’s as if the topic passed unnoticed through me.
I do look at ingredient lists all the time and, particularly in this subject, try to have an idea of how much caffeine I consume, when possible. However, since it’s often hard to estimate it, caffeine consumption probably gets less attention from me than it should. And that’s one of the things I liked about Katie’s talk: it’s something that’ll stick to my mind every time I drink coffee, and make me more wary (even if only a bit) about my own consumption.

The most interesting part of the talk for me, however, was something entirely different. As a physics major, I end up rarely being in contact with areas like chemistry and biology. And it’s easy to get lost in one’s field and forget about the rest. In this sense, and considering I like those subjects, learning about the chemistry side of caffeine and similar substances was a pleasant surprise to me. For instance, I found it extremely interesting when Katie started explaining the separation process that makes “decaf”s and why some “decaf” drinks can still have substances with similar effects to caffeine (like theophylline) due to differences in molecular polarity (in the case of theophylline, an H-N bond in the molecule makes it polar, and it gets dissolved in the aqueous part during the separation – alongside the remainder of the drink – while the (non-polar) caffeine gets separated by being dissolved by a nonpolar substance).

Overall, it was very exciting, for me, to attend the talk, and I’m really happy to have learned about caffeine(&co) from a perspective/area completely different from the one I’m used to!

*(and I know this because it’s a bit funny/weird: even though I like coffee’s taste, if I’m not sleepy or don’t have many responsibilities – as in school breaks, for example – I usually spend days or weeks without coffee as I simply forget it exists!)