For many of us caffeine is the stuff that keeps you going while you finish that project up at 3am, gets you going in the morning or just the stuff that’s in your cup as you talk to a friend or check the news. Caffeine is much more than this though and is a very popular drug (yes, it is considered a drug) and a chemical compound with some interesting traits. Caffeine is consumed on a daily basis by 90% of adults in the US.

For starters, caffeine is a diuretic. For those of you wondering, a diuretic is anything that dehydrates the body through the means of urination. In layman’s terms, caffeine is the reason you have to urinate more often when you consume beverages such as coffee. Caffeine in its pure form tends to be quite bitter as well. Pure caffeine is a white crystalline compound, but in nature it occurs in plants and their fruit so coming across the pure form is not as common.

Caffeine is also referred to as guaranine when found in guarana, matine when found in mate and theine when it is found in tea. Much like sucrose, glucose and maltose are all sugar, all of these names are caffeine.

Now, why does caffeine exist? What purpose do plants have in manufacturing it? The main reason that plants produce it is to prevent pests; its natural purpose is to serve as a pesticide. As a psychoactive stimulant, caffeine paralyzes many pests and prevents unnecessary harm to the plant, fortunately for us; people are not paralyzed by such small amounts of caffeine.

Now that you can be assurred that caffeine will not cause paralysis, let’s move on to how caffeine works. Your brain many specialized cells with different functions. Some of these cells, are adenosine receptors. The adenosine receptors trigger a slowdown in activity in your brain when adenosine (a naturally occurring chemical that assist in sleep) binds to them. Adenosine builds up in your brain when you are awake and active and attach to your nerve cells to trigger sleep. Now caffeine is part of the xanthine chemical group, the same group that adenosine is in. To the nerve cells, caffeine and adenosine look the same, and either chemical can bond to the adenosine receptors. When you consume caffeine, it attaches to the adenosine receptors and prevents the adenosine from attaching, as the receptors are taken (like when someone else moves in to a house, it is no longer vacant) and you feel less sleepy because the adenosine is unable to attach itself to nerve cells. This is why caffeine makes you feel more alert and awake: instead of wating for the adenosine to metabolize and wear off, the caffeine blocks it off.

Now, while a cup of Joe won’t have the same effect on you as it does pests (as mentioned earlier), caffeine can be harmful if taken in large doses. The lethal dose is considered to be 10g of caffeine, so you probably don’t have to worry too much about death, as an 8oz cup of brewed coffee averages 150mg (that’s 67 -8oz. cups of coffee or ~4.2 gallons of it). That’s not to say that it caffeine can’t be unpleasant. The average person will feel begin to feel some form of caffeine intoxication after about 250mg (of course those of us that drink a pot of coffee each morning may less adverse to it’s effects). This may include hallucinations, headaches, insomnia, crankiness and an increased heartbeat. Now before you throw out your auto-drip Mr. Coffee to avoid any future consumption, please remember that side effects such as hallucinations occur around the same time that you start nearing death from caffeine. In other words, unless you are intent on overdosing on coffee by drinking over 4 gallons of coffee, you have nothing to worry about other than getting a bit jittery. I would like to once again mention that caffeine is not deadly unless you are trying to make it so. I say this because of the somewhat negative rap caffeine seems to get often. Caffeine does not stunt growth, or anything else like it. Many sources of caffeine are rich in anti-oxidants, and some people have an easier time focusing with caffeine in their system (how else do you think I was able to sit down and type this out?), all-in-all caffeine is relatively harmless, and has become a part of our culture.

If there’s anything else you are wondering about caffeine, or if there’s anything you feel should be added, please contact me at CaffeineGuru@gmail.com and I will get back to you and update this page.