Students and coffee: not a good combo
Campus Times
May 9, 2003
Junior Vanessa Caraballo visits Starbucks four times a week to order
her usual Vanilla Latte.
"It soothes my stresses," Caraballo said. "Sometimes
I spend my time just reading a book and drinking a cup of coffee."
As opposed to others who believe drinking coffee will increase their
energy, Caraballo feels relaxed once she drinks caffeine, though she admits
that she actually gets too relaxed sometimes, relaxed enough to fall asleep.
The perceived energy that coffee drinkers get comes from their body's
struggle to adapt to increased blood levels of stress hormones while they
intake caffeine. Chemical stimulation is what provides the energy, not caffeine.
When people go through this struggle, they are likely to experience side
effects of caffeinism, which is characterized by fatigue, according to the
book, "Caffeine Blues," by Stephen Cherniske, a clinical nutritionist.
Students who drink coffee to finish that 10-page paper or to stay up
cramming for their final the night before, do not know that caffeine is
a major factor in the fatigue they feel while trying to stay up at all hours
in the morning.
Caffeine creates tension that ultimately results in fatigue, rather
than providing energy.
"We get a lot of addictive customers; they have no patience,"
said Esmeralda Escudero, a La Verne Starbucks employee.
It is very hard for those who are in the habit of drinking coffee to
be moderate or sensible when consuming caffeine. Drinking coffee sets up
a cycle of alertness followed by fatigue, according to Cherniske.
"Before, when I drank coffee a lot, I began to get immune to it
and got really sleepy," said junior Geraldine Bumanglag.
Cherniske said that most people begin with one cup in the morning, but
soon they need a second cup at mid-morning and another caffeine hit in the
afternoon.
"Over time, adrenal weakness leads to a deeper fatigue, more caffeine
and a spiral of increasing stress and decreasing can be devastating,"
Cherniske wrote in his book.
Also, many students like Caraballo believe that drinking coffee will
improve their study skills.
A study in the Journal of Clinical Psychology comparing the memory of
those who drink coffee and those who do not proved otherwise. A group of
college students were given a 100 milligrams of caffeine before taking the
Auditory-Verbal Learning Test. The results found that the students did well
in the beginning of the test, but were weaker in the middle to end sections.
"This illustrates that the 'enhancement' of alertness provided
by caffeine is both temporary and illusory," Cherniske stated.
"I believe that heavy caffeine consumption is a significant factor
in the epidemic of anxiety suffered by college students," Cherniske
commented on a questionnaire evaluating student's expectations of caffeine.
This questionnaire "Caffeine Consumption, Expectancies of Caffeine
enhanced Performance, and Caffeinism Symptoms among University Symptoms"
in the Journal of Drug Education showed that those students with the highest
caffeine expectations were the ones who take in most of the caffeine and
who experience greater levels of anxiety, depression, insomnia, headache
and fatigue.
Coffee might help Caraballo relieve some stress, but research shows
that compared to men, caffeine is much more damaging to women, producing
adverse effects at lower intake, according to Cherniske.
The time it takes the body to eliminate one-half of a given dose changes
when women are in their menstrual cycle, a fact in the "Metabolism
of Caffeine and Other Components of Coffee" by M.J. Arnaud that many
do not know and might not even think about.
Women who are on birth control pills take about twice the normal time
to eliminate caffeine, according to D.W. Yesair's book "Human Disposition
and Some Biochemichal Aspects of Methylxanthines."
Though drinking coffee and hanging out in coffee bars is a popular trend,
students need to be aware of the dangerous side-effects that can be caused
by consuming too much caffeine.