Coffee is the lifeblood of most college students, they need it to wake up, stay awake, and give them energy to go out and do things. But what happens if you drink too much of it? They say coffee is a drug, and according to druginfo.org, they aren’t wrong. “Caffeine is a stimulant which acts on the central nervous system to speed up the messages to and from the brain.” This explains why people feel more alert when they drink it, and why some people think it helps them study. But there is a threshold to drinking caffeine and if you pass it too much caffeine begins to have drastically negative effects on the body.

According to Mayo Clinic, drinking to much caffeine can lead to insomnia, nervousness, restlessness, irritability, fast heartbeat, tremors, and nausea. Ironically many of these symptoms are the reasons that a lot of people drink coffee. The phrase I can’t wake up without my Joe comes to mind, and many people claim to be cranky until they have their morning brew. But what I believe is happening with these people is they have fallen into a negative cycle in which drinking too much caffeine makes them too energized to fall asleep, so they aren’t getting enough rest, and when they do wake up they still feel drained and drink a lot of coffee to feel awake, which just starts the cycle over again.

There has been a lot of debate about what the healthy amount of coffee per day is. Harvard School of Public Health has determined through studies that up to six cups of coffee is the healthy limit. Wow six cups that’s a lot! You need to keep in mind that when they say cup they mean eight ounces with one hundred milligrams of caffeine, while a grande Starbucks coffee has about 330 milligrams. So no you cannot go to Starbucks six times a day and be healthy, also man that would be a ton of money.

Caffeine functions like most drugs; people develop tolerances to it and suffer from withdrawals when they try to go without it. This is because the body becomes dependent of the caffeine to stimulate itself and the biggest response most people have to withdrawal is intense headaches. A report done by the Times explored caffeine withdrawal and luckily for anyone who is considering quitting cold turkey they found that the symptoms tend to go away in a day or too. Meaning that “rehabilitation” is much easier then other drugs, the most difficult part of the process would be regulating your sleep schedule again.

However going cold turkey isn’t entirely necessary; there are many studies that have found there are several health benefits to drinking caffeine, in moderation of course. The report by Harvard that I mentioned earlier also discussed how recent science has discovered that drinking caffeine moderately may “protect against type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, liver cancer, and liver cirrhosis.” So next time you are feeling like a cup of coffee try to keep it to just one cup, otherwise you may become dependent and develop a tolerance and need more. Before you know it you’re that person at Starbucks everyday that everyone’s always talking about.

http://www.druginfo.adf.org.au/drug-facts/caffeine#tolerance

http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/caffeine/art-20045678

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/coffee/

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/31/caffeine-withdrawal-is-now-a-mental-disorder/