Caffeine: Good or Bad?

Caffeine is either a miracle, capable of making an otherwise drowsy person into an awake and alert individual, or a toxin that should be avoided at all costs, depending on who you ask.

All college students know the feeling: having a test the next day and being too tired to study all night. It’s only natural that one would turn to a completely legal, widely used drink with the promise of alertness. But not everyone loves the stuff: many people find the caffeine-rich substance to make them jittery and incapable of really studying. So what is the deal?

Amazingly, the research around a widely used and highly polarizing drink such as coffee is still incomplete, with scientists discovering new information about the stuff all the time. As one researcher at Johns Hopkins puts it, coffee’s “particular effects on strengthening memories and making them resistant to forgetting has never been examined in detail in humans.”

Conducting a double-blind trial on people who had not previously been coffee drinkers, giving some a dose of caffeine and others a placebo, and studying their memory of a series of images.

The people who consumed the caffeine tablet were significantly better at remembering the images, leading the researches to conclude that Caffeine has a positive impact on human memory.

German scientists for Pub Med gathered different type of scientific research on the subject through a survey in which they compared grades among middle school students and their caffeine intake. They found that, in general, caffeine usage lead to higher grades.

These two examples of scientific research about caffeine usage relate to class, in that they showcase two types of ways in which scientists can make conclusions about a topic, the first being a double blind experiment and the other being a survey.  

3 thoughts on “Caffeine: Good or Bad?

  1. Diego

    You managed to incorporate concepts we saw in class in an efficient manner, like when you mentioned the double-blind trial and the survey, two different ways to create logical conclusions about a matter. Everything you said was completely relevant to the case and it was also well organized which helps keep the reader focus. There has always been so much debate on this topic right here and you couldn’t have said it better at the introduction of your blog when you said that the answer you were going to get all depended on who you asked. In my personal opinion, I would rather use more natural ways to keep focused like having a good sleep schedule, or having a routine where you usually focus on tasks that demand your attention and that helps build a habit which creates a natural awareness created without the use of any substances.
    I can see two types of morning persons, the ones who use caffeine and the ones who don’t. Of course I would prefer to have the same performance without having to drink coffee or products with caffeine, because its clear that if the person who didn’t have his cup of coffee in the morning will not be at his peak as the guy that naturally created a habit for his body to be awake without the demand of caffeine.
    However just now I am under the use of caffeine because I haven’t yet created that habit for myself, and I must be alert for long periods of time because I got myself into the situation of cramming.
    Despite everything, it’s very interesting how a survey showed that the use of caffeine lead to higher grades, which is particularly in the interest of any college student like us right now. So that helped a lot in making your blog relevant and precise in targeting its readers interests.

  2. Seung Min Park

    I enjoyed reading your blog post. Actually, caffeine is deeply related to students. I think caffeine has both positive and negative sides. After reading your post, I research more about the caffeine and how it affect to our body. According to the article which I found, when we drink too much caffeine as it could occur some spinal bone loss in postmenopausal women and also the caffeine raise blood pressure. However, it also has positive side something like lowers the risk of oral cancer and cuts suicide risk.
    http://www.aarp.org/health/healthy-living/info-10-2013/coffee-for-health.html

  3. Philip Littleton

    Just like anything, caffeine has both positives and negatives. Sometimes, however, the dangers of caffeine can be very subtle. Many are so addicted and rely so heavily on their daily coffee dosage that they cannot start their day without having their cup o’ joe. Aside from addiction, this web article reveals that excessive uses of caffeine can affect sleeping patterns, especially if you overdose on it. Point is, try to do everything in moderation, especially when it comes to the addictive caffeinated substances.

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