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More To Coffee Buzz Than Caffeine
MrByte420 writes "WebMD has story about every computer geek's favorite beverage enhancer. Seems like there's more to the kick than just the caffeine that makes coffee a favorite amongst the sleep deprived programmers of the world. Some more information can be found here with some interesting details why decaf can keep ya up and wired too. In related news, scientists report no progress in determining why the best computer code is written at 4:27 AM on a tuesday morning surrounded by a box of Mountain Dew."
I wonder which caffeine extraction method was used?
Liquid C02 under pressure is often used to extract the caffeine. But there are other methods.
It might be interesting to see if the same results come from decaffeinated coffees made by different methods. It might also be interesting to see if the study controlled for the effects of smell and taste. People who don't drink coffee might find their heart races when forced to drink something that is definitely an acquired taste.
It might also be that removing caffeine and two other alkyloids (theophylline and theobromine, although I am unsure how prevalent those are in coffee) which are diuretics and vasodilators might allow other ingredients to have the opposite effect (previously mitigated).
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Shouldn't this have been posted a little later in the evening (morning)
Anyway: I do not drink coffee yet I function with little more than 4 hours of sleep. My beverage of choice is water. After realizing many years ago that soda rotted your teeth and had WAY too many calories per can (most juices too) I kicked the habit. I enjoy the occasional cappaucino now and then, but nothing like I used to with nightly visits to Dunkin D's during college.
My question for the everyone: how effective is self-determined sleep depravity? I tend to just "keep myself awake". Sure, I get to the point to where I can no longer function and pass out - in fact if I go to bed before this point I tend to not be able to sleep because I can still be doing "more productive" things with my time.
Are there signs that I am not getting enough sleep? I know it is time to go to sleep when I start slurring my words, which generally happens in the 30-40th hours of being awake.
I am asked how I do it, my answer is that I just do. I just have stuff to do and believe that sleep is a waste unless I need it. Do you find yourself doing this? Is this common among people you know?
I DO get a kick seeing all of the drones "needing" their coffee in the morning - people don't realize they are hooked on the caffine. More addictive than crack!
Me too ... Water Joe! That's right: water plus caffeine minus sugar!
Here at the UnivMich, you can get it at the party store just north of Williams and State, the Main St. party store downtown (kitty corner NW of the Courthouse) and Meijer's (but not Krogers...) in both 16- & 32-oz. sizes.
The power of caffeine without the spike/crash of sugar!
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Coffee with or without the caffeine contains significant numbers of expectorant and diuretic alkaloids, ie: oils and along with caffeine these are known to strip out calcium from the body... calcium being the major nerve insulator with it's major contribution being the meyelin sheath surrounding nerve bundles. So if you drink a lot of this stuff that sucks off calcium from your nerve bundles you end up with 'twitchy' nerves that arn't insulated enough and start 'cross-talking' and causing lots of electrical feedback loops/shorts... ...kind of like when you play the bass too loud for too long on unprotected audio cables (oxidation), the signal gets a little scratchy and fuzzy.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
How did they prepare the espresso? Anyone who's had different types of coffee knows this makes a difference. After visiting Italy and tasting true italian espresso, I can't really tolerate 'normal' coffee. I'm no biologist, but wouldn't the method and conditions (temp, pressure) of preparation influence the compounds in the coffee? What about serving conditions?
Well, the question I have is whether the decaf drinkers thought they were drinking decaf. If not, this points more to psychosomatic effects than anything. While giving one group decaf (which doesn't remove all caffeine, I'm given to understand) makes a decent control for the caffeine, what's really needed are four groups: one given real coffee/told it's real coffee, one given decaf/told it's real coffee, one given decaf/told it's decaf, and one given real coffee/told it's decaf. And it seems to me that their study population (of fifteen) is way too small to have confidence in the results... plus these were 15 healthy volunteers... what's needed is a much larger group that is more randomly selected.
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I wonder if there is any chance that this can be attributed to the placebo effect. I would think that people not getting caffine were not told of the fact. They expected caffine effects, they got them.