Caffeine Addicts Get No Additional Perk, Only a Return To Baseline

Dthief writes "Bristol University researchers found that coffee drinkers develop a tolerance to both the anxiety-producing and the stimulating effects of caffeine, meaning that it only brings them back to baseline levels of alertness, not above them. 'Although frequent consumers feel alerted by caffeine, especially by their morning tea, coffee, or other caffeine-containing drink, evidence suggests that this is actually merely the reversal of the fatiguing effects of acute caffeine withdrawal,' wrote the scientists, led by Peter Rogers of Bristol's department of experimental psychology."

Comments

Re:well GREAT

[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:It could be that...

[A beautiful mind]

This is the reason I highly dislike the mainstream media. I guess it's okay for them to at least try to summarize research, even though they fail horribly most of the time, but for fuck's sake at least provide a link to the original research or at least the press release from the university!

A much better test would be to actually TEST their alertness, instead of relying on a subjective self-assessment.

They did that. From the press release:

Approximately half of the participants were non/low caffeine consumers and the other half were medium/high caffeine consumers. All were asked to rate their personal levels of anxiety, alertness and headache before and after being given either the caffeine or the placebo. They were also asked to carry out a series of computer tasks to test for their levels of memory, attentiveness and vigilance.