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Chapter 1: What is our love/hate relationship with caffeine?
Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus. And this is the show that pits facts against flat whites. On today's show, caffeine. Should you quit it?
Chapter 2: How does caffeine affect our gut health?
Caffeine is one of the most used drugs in the world. 85% of people in the US drink at least one caffeinated beverage each day. And that includes kids.
Chapter 3: What impact does caffeine have on our brain?
But yet, despite the fact that we are shoving this drink down our pie holes, there have always been these fears that caffeine is bad for our health.
Your cup of coffee could soon come with a spoonful of cancer warning. My heart was racing. I was super anxious. Something was happening.
Chapter 4: How does caffeine influence our sleep patterns?
I was having a panic attack. Could it all be a sign, though, of a serious problem? A problem like caffeine addiction.
And our worries around caffeine have reached new heights when it comes to energy drinks. Just last year, a 17-year-old from Texas died after drinking Alani New.
A Texas family is filing a wrongful death lawsuit over an energy drink that they claimed killed a teenage girl.
According to family lawyers, a coroner's report shows that she died from an enlarged heart caused by stress and a large amount of caffeine from Ohlone energy drinks.
The distributor being sued denies the claims, and the company that makes the drink says it's labeled not recommended for children.
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Chapter 5: Are we becoming caffeine addicts?
But this is just the latest in a string of scary stories from the past several years of people, often younger people, dying soon after drinking energy drinks.
Davis collapsed in the classroom of his high school in South Carolina. It wasn't a car crash that took his life. Instead, it was an energy drink. She drank two 24-ounce energy drinks in less than 24 hours.
And it took her life. So today on the show, what is this drug doing to our brains and our bodies? Is it ruining our sleep, turning us into caffeine addicts, and potentially even killing us?
Chapter 6: What dangers do energy drinks pose to our health?
When it comes to caffeine, there's a lot of... My heart was racing. But then, there's science. Science vs. Caffeine is coming up just after the break.
I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long-haul truck together.
We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats.
I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?
There were 32,000 pounds of them.
32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats. Yeah, that's incorrect. Find out what it's like to be a long-haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast What It's Like To Be.
Welcome back. Today on the show, we're taking on caffeine and energy drinks to find out once and for all how bad is this stuff? What is it doing in our bodies and our brains? And we first drank up the science on caffeine a few years ago when we first put down this episode. And back then, there was all of this hubbub about the energy drink prime.
And that's what got senior producer Rose Rimler interested in this topic in the first place.
Yeah. A lot of the talk was about how it's got a crazy amount of caffeine. It's bad for us. And energy drinks are bad for us. And sort of just this feeling that like caffeine is bad for us. And I don't know about you, but I have caffeine every day when I have my coffee. So it made me wonder, like, is my caffeine habit something I should take a second look at?
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Chapter 7: Is caffeine truly addictive or just habit-forming?
Yeah, if you have to run off on the way. No, I don't. Because I took a couple of sips before our chat. And I'm all sorted. Took care of business.
I appreciate that level of planning. Always come prepared. That is me. Okay. So that's how coffee can affect the gut. And from there, caffeine starts getting absorbed in your bloodstream. Okay. Depends on your body, but this takes about half an hour to an hour to peak. So caffeine's in your blood, it gets to the blood-brain barrier, and it just sails right past it. I talked to Astrid about this.
When I think of coffee entering our brain, I just imagine my brain is a sponge that just soaks up the coffee.
Okay.
Is that kind of right? Yeah, why not? Yes, because, you know, you drink your coffee, and all of a sudden, your whole body, including your brain, gets invaded by these caffeine molecules.
In the brain, it stimulates some neurotransmitters, including dopamine, and that gives us a bit of a mood boost. But the big thing that caffeine does in our brain is, of course, that it wakes you up.
Yes.
Yes, it's claimed to fame. And this happens because caffeine basically barges into the brain and like elbows out this molecule called adenosine from these special receptors. And what adenosine is, it's like the sleepy molecule. So it, like, binds receptors in your brain that basically turn on the feeling of sleepiness. So caffeine's like, out of my way. I'm coming in.
I'm going to bind to those adenosine receptors. And that means you don't feel as sleepy.
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Chapter 8: What are the potential health benefits of caffeine?
real nerdy here it's not that caffeine is binding onto these receptors and going let's go brain get excited it's rather the lack of adenosine the lack of sleepiness that wakes you up yeah and that's what we like about caffeine right like that is the whole point that it wakes us up
And it's not just about being awake. We actually have a lot of evidence that caffeine helps us be more alert, more focused, and helps us to react to stuff faster.
This has been quite extensively studied. This is clear. So if I take a stupid example, but you are facing a lion. If you have been drinking caffeine, you will react faster, and you will run away before.
Could save your life.
Yes, could, absolutely. Could make a difference and save your life.
And scientists have actually tested this. They gave free coffee to people who were visiting the zoo that day, and then they opened the lion cage. Amazing. And they got away? They got away? Some got away, some didn't. That's right.
Those in the placebo group were less likely to get away. We are joking.
No, there are no lions. But there is one small study that suggests that caffeine really could save your life. So this study, researchers had people stay up really late and then drive a car on the highway in the middle of the night. This is a real car and a real highway.
Oh, my God.
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