You're Crazy with Caffeine

Well Em, just like this little pup up above, your body does in fact crave various things while under duress.  For the dog, he's probably craving stronger chair legs...or for it to be quick and painless!

Over time, people create their own self-defense mechanisms to help them get cope with stressful events.  Say for instance that you love Dr. Pepper...the best way to get your mind off a tasking situation may be to take a cold, refreshing, esophagus-burning swig of the Pepper (41mg of caffeine in 12oz).   

The medical reason why people crave caffeine during stressful is simply that it is slightly addictive and that people use it as a coping mechanism.  Caffeine blocks the hormone adenosine which is the body's natural tranquility response.  In doing so, it makes caffeine a central nervous system stimulant giving your body that notorious "boost of energy". In other words, you get that boost of energy by the adenosine receptor cites being blocked by the caffeine.  It also stimulates the adrenal glands to produce more of the stress hormone known as adrenaline, which in some aspects is the body's natural version of caffeine.  

Bottom Line is this....When your body is confronted with a stressful situation adrenaline is released which initiates the fight or flight response.  When your body realizes that your adrenaline is starting to sky-rocket it then releases adenosine in order to reduce the anxiety and bring your vitals back to within normal limits.  If however, caffeine in your crutch, then the caffeine blocks the adenosine from reducing your anxiety and actually aggravates it much worse.  I heard it once put that your adrenal glands are the horses that are carrying a wagon load up a stressful hill.  Caffeine would then be the whip that is driving the adrenal glands.  In order to function at your highest capability, the caffeine whip should be replaced with sleep and rest....and yes even YOGA!!!  

In the long term, caffeine actually causes fatigue and reduces your ability to deal with stress. 

You shouldn't be having more than 250mg of caffeine a day...

Medical Fact #4:  This one is for Ryan..."On average when you cough, it is expelled at a  whopping 60mph"

Coffee...Love It or Leave It.

Ahh yes…who can survive without their freshly brewed cup of coffee!! The average American downs about 3 cups of coffee each day and that number is steadily growing. Even the size of the “cups” are getting larger and larger. In fact, this past weekend I stopped at Wawa coming home from ocean city and a woman was filling up one of those monstrous 64 oz plastic mugs with a deep roasted brew. Of course you don’t see that every day and so I couldn’t pass up such a glorious opportunity. As I walked by her I stopped and said, “that’s a lot of coffee you got there mam” to which she replied, “Yup, and I’m gonna drink all before I fall asleep tonight”. The conversation ended as quickly as it started by me saying, “You won’t be falling asleep tonight!”.

Aimee, I’m sure that you are very much aware that for some people, coffee is a necessity for daily functioning. There are of course arguments from both sides, in which some have very good validity. Before I state a few facts about coffee, my advice for everyone is Moderation. Our bodies are well equipped to take in and digest a multitude of natural things such as the seeds of coffea Arabica (coffee), but too much of anything can stress out the body.

In my weight lifting days, I was told two things about coffee from two different sources. One person told me that an apple has just as much caffeine in it as coffee and so that would obviously be the better choice. Well, with comments like that It makes me wonder if the guy ever graduated because apples don’t even have caffeine in them! So that is a total myth. Apples are a good source of carbohydrates and contain various enzymes that work similar to effects of coffee but do it in a much different way.

The other bit of information that was passed along to me was that bodybuilders often down a cup of coffee before heading out on stage because it helps to tighten up the muscles. That in fact is not a myth. Caffeine blocks adenosine, which is a chemical that makes you naturally drowsy. In doing so its constricts the brain's blood vessels, the heart beats rate increases, muscles tighten, the blood pressure booms, blood vessels near the surface constrict and more blood flows to the muscles. But the long term effects can be really tricky. Once the temporary stimulation stops, the brain cells start needing caffeine for stimulation and a sudden neural sluggishness installs.

Ok, so let me just give you some positives and negatives.

Positives:

1. 2-3 cups of coffee a day seem to have minimal to no long term effects on your body.

2. Caffeine has been found also to protect against Parkinson’s disease and depression, which is most likely related to its inhibiting effect on adenosine receptors. Depression is eased because caffeine increases dopamine. Dopamine is the happy feeling hormone produced in the brain.

3. It boosts mood, alertness, and physical performance. However, let me make this clear. Alertness may be enhanced for the perpetual coffee drinker due to the fact that brain cells need to be continually stimulated, but studies show that compared to a non-coffee drinker it does not give them an upper hand in alertness or concentration.

4. Coffee can be used as a laxative if need be.

5. In moderate amounts, it can help decrease post-gym muscle pain.

Negatives:

1. It causes sleep disturbances. Caffeine needs about 12 hours or so to be fully pushed out of your system.

2. It does in fact raise blood pressure.

3. Irritates the stomach lining.

3. And this is in my opinion the worst…More than three cups per day for years, increases loss of bone mineral density. Caffeine is a mild diuretic, speeding up the urination cycle, but "steals" calcium which is lost through urine. Long term, heavy caffeine use leads to a rapid development of osteoporosis.

So, to finally answer your question.

Your body doesn’t need caffeine to function properly and if you choose to stop in taking it, do it gradually or else your blood pressure will plummet and the blood vessels in your head will dilate giving you an extreme migraine. If you can get passed the caffeine withdraw, the best thing you can do for your body in the morning to wake you up is to down a 12-16oz glass of chilled water within 30-40 minutes. On a non-workout day, you also want to eat a healthy breakfast that contains no more than 450 calories.

Medical Fact #3:

If you yelled continuously for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

Follow up....Finally!

First, let me apologize for taking so long to blog...Passing this semester was a pretty big deal...just ask my fiance'! 

After reading the interesting findings on coca-cola, a good friend of mine wondered what the effects of Beer on your system would be and if it would be any worse for you.  Well, in this long awaited follow up segment, I’ll try not to go into too much detail, but let me just state a few facts about sitting back and enjoying a nice “brewsky”. 

When you down a can of coke, the initial wave of sugar (an entire days worth remember) is the stressor that your body immediately must deal with.  However, in beer there isn’t nearly as much sugar and so the body’s metabolic reaction is much different.  Its so much different, that alcohol actually has an opposite effect at first making the blood hypoglycemic (lowers blood sugar).  That’s why alcohol consumption for a diabetic can be quite dangerous, especially if they’re on insulin.

A 1-pint Ale has around 30 grams of carbs with approximately 7 calories in every gram of alcohol. When you chug this refreshing Ale your body then goes to work separating the contents of the drink. Though its not the best or most nutritious source, the body can relatively handle the magnesium, selenium, potassium, phosphorus, and vitamin B that are supplied in beer.  But as we all know, it’s the ethanol that really makes your body start hating life. Lets not forget that ethanol is a chemical irritant and your body looks at it like it’s a toxin. Our cells don’t need alcohol to function properly in some elite way nor do they want it.

Alcohol is digested by the small intestines.  From there the alcohol-laden blood travels to there liver where it’s the only place that an enzyme called “alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme” can start breaking it down so there won’t be as much alcohol floating around in your blood affecting your other organs. It does so in two steps: first by breaking the alcohol down into acetaldehyde; and then breaking the acetaldehyde into acetyl. This chemical breakdown produces hydrogen ions which then have to be picked up and escorted out by vitamin B (B-3 I believe).  I would assume that this is why some beer companies choose to keep vitamin B in their ingredients when others do not. While vitamin B is busy trying to clean up the acid build up in the liver, the more important job it has functioning in glycolysis and ATP (energy for the body) is inhibited.  This would be one of many reason why alcohol is considered a depressant. On top of that, excess acetyl results in fatty acid which over time starts to clog the liver.  Fatty liver is the first stage in the dreaded cirrhosis (death) of the liver which is an irreversible stage. 

I could probably go on and on, but I’ll just mention one other fact.  The two most important items that your brain needs to function properly is Oxygen and glucose.  Alcohol is a major inhibitor of the production of glucose and hence when someone downs a few too many, they become “sloshed”.

So Ryan, my answer to you would be…pick your poison.  I’ve chosen my poison to be a Guiness.  Obviously, our bodies are well equipped to handle a coke or beer every once in a while, but  anything in excess may be borderline dangerous.

Medical Fact #2:  The length of the human blood vessels, if stretched out, is such that it would circle the globe 2 1/2 times.

The Coke Side of Life

A sandy beach under foot. A blue sky up above. Relaxing amidst the enjoyable 95 degree temperature with a snack in one hand and an ice cold coca-cola in the other. On the outside, the picture of such a statement sounds mouthwatering and alluring, but on the inside the body would beg to differ. Well, at least it would as soon as you put that can of soda to your lips. With my boss who drinks 8 24-oz diet cokes a day, the question that everyone wants to know came to my mind…Exactly how bad is coca-cola for you? My boss isn’t alone though…Americans drink 13.15 billion gallons of carbonated drinks a year, with studies showing of a per capita consumption of approximately 15 ounces a Day!

For this blog alone, I’ll keep to the coca-cola side of things and leave diet coke for another day. For those curious however, I will say that diet coke seems physiologically easier for your stomach to handle then the real stuff…but don’t kid yourself…its not by much.
Our bodies are magnificent in the way they work and how they are able to keep homeostasis within. How does your body react to a 12 oz can of coke…

In The First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don’t immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.

20 minutes: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat. (There’s plenty of that at this particular moment)

40 minutes: Caffeine absorption is complete. Your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, as a response your livers dumps more sugar into your bloodstream. The adenosine receptors in your brain are now blocked preventing drowsiness.

45 minutes: Your body ups your dopamine production stimulating the pleasure centers of 

your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works, by the way.

>60 minutes: The phosphoric acid binds calcium, magnesium and zinc in your lower intestine, providing a further boost in metabolism. This is compounded by high doses of sugar and artificial sweeteners also increasing the urinary excretion of calcium.

>60 Minutes: The caffeine’s diuretic properties come into play. (It makes you have to pee.) It is now assured that you’ll evacuate the bonded calcium, magnesium and zinc that was headed to your bones as well as sodium, electrolyte and water.

>60 minutes: As the rave inside of you dies down you’ll start to have a sugar crash. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. You’ve also now, literally, pissed away all the water that was in the Coke. But not before infusing it with valuable nutrients your body could have used for things like even having the ability to hydrate your system or build strong bones and teeth.

This is the basic outline for how your body reacts when you choose coke over another less harmful drink. When looking at the many effects it has on your system, one could go in a number of different ways to prove the point that coke is better left in the can (literally). If you’re looking for a cheap way to clean your toilet bowl, pour a can of coke into your “can” and the acid will start cleaning those rings immediately.

There is a reason why Cal Ripken was the ultimate IronMan…it’s because he chose milk over coke! Soft drinks aren’t very soft…they are extremely high in phosphorus and phosphoric acid, which infiltrate body fluids, corrode the stomach lining over time, and simply eat away at your liver until it looks like an over-used sponge. The ideal phosphorus-calcium ratio is 1:1. The average American diet can be upwards of 4:1 or 5:1. That means that the calcium, which your body needs for bones, muscle contraction, and blood vessel constriction and dilation is inhibited from doing its job. Not only is it inhibited, but it’s actually pulled out of your bones in order to counteract the high phosphorus levels. Low calcium levels lead to osteoporosis…which just so happens to be the number one bone disease in America. A low calcium to phosphorus ratio can also lead to hypertension (high blood pressure) and an increased risk in colon/rectal cancer.

Let me just state a few facts that may surprise you:

1. The pH of your stomach is basically 2 where specialized cells secret Hydrochloric acid to dissolve whatever it is you choose to throw at it. The carbon dioxide mixed with solution to create carbonic acid (Coca-cola) has a pH of 2.5. You may ask yourself at this point, “well how does my stomach deal with such high acidity”? My answer: Whereas Carbonic acid is strong enough to take rust off a nail in a 24 hr period, dissolve bone and eat through teeth, the hydrochloric acid can dissolve the nail completely in 24hrs. Therefore, your stomach wins initially.

2. Why is it so hard to break away from my addiction? My answer: The caffeine. A test done by John’s Hopkins showed discovered that caffeine-withdrawal symptoms include not only headache, but also fatigue, mild depression, muscle pain and stiffness, flu-like feelings, nausea and vomiting. Who wants to feel like that when you can just down another coke! It’s suppose to help an upset stomach right????

3. Studies show that from 1985-1997 schools decreased the amount of milk they bought and replaced it with carbonated beverages. Over 200 school districts nationwide have contracts with soft drink companies to exclusively sell their product in schools.

4. Twenty-one percent of the sugar in the American diet comes from soft drinks! That's more than just an unhealthy consumption of empty calories. –Neal Barnard MD

5. "A study on the relationship between caffeine and fertility found that just one caffeinated soft drink per day was associated with a reduced monthly chance of conception of 50 percent."—Dr. Gary Null.

6. And probably the most shocking statistic for me…Harvard university’s study shows that One extra soft drink a day gave a child a 60 percent greater chance of becoming obese. One could even link specific amounts of soda to specific amounts of weight gain. Each daily drink added .18 points to a child's body mass index (BMI). This, the researchers noted, was regardless of what else they ate or how much they exercised. "Consumption of sugar [high fructose corn syrup]-sweetened drinks," they concluded, "is associated with obesity in children."
Around one hundred years ago they took the cocaine out of the coke…what they replaced it with doesn’t seem all that much better. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!!

Medical Fact #1: The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps blood, that it could squirt blood 30 feet.

Introduction

The Medical Mastermind blog has been initiated to make people aware of how intricate and amazing the human body is. Once a week or so I'll try to answer various questions that I come across during class or any questions that will be asked to me over this blog. So friends, ask away!