LIFESTYLE
This Is Your Mind on Plants
Opium-Caffeine-Mescaline
Stating the obvious — that “caffeine makes us more energetic, efficient & faster” — albeit scientific explanantion how caffeine hurts our mind & body
Why does coffee make us feel more alert?
Mr Pollan : “…caffeine only appears to give us energy. Caffeine works by blocking the action of adenosine, a molecule that gradually accumulates in the brain over the course of the day, preparing the body to rest. Caffeine molecules interfere with this process, keeping adenosine from doing its job — and keeping us feeling alert. But adenosine levels continue to rise, so that when the caffeine is eventually metabolised, the adenosine floods the body’s receptors and tiredness returns. So the energy that caffeine gives us is borrowed, in effect, and eventually the debt must be paid back.
….Regular coffee consumption is associated with a decreased risk of several cancers (including breast, prostate, colorectal and endometrial), cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, dementia and possibly depression and suicide. (Though high doses can produce nervousness and anxiety, and rates of suicide climb among those who drink eight or more cups a day.)
An invisible public-health crisis: not getting nearly enough sleep
The sleep we are getting is of poor quality, and a principal culprit in this crime against body and mind is caffeine.
Caffeine itself might not be bad for you, but the sleep it’s stealing from you may have a price. Research suggests that insufficient sleep may be a key factor in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, arteriosclerosis, stroke, heart failure, depression, anxiety, suicide and obesity. “The shorter you sleep, the shorter your lifespan.”
For most people, the “quarter life” of caffeine is usually about 12 hours, meaning that 25% of the caffeine in a cup of coffee consumed at noon is still circulating in your brain when you go to bed at midnight. That could well be enough to completely wreck your deep sleep.
“How many times a night do you wake up?” he asked. I’m up three or four times a night (usually to pee), but I almost always fall right back to sleep.
It seems that deep sleep is just as important to our health, and the amount we get tends to decline with age.
Caffeine is not the sole cause of our sleep crisis; screens, alcohol (which is as hard on REM sleep as caffeine is on deep sleep), pharmaceuticals, work schedules, noise and light pollution, and anxiety can all play a role in undermining both the duration and quality of our sleep.
But here’s what’s uniquely insidious about caffeine:
The drug is not only a leading cause of our sleep deprivation; it is also the principal tool we rely on to remedy the problem.
Most of the caffeine consumed today is being used to compensate for the lousy sleep that caffeine causes — which means that caffeine is helping to hide from our awareness the very problem that caffeine creates.
#MorePowerToAllofUs
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