Why You Should Not Consume Caffeine Routinely
Introduction
By some accounts, caffeine is the most widely consumed psychoactive substance in the world. In fact, caffeine use is so common that most people find it difficult to think of caffeine as belonging to the same category as substances like alcohol and nicotine.
However, caffeine has very real (and often unforeseen) effects on various systems in the body, and, as with any other psychoactive substance, you could make the case that there is a “right” and a “wrong” way to use it.
Imagine, for a moment, the prototypical caffeine user: someone relying on a few cups of coffee to give them the extra “kick” they need to make it through the day. Perhaps this person has a hard time waking up in the morning, or is trying to compensate for too little sleep or poor sleep quality.
Taking a step back: does it actually make sense for this person to rely on caffeine? While every health and wellness recommendation depends on the individual and their particular circumstances, one could argue that the default answer should be “no.”
Why might the average caffeine user want to rethink their habit? Let’s explore the science.
How caffeine works
At first, caffeine-containing products like coffee reliably deliver on their promise to decrease feelings of fatigue and increase feelings of alertness. The operative phrase in the previous sentence is, of course, “at first.”
Before explaining this hefty caveat, let’s consider how caffeine works when it does its job of promoting alertness.
Fundamentally, caffeine functions by entering our central nervous system and blocking the receptors for adenosine, a signaling molecule that accumulates in the brain throughout our waking hours and is cleared while we sleep.
Adenosine plays a role in fatigue signaling, and its daytime build-up and nighttime breakdown are among the primary reasons you typically feel more alert in the morning and drowsier at night.
After nights when we do not sleep well enough or long enough, the nighttime breakdown and clearance of adenosine from our nervous system are incomplete. As a result, leftover adenosine contributes to lingering drowsiness that pulls us back into bed.
Caffeine helps in these moments of drowsiness by keeping adenosine from acting at its receptors. In other words, adenosine may be present in your brain and still screaming out “You are tired!” but nobody listens. End of story, right?
How caffeine stops working
Unfortunately, the mechanism described above explains only caffeine’s initial effects. With repeated, consistent use of caffeine, the body adapts just as it would to any other stimulus.
Specifically, repeated caffeine exposure leads the human body to figure out that adenosine signaling is being impeded. As a result, the number of adenosine receptors in the central nervous system increases: in an attempt to “hear” the suppressed adenosine signal, your neurons turn up the volume.
Turning up the “volume” of adenosine signaling is a direct attempt to counteract caffeine’s effects, moving adenosine-related fatigue signaling back toward its baseline level.
In terms of what you can consciously perceive, the reversion to baseline adenosine signaling is accompanied by a return to baseline feelings of alertness: that is, you feel as you did before you started consuming caffeine.
Therefore, there is no “free lunch” when it comes to reducing drowsiness or increasing alertness through stimulants.
Caffeine can help you feel more alert provided that your body is not used to it; once your body becomes used to it, caffeine can no longer be relied on to lift you above your baseline.
The vicious cycle
So why is it that coffee and other caffeine-containing products come to feel like an everyday necessity that routine users cannot function without?
By consuming caffeine-containing products on a routine basis, caffeine users create a “new normal” in which an elevated number of adenosine receptors is consistently present in their central nervous systems to counteract caffeine’s effects.
As a result, their nervous systems become more sensitive to whatever adenosine is present at any given moment.
In situations in which caffeine is not around to block adenosine signaling (for example, when your home coffee machine breaks down), the brain’s increased sensitivity to adenosine signaling leads you to feel more fatigued or drowsy than you otherwise would.
Specifically, compared to individuals who rarely consume caffeine, routine caffeine users likely wake up with more fatigue-inducing adenosine signaling taking place in their central nervous systems. Until such a user consumes coffee and restores the signaling balance, they likely feel less well rested than non-users.
Once such a pattern arises, routine caffeine consumption no longer produces the extra alertness it first did, but instead restores alertness to the baseline level one would experience if one never consumed caffeine.
This sort of vicious cycle reflects a predictable pattern common to many substances that act on the central nervous system: the same substance that people initially turn to in an attempt to feel alert eventually makes them feel less alert in its absence than they did before they started.
This relationship explains the very real sense of dependence that people feel toward caffeine: once your body has come to expect caffeine, not having it in your system amounts to throwing extra drowsiness and fatigue into the mix.
In fact, the story of caffeine dependence is another chapter in the larger story of the human power of adaptation.
Consider, for a moment, that human beings are not the biggest, fastest, or strongest living creatures on Earth. Yet there is virtually no environment that human beings have not safely visited or outright inhabited for long periods of time.
Whether to our benefit or to our detriment, humans adapt to new situations and stimuli.
This innate adaptive power shapes our relationship with substances as well. The use of substances that initially make us feel supernormal levels of alertness, happiness, or relief can eventually become indispensable to our feeling normal again.
Keeping this core insight in mind as we shape our wellness habits (including routine caffeine intake) can help us achieve steadier mood and energy levels, in turn improving our overall well-being.
Wellness Takeaways
Caffeine is a generally safe and well-tolerated drug that can play a role in reducing drowsiness and feelings of fatigue. Like all health and wellness tools, it has several limitations. Consider the following approaches to caffeine for the best results:
Avoid using caffeine on a daily basis. As your body becomes used to caffeine, it begins to expect it. Over time, caffeine becomes less effective, and you may need more of it to feel even normal levels of alertness.
Consider “saving” caffeine for emergencies and one-off situations like the morning after disrupted sleep, or late-night scenarios in which you need to operate a motor vehicle safely. For infrequent users, smaller doses should do the trick.
Do not consume caffeine within 8 hours of bedtime. Consuming caffeine too late in the day can disrupt sleep and increase feelings of drowsiness in the morning, creating a vicious cycle of increased caffeine consumption and dependence.
Do not use caffeine as a substitute for high-quality sleep. After all, the absence of morning drowsiness is not the only benefit of sleep; getting the right amount of sleep will make each waking hour more efficient, productive, and pleasant.
Cut back on caffeine use gradually. If your body has adapted to caffeine use over a long period, it may take days to weeks to establish a new, caffeine-free baseline.
Thank you for your time and attention!
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