The Shocking Effects Caffeine Has on Your Brain and Body

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hey 42 here the world is addicted to a potent psychoactive drug it is by far the most popular drug in the world the average person consumes over 300 milligrams of it every day yes it does stuff to your brain in your body that will shock you I am of course talking about caffeine but how does caffeine work and what's the worst thing it can do to your mind and your body and could it kill you firstly how does this good work how does it perk you up in the morning well every minute you are awake your body is releasing a chemical called adenosine into your bloodstream adenosine can be forced off asleep pressure the more adenosine that is built up in your system the higher your sleep pressure and so the more you feel the need to sleep after being awake for about 12 hours adenosine levels in your body will have built up to such a level that you will feel an overwhelming need to sleep if you stay awake for a further 12 hours or more the adenosine levels are so great that you will struggle to keep your head from dropping off and your mind from slipping into brief moments of blissful unconsciousness the only way to reduce two levels and rid your body of this adenosine buildup is by actually sleeping during sleep your body systematically breaks down the adenosine particles in your blood and flushes them out of your body caffeine works by directly battling with adenosine adenosine affects your brain by latching onto neural receptors when it does this you feel sleepy but caffeine molecules are able to latch onto the exact same receptors as adenosine in doing so it takes the place of the adenosine and thus blocks the adenosine from activating those receptors like standing on the wrong side of an elevator in a tube station causing a buildup of pissed off businessmen behind you the only difference is that caffeine doesn't results in your head being smashed in with a briefcase most of the time the caffeine therefore fills your brain into feeling awake and alert at least for a little while the problem is that although adenosine is being blocked it doesn't ever go away in fact whilst the caffeine sits in your receptors for several hours blocking adenosine like a fat unwanted squatter adenosine is still being released in droves into your bloodstream increasing in volume but unable to actually latch onto and affect your brain caffeine has a half-life of about six hours so after around six hours after ingestion your body starts to break down the caffeine which frees up your brain receptors again when this happens the tidal wave of built up adenosine suddenly floods the newly unblocked cell receptors in your brain like a torrent of sleepiness this causes you to crash after feeling awake only moments earlier your energy levels will suddenly plummet into a deep hole of lethargy this is colloquially referred to as a caffeine crash and it's why drinking caffeine to keep you awake behind the wheel of a car late at night can be deadly when the caffeine crash inevitably hits but what if before the caffeine crash arrives like an unwanted train of disappointment you were to drink more coffee topping up and renewing the caffeine levels in your system well like before the new caffeine would rush to your cell receptors and occupy them thus blocking the adenosine for longer still and prolonging your feigned state of awakeness and alertness and what if you were to repeatedly take more caffeine to put off sleep indefinitely well the issue here is that eventually the adenosine will build up to such overpowering levels as your caffeine intake will no longer be able to stop it from activating every receptor in your brain and like a levee breaking sleepiness will flood your brain but your mass caffeine intake will likely have kicked off a dependency cycle where your body constantly needs more caffeine to hold back some nasty withdrawal symptoms repeat this dependency cycle enough and congratulations you are addicted to caffeine the day after this caffeine party you will wake up from your dropped boughs asleep with a headache low energy dizziness and you'll generally be in a bad mood you'll also still feel really tired because although you slept you didn't really sleep let me explain we all know that caffeine can stop us from drifting off to sleep if we drink it too close to bedtime in fact a study found that even when a large coffee is drunk in the afternoon it can cause you to lose an hour of sleep that night but when you do eventually fall asleep if caffeine is still in your system then the quality of your sleep will be abysmal in fact if you drink enough caffeine before bed you may as well have not slept at all if you consume caffeine less than six hours before bed it will still be rushing around your system during sleep this reduces the amount of deep sleep you will receive which is the sleep stage during which your body repairs muscles boosts your immune function and increases your energy levels for the following day basically all a really important stuff so a cup of coffee the evening before will cause you to feel groggy the next morning long after you've awoken and long after you drank the coffee now we all shook down coffee like it's the tears of Jesus but apart from keeping you up at night what is it actually doing to your body and can it kill you within 15 minutes of drinking a double-shot cappuccino or flat white that contains around 130 milligrams of caffeine your heartbeat will increase rapidly and your stress will be heightened because caffeine stimulates adrenaline production this can make you feel anxious or give you the jitters in some people who are extra susceptible to caffeine it causes heart palpitations insomnia headaches and hallucinations but if you drank enough coffee would you die well sorry to disappoint all you masochistic thrill-seekers out there but not really it will take a healthy adult male with no pre-existing conditions just 10 grams of caffeine to kill them although what constitutes a lethal dosage depends on the individual the highest known caffeine overdose that was survived was when a 39 year old female attempted to commit suicide by taking a staggering 100 grams worth of caffeine pills but caffeine is so dilute within coffee beans and thus liquid coffee that you would need to drink about a hundred and fifty eight shots of espresso before you kneel over dead the problem is even when drinking only espressos continuously the human stomach is unable to fit that much liquid into it eventually you will have to slow down or just stop knocking them back and that will give your liver just enough time to break down some of the caffeine in your system and thus save your life it would technically be possible to die from a caffeine overdose drinking coffee alone but it would be really difficult and some people just wouldn't be able to do it especially if you're the kind of person who gets bloated halfway for a pint however people were serious pre-existing heart conditions would have to drink a lot less coffee to die and could suffer cardiac arrest or slip into a coma after just a couple of cappuccinos but even for people who aren't aware of any heart conditions caffeine can and does kill quite often actually it's not coffee that's the enemy however it's when caffeine comes in other forms specifically energy drinks and pills a sixteen-year-old David Allen crime sadly discovered after he drank a latte an energy drink and a mountain dew in a short space of time the excessive caffeine caused a heart arrhythmia and he dropped dead at school cases like these are rare but they almost always happen as a result of drinking energy drinks or taking caffeine pills and not from drinking coffee alone in 2014 in the u.s. 1,700 people died as a result of consuming energy drinks a single energy drink in of more than twice the caffeine content of a cup of coffee to make matters worse a study found that most major brands of energy drinks contain far more caffeine content than what is advertised on the label also powder caffeine or caffeine pills are even more dangerous one teaspoon of powdered caffeine is equivalent to twenty six cups of coffee if you already worry about the effects of too much caffeine you may be one of those incredibly exciting people who orders decaf well I've got some bad news for you decaf doesn't exist there are various methods of decaffeinated coffee on an industrial scale but none of them is capable of removing a hundred percent of the caffeine from the be a cup of decaffeinated coffee still contains anywhere from two to 14 milligrams of caffeine if you do drink decaf you're even upstairs Tim pot or you are extremely sensitive to caffeine and the tiniest amount makes you hallucinate that's your hands have turned into lobster claws if so then fair enough because that sounds rather frightful but what if you're the opposite to caffeine sensitive what if you could have a superhuman power that caffeine would have little to no effect on you well maybe you already do are you the kind of person who can drink five cups of coffee over a couple of hours and hardly feel the effects at all can you drink coffee just before bed and drift off to sleep just fine well you may have a unique variant of a gene human DNA has a gene for just about everything how tall you will be wherever you like seafood and if you unfortunately have a nose the shape of a mushroom but scientists have recently discovered that there is a specific gene that determines how your body will react to caffeine it's called cyp one A two you'll remember that one you either have a fast or a slow version of this gene those of the fast version have a different enzyme for breaking down calf that is more efficient and it can metabolize caffeine four times quicker than those with the slow version this essentially means that fast metabolizers can drink four cups of coffee and feel about the same as someone with the slow variant here only consumed one cup but which variant of the gene you have will also dictate whether or not drinking coffee is good or bad for your health when a group of 2,000 adults who had all previously had a heart attack participated in a study a shocking conclusion was reached it was found that drinking four or more cups of coffee per day increases an individual's risk of heart attack by 36% but only if they have the slow variant of cyp one A two drinking four or more cups per day resulted in no increased risk of heart disease for those with the first variant of the G but should you actually be worried about how much caffeine you consume well Lajoie is still out on this one but all studies points to quantity being the deciding factor more than four cups of coffee per day has been linked to some ill effects on your health and could possibly be carcinogenic but if you stick to less than four cups per day there is strong evidence to suggest that coffee can blow your risk of type 2 diabetes interestingly a study conducted at Harvard showed that those who drink decaf only reduce their risk of diabetes by around sixty percent of the risk reduction enjoyed by full caffeine consumers so it indicates that it's caffeine specifically in the coffee that is playing a large part in the health benefits of the drink coffee has also been linked to lowered rates of depression Alzheimer's heart disease and even certain types of cancer also in a way that may have never occurred to you before by abstaining from drinking coffee you could actually be harming your health how well unless you're extremely sensitive to caffeine drinking coffee or it's caffeine containing sister T throughout the day keeps you hydrated the common misconception that Coffee dehydrates you is well a misconception it simply isn't true coffee is a diuretic sure which means it promotes increased liquid loss from your body through your urine but that means almost nothing because this diuretic caffeine is swimming in a huge mug of water so the small amount of water expelled from your body through the diuretic effect is replaced many times over by the liquid in the coffee resulting in a net gain of water in your body unless you only drink espressos which have very little liquid but the same caffeine content so the Italians are all screwed although they're not because it's common in Europe to drink a glass of water with an espresso and so should you if you're smart even a small glass of water will easily cancel out any diuretic effects from the espresso a study found that a regular sized cup of coffee is almost just as hydrating as water even more so if you add some milk because believe it or not milk is actually more hydrating than water any negative effects of caffeine are far outweighed by the negative health effects of not drinking enough water on a daily basis and when some people choose to give up coffee or tea they often don't replace it with another drink at least not one which they would drink is regularly throughout the day which means overall they're consuming far far less water each day which is definitely harmful so drink up I say but make sure when you do drink coffee it's darn good coffee because life's too short for bad coffee do you know what else life's too short for browsing the internet unprotected without noord VPN the only VPN to get a perfect score on PC Mac Nord VPN have kindly sponsored today's video they have thousands of superfast servers in over 60 countries Nord VPN uses and military-grade encryption and has absolutely no data logging it works on any device Android iOS Windows Mac Linux you name it seriously I even run this thing seamlessly on my android TV to watch content from around the world I travel a lot and I often do sensitive work on my laptop banking messaging private documents etc in coffee shops hotel rooms and public spaces but I always use naud VPN in these instances because it's easy for hackers to intercept your packets over public Wi-Fi and see everything you're 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Channel: Thoughty2
Views: 1,111,669
Rating: 4.8793073 out of 5
Keywords: caffeine, coffee, thoughty2, what coffee does to your body, what does coffee do to your body, thoughty 2, thoughty, what caffeine really does to your body, what does caffeine really do to your body
Id: ohHCyf-UaX4
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)
Published: Fri Aug 16 2019
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