What Caffeine Tolerance Means for Your Body
Coffee and caffeine drinks are some of the most popular drinks of them all. As simple as coffee may seem, there is more to it than meets the eye. It doesn’t just give you a boost and you should know that caffeine acts different on people with different tolerance levels.
There are has been a lot of research conducted regarding the coffee effects on brain. Read on to find what coffee really does to you. If you understand how it works, you will also know how use coffee optimally for the best results.
Quick Caffeine Tolerance
1. Tolerance versus sensitivity
2. How does caffeine tolerance work?
3. How long does it take build tolerance?
4. How do I prevent building tolerance?
How Coffee Affects Your Brain Function and What It Really Means for Your Body to Have Caffeine Tolerance
So, what do you need to know about caffeine tolerance? How will it affect your everyday life? Is there anything special you have to take into consideration?
What is high caffeine tolerance?
If a person never drank coffee or has abstained for long periods of time, they are considered to have zero tolerance. Basically, tolerance refers to how a person reacts to the effects of caffeine. There is a difference between tolerance and sensitivity. Tolerance is something you develop over the years whereas sensitivity refers to the genetic predisposition of the way the body processes the coffee molecules.
How does tolerance work?
Because you develop tolerance, if you are a habitual coffee drinker, after a while you won’t see the same results as you did at the beginning. Coffee works the best if you have zero tolerance. In this case you will experience euphoria, positive feelings, extreme alertness, increased energy, and improved motivation. In case you drink the same amount of coffee on a daily basis, these effects will appear at a lower degree. After a while the coffee you drink will produce “normal” effects, rather than anything out of the ordinary. By normal we mean that if a habitual drinker doesn’t get their caffeine dose, they will feel fatigued and tired. As a result, they will need caffeine to be able to function normally instead of getting the “superpowers” they used to get.
How fast does tolerance develop?
According to some studies in the field, tolerance may develop as soon as 1-4 days of coffee drinking. This has been measured by the levels of blood pressure, plasma epinephrine levels, and heart rate. After 1-4 days the study subjects returned to their baseline (meaning that the caffeine energy drinks didn’t give them a spike anymore). Specialists claim that people develop tolerance because the brain develops more adenosine receptors to make up for those blocked by the caffeine molecules.
The only way to make sure that you will get the same high feeling from the caffeine in energy drinks is to increase the dosage every couple of days. Naturally, this is not possible because soon you would reach dangerous amounts of coffee. Having too much coffee or caffeine isn’t only dangerous for you, but it could result in some chain reactions in your body that could turn out to be fatal.
Resetting or preventing tolerance
The good news about energy drink caffeine is that tolerance can be reset or prevented. If you are a habitual drinker, you should have a detox program to eliminate all caffeine from your system. Depending on the amount of caffeine you had on a daily basis, the detox could last from 2 weeks to 2 months. In this time your brain will return to normal functioning. In order to speed up the elimination of caffeine, you might want to think about using ruteacarpine, which is known to clean the body of caffeine.
The best way to avoid tolerance is to make sure you never actually develop it. If you are an occasional consumer energy drinks caffeine, you don’t have to worry about developing tolerance. You will experience the positive effects each time you drink coffee. The healthiest way to consume caffeine is to have it only if you really need it. This means that you should have only one or two coffees per week and make sure several days pass between them. If you have zero tolerance, you should remember that if you drink coffee late in the evening, you will have great chances of sleeplessness during the night.
If you prevent caffeine tolerance or if you reset it, a dose of 100-200 mg will be enough to give you an energy boost. The secret to get caffeine energy is to avoid habitual caffeine consumption. Some people find it difficult to consume coffee in moderation. As a matter of fact it is just as difficult as for a smoker to smoke only a cigarette per day every three days. This is because caffeine has an addictive nature. This is why some people either drink coffee or they don’t; there is no middle road.
Coffee and mental performance
As it has been mentioned before, caffeine is a mild stimulant to the central nervous system. It can improve mental performance by increasing alertness, concentration and attention. Caffeine can also result in wakefulness if you have a lack of sleep or reduced alertness. This is why coffee works for the people working during the night or suffering from a cold. Some of the studies suggest that caffeine can help those struggling with shift work sleep disorder or jet lag. Studies also suggest that caffeine could improve memory especially in case of repetitive and tedious work. However, this doesn’t mean that the more coffee you have, the better you perform. As a matter of fact, overstimulation can decrease your productivity.
Caffeine and sleep
In case you are wondering how coffee affects your brain, you should know that caffeine also affects your sleep patterns. There is also some evidence suggesting that there is a connection between caffeine intake day-time sleepiness and sleep quality. If you have sleep problems, it might be enough to give up caffeine for only a day to improve your sleep.
As you can see, tolerance to caffeine will affect all sides of life, but there is one perk we haven’t mentioned before: caffeine can help you burn fat faster and lose weight. This is because it increases your metabolism, making your body burn calories at an increased rate.
