coffee health pt 2

Academics such as Professor Roland Griffiths warn against abusing caffeine’s benefits.  A Johns Hopkins professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, Griffiths told Time Magazine that for coffee binge-drinking students especially, “the stress of the deadline can be exaggerated by the caffeine.”  Research conducted at Duke University suggests that your morning dose does its work to keep you awake for 12-16 hours before needing a revival (Time Magazine, “The Newest Addicts on Campus”).  At this point, you feel groggy and go to bed.  During sleep, the body is deprived of caffeine, making mornings especially difficult, only to be remedied by the much-needed morning dose of caffeine. 

This never-ending cycle is maintained by the body’s constant craving for caffeine and the ups and downs of withdrawal.  Drinking coffee, then, according to Jim Lane at Duke University, is necessary to “restore normal functioning rather than to feel more alert than usual” (Time Magazine, “The Newest Addicts on Campus”).

 A study by the Journal of American Diabetic Association revealed that 90 percent of adults consume caffeine every day.  Caffeinated beverages are clearly no longer simply symbols of upper-middle class leisure; we have become a culture desperately dependent on the coffee bean as a commodity, self-consciously perpetuating the cycle of withdrawal and temporary relief.

Whether you are hitting the books, procrastinating, or catching up with other sleep deprived friends, just remember: that cup of coffee connects you to a network of global trade and centuries worth of beans ground and consumed by fellow idlers across the globe.