As a public service to those readers in and outside of the Washington, DC beltway who rely on a cup or two or three of coffee each morning to get into the rhythm of the new day, a study published online in the journal, Neuropsychopharmacology, reports that the stimulatory effects of caffeine may be nothing more than an illusion. Tests on 379 individuals who abstained from caffeine for 16 hours before being given either caffeine or a placebo and then tested for a range of responses showed little variance in levels of alertness. The study suggests that, while frequent consumers may feel alerted by coffee, this may merely be a reversal of the fatiguing effects of acute caffeine withdrawal.
You can read more details of the study in this ScienceDaily article.
Reference: Peter J Rogers, Christa Hohoff, Susan V Heatherley, Emma L Mullings, Peter J Maxfield, Richard P Evershed, Jürgen Deckert and David J Nutt. Association of the Anxiogenic and Alerting Effects of Caffeine with ADORA2A and ADORA1 Polymorphisms and Habitual Level of Caffeine Consumption. Neuropsychopharmacology, 2010.
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