Buzz | Caffeine and You

Brain Candy: Sugar May Boost Coffee’s Effects

June 6, 2013 By Kate Heyhoe

Caffeine and glucose makes some brain tasks more efficient

MRI: Caffeine + sugar combo = more brain efficiency (seen here as neural activity), with same productive results.

Sugar + caffeine = synergy? Combo boosts memory + attention, says one study.

Glucose and caffeine boost brain tasks: Sugar-sweetened coffee improves working memory and sustained attention, according to a study published in 2010 by University of Barcelona researchers. They found that glucose (in the form of sugar) and caffeine boost brain function more when taken together than they do separately.

Caffeine and Glucose Synergy

MRI brain scans measured forty test subjects under four conditions: coffee alone, coffee with sugar, sugar alone, and plain water. The subjects were asked to perform certain tasks associated with sustained attention and working memory. Individuals who consumed caffeine and glucose in combination showed no drop in their performance of the tasks, while the areas of the brain associated with these tasks showed reduced activity; in other words, the brain was more efficient. The brain on sugar and caffeine needs fewer resources to produce the same level of performance. Subjects who took only caffeine, glucose or water did not show the same efficiency in brain activity.

An earlier study on caffeine and glucose taken together showed improvements in attention span and declarative memory, suggesting that a combination of caffeine and glucose may benefit attention, learning and verbal memory, none of which were observed when the substances were consumed separately.

What about energy drinks? A smaller study of twenty participants measured glucose and caffeine synergy using energy drinks. Compared with a placebo, an energy drink containing caffeine, glucose, and flavored with ginseng and ginko biloba resulted in significantly improved performance on “secondary memory” and “speed of attention” tasks, but without other cognitive or mood effects. The researchers noted that glucose and caffeine taken separately would not produce the same results. They concluded there is synergy between glucose and caffeine, one that merits further investigation.

Hit-and-Run Driver Pleads “Starbucks Defense”

June 4, 2013 By Kate Heyhoe

Caffeine and bipolar disorder caused Daniel Noble’s reckless driving spree.

True story: Excessive caffeine, a mental disorder, and no sleep lead to tragic consequences…

At 7:30 on the morning of December 8, 2009, Daniel Noble drove his gold Pontiac onto the University of Washington campus and without hesitation, plowed down a student in a crosswalk. One block later, Noble drove up onto the sidewalk and struck another young man. Again, Noble didn’t stop. He drove ahead and parked on the same road in the middle of campus, less than 200 yards from his second victim. Both men’s legs were broken. Noble had knocked them right out their shoes. One shoe was later found high in a tree.

Noble, wearing pajamas and slippers, stepped out of his car and began walking to a nearby building. The car was as shattered as his victims. The windshield had imploded, bearing a gaping hole and crackled veins on every surface. A dent the size of a person marred the roof. Hair and a small piece of scalp peeked out from the weather stripping on the driver’s side door. Officers later said it was a miracle no one else had been hurt.

Normal Guy Snaps

Noble stood 6’1″, and weighed 300 pounds. His dark brown hair, fashionably cropped in the upright, spiky style of the times, stood out in all directions. As officers approached him, they could hear Noble swearing and rambling incoherently. When they tried to arrest him, he became argumentative. A struggle ensued. One officer wrestled Noble to the ground. Noble fought back so fiercely, they had to taser him into submission.

Everyone, from his wife to his colleagues, was stunned by Noble’s behavior. He was a financial analyst for the University of Idaho Foundation and bore no history of mental instability or criminal behavior. He often started his day at 4:00 AM. He was a hard working, regular guy.

What could possibly cause Noble to go bonkers?

Was It the Caffeine or the Combination?

Caffeine was at the heart of the defense team’s reasoning. To great public surprise, they won the case. But caffeine alone wasn’t the whole story.

A number of witnesses had testified on Noble’s behalf. The barista at the local Starbucks said Noble was a normal, regular customer. But he’d shown up that fateful, near-freezing morning in pajamas, with no cell phone, and ordered two large coffees. Noble’s wife said he started to act peculiar two or three days before. He gradually got worse. He’d been working long hours in recent weeks to finish up the foundation’s budget, and wasn’t sleeping well at night. He drank coffee and energy drinks to keep going.

Medical experts diagnosed Noble as suffering from a rare form of bipolar disorder – triggered by heavy consumption of caffeine. In other words, Noble had suffered temporary insanity caused by caffeine psychosis. That diagnosis was key to Noble’s defense.

The judge dismissed the charges after concluding Noble was unable to form the mental intent to commit a crime. Noble was released but ordered to receive mental treatment, and not to drive or consume caffeine.

Victim Faces Long Recovery

Meanwhile, the injured students recovered, despite painful and long-lasting injuries.

The 19-year old freshman, Neil Waldbjorn, was hit especially hard. The accident “broke two bones in his right leg, two bones in his left arm, ripped muscles and tendons off the bone in his left leg, and damaged his lungs and spleen so badly that he spent six days in an intensive-care unit,” reported wenatcheeworld.com. Months later, he was still in physical therapy.

Hogun Hahm also suffered a broken leg, and soon after returned to his home in South Korea.

No doubt either victim felt Noble’s caffeine consumption was a justifiable defense, but even a normally benign drug like caffeine can have serious consequences, especially when mental stability is already compromised.

A Caffeine Buzz Gets Out of Control

Some would argue against the merits of Daniel Noble’s legal defense, but the case raises an important question about the world’s most widely consumed drug: Under what conditions can caffeine become a dangerous substance?

In Noble’s case, faulty neural wiring (bipolar disorder) in combination with the overuse of caffeine flipped his mental state upside down. He lost control, and didn’t even remember what he had done.

Caffeine is complex, and not everyone responds the same way, as this true story shows. Caffeine has many benefits when taken in low to moderate doses. But it’s still a potent drug and impacts the central nervous system, including the brain.

To find out how caffeine works, jump over to Caffeine Basics, my online book – it’s free and uploaded chapter-by-chapter at CaffeineAndYou.com.

[NOTE: Chapter 8 – Habit, Safety and Addiction is being updated with new information from the American Psychiatric Association’s just released Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). I’ll upload that chapter soon, as it relates directly to this Starbuck’s Defense post.]

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So, what do you think? Was Noble’s sentence just, did the judge rule fairly? Was caffeine at the heart of his condition, or was this an excuse? Leave a comment and chime in.

Cheating Death: Do Coffee Drinkers Live Longer?

May 31, 2013 By Kate Heyhoe

Does coffee drinking cheat death?

Death is inevitable, but a major study shows…

“Coffee drinkers have a lower risk of death.”

I read this twice and still wondered: What exactly does this mean?

“Older adults who drank coffee, both caffeinated or decaffeinated, had a lower risk of death overall than people who did not drink coffee,” says a study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI, a division of the National Institutes of Health) and AARP.

Coffee drinkers aren’t immortal – and they didn’t necessarily live longer – but they were less likely to die from such common killers as heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes, and infections. (The association was not seen for cancer, at least in this study, but other research shows coffee reduces the risk of certain cancers.)

Bottom line: coffee is safe to drink – that’s the biggest takeaway from this study. And coffee may even benefit your health. You’ll still die, but maybe not as soon.

A Relief for Billions Worldwide

Americans alone consume 400 million cups of coffee per day, so coffee’s health effects are a big deal.

For decades, coffee’s safety has been questioned. Early studies didn’t weed out smokers, who tend to live life on the edge by eating more red meat and few fruits and vegetables, drinking alcohol, and avoiding exercise. Smokers also tend to drink a lot of coffee. (Previous coffee research is also complicated by conflicting results, which may be due to poor methodology, small samples, conflating caffeine and coffee, or for other reasons.)

But unlike early research, the NCI/AARP study is the largest and longest running of its kind. It analyzed coffee-drinking habits of 400,000 men and women aged 50 to 71 – and it controlled for people with poor health habits, known chronic diseases (like cancer), and other data-skewing factors.

The study analyzed the habits of 229,119 men and 173,141 women over 14 years. Respondents completed questionnaires about their diet and health information in 1995 and 1996, and were tracked through 2008; by the end of the study, 52,000 had died.

The Bottom Line

Generally speaking, here’s what the data showed:

• The more coffee consumed, the less likely a person was to die from various common health problems, including diabetes, heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, infections, and even injuries and accidents.

• The risk of dying during the 14-year period was 10 percent lower for men and 15 percent lower for women who drank from two to six or more cups of coffee per day, regardless of whether the coffee was caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee.

• Regular, long-term coffee consumption is associated, then, with a lower risk for certain life-threatening diseases. This study doesn’t support cause and effect: it doesn’t show that drinking coffee itself creates better health or longer life. We can’t be sure why the coffee-drinkers had less disease, only that a significant percentage of them did – and that 5-cup a day drinkers had less incidence of disease than the 2-cup a day group.

Coffee has more than a thousand compounds, including caffeine, which has been well-researched but still confounds scientists. The next step, says Dr. Neal Freedman, the study’s lead author, is to explore these compounds to determine their health impact, both singly and in combination.

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The results of the study were published in the May 17, 2012, edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. You can read the actual study here:

Association of Coffee Drinking with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality

Modern Rush: Ready-to-Drink Tea

May 27, 2013 By Kate Heyhoe

Ready-to-Drink Tea: A $3.5 billion market

Cold, Instant, and On-the-Go: How We Like Our Tea

More Americans go inside convenience stores to buy caffeinated beverages than for any other reason.

The tripod of modern living stands on three legs: Convenience, time-saving, and mobility. Just look at digital devices, fast food, and caffeine. Seattle became famous for its drive-through coffee spots. Coffee is a cash cow for McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts. And now tea is beating out coffee and soda at some cash registers.

Caffeinated drinks – including coffee, iced tea, sodas and energy drinks – are what keep the local mini-mart in business, and what keeps their mobile customers on the go-go-go. Coffee’s hot all year, but in summer, iced tea sales soar.

Instant iced tea was the big 20th century boost for tea. It first entered the consumer market in 1953, and when Lipton Instant Iced Tea arrived in 1958, iced tea really took off.

When Snapple introduced bottled iced tea almost thirty years later, it created a whole new beverage category: Ready-to-Drink tea is now led by brands like AriZona, Fuze, Honest Tea, Sweet Leaf, and the giants Lipton and Nestea.

Bottom line: When tea became instant, sales took off. When it became cold, instant and ready-to-drink, tea joined the ranks of coffee and colas as a powerful caffeinated player – at least in the U.S. In Asia and other substantial portions of the globe, hot tea remains the main caffeinated beverage, but iced tea increasingly appeals to a young, cosmopolitan market.

U.S. Tea Sales Catching Up

Overall, tea is second only to water as the most widely consumed beverage worldwide, a fact often mentioned.

But did you know: More tea is consumed worldwide than coffee, chocolate, alcohol and soft drinks combined. After the American Revolution, tea’s popularity declined severely in the U.S. A hundred and fifty years later, specialty blends gave tea a big boost, especially Constant Comment in 1945 and more recent upscale brands like Republic of Tea and Tazo (now owned by Starbucks). Reports of the health benefits from tea’s antioxidants also kicked up consumption.

According to the Tea Association of the USA:

Approximately 85% of tea consumed in America is iced.
Over the last ten years, Ready-To-Drink Tea has grown by more than 17.5 times. In 2011, Ready-To-Drink sales were conservatively estimated at $3.50 billion
In 2011, over 65% of the tea brewed in the United States was prepared using tea bags. Ready-to-Drink and iced tea mix comprises about one fourth of all tea prepared in the U.S., with instant and loose tea accounting for the balance. Instant tea is declining and loose tea is gaining in popularity, especially in Specialty Tea and coffee outlets.
On any given day, about one half of the American population drinks tea. On a regional basis, the South and Northeast have the greatest concentration of tea drinkers.

As with coffee in the 20th century, the perception of “premium” quality gave tea traction. During the last fifty years, tea has been marketed as a special treat, bringing caffeine, pleasure, and reward to the tea-drinking brain.

So next time you pop into a mini-mart to pay for your gas, take a look at the 53 or so brands of tea in the cooler. Since ready-to-drink iced tea has brought a new level of passion to consumers, you’d be right to say it’s a really “hot” product.

Guarana Soda: Brazil’s National Buzz

May 17, 2013 By Kate Heyhoe

The caipirinha may be Brazil’s national cocktail, but Brazil’s national drink is a carbonated, caffeinated quencher known as guarana soda.

Brazil’s guarana soda industry dates back to 1907, and today is Coca-Cola’s fiercest competitor. Guarana Antarctica is the leading big-name brand, but collectively hundreds of smaller brands, many regionally made, make up more than 50 percent of Brazil’s soft drink market.

The guarana plant itself is more than just a caffeine buzz. It’s a symbol of Brazilian history and pride. It’s also an economic boost, since guarana production helps supply the worldwide energy drink industry with caffeine, which in this case is known as guaranine.

So where does guaranine come from? The substance hails from the seeds of the guarana plant, hence the name. Native to the Amazon basin, guarana vines bear clumps of grape-size, Christmas-red berries and can climb as tall as 35 to 40 feet. When the three-sided guarana fruits ripen, the capsule splits to reveal a black seed poking out of a white aril – they look like arm-length clusters of Muppet eyes. (Native legends say that the first guarana plant sprouted from the eye of an infant god.) Essentially, the seeds are dried, ground, and brewed into tea or processed as an extract.

But how the Amazon tribes cultivate, process and use guarana is far more interesting, as my post on The Children of Guarana explains.

Pop Goes Guarana: Antarctica Competes with Jesus

Commercially grown guarana may not meet the tribal natives’ gold-standard of quality, but it still packs a power punch. Throughout South America, it’s made into guarana-based sodas that tingle the taste buds with their spicy, berry-like flavors. Variations now inundate the North American market. You’ll find guarana in Bawls, Monster, Rockstar, Full Throttle, and other energy drinks, and in many energy shots.

To taste a South American brand, try Brazil’s Guarana Antarctica (find it in Latin markets and online). It was created in 1921, and the canned soft drink has been zipping around the world ever since. It’s Brazil’s most popular soda, after Coca-Cola. (It tastes a bit like ginger ale, if slurped while chewing Double-Bubble gum.)

And speaking of Coca-Cola: The global beverage giant now bottles its own pink, bubbly, bubble-gum-tasting soda known as Guarana Jesus – which is not some weird holy drink, but rather it’s named after its inventor, Jesus Norberto Gomes (a pharmacist who created it in 1920).

The original company was sold to Coca-Cola, which originally sold it in only in its birthplace, the Maranhao state in northeastern Brazil, but now has expanded. Ironically, Jesus (the drink creator, not the Creator) was an atheist and excommunicated by the Catholic Church for assaulting a priest. Humorous ad slogans make the most of the brand identity and have kept the heretical tone alive:

“Abençoe sua sede!” (Bless your thirst!)

“Fé no estômago” (Faith in your stomach)

“Guarana Jesus, porque nem só de pão vive o Homem”

(Guarana Jesus – because man does not live by bread alone)

For more about guarana, check out the Guarana Profile in Caffeine Basics.