I wonder why it is my brain's best friend

It’s amazing, how suddenly the world starts to change when viewed through the eyes of a cup of coffee. Without my morning coffee, I just find myself as a dried piece of goat. Well, I think that it affects my mood in someway.

Still excess in everything is bad. Are you also a coffee addict like me? Do you ever say like it’s coffee that keeps you going? In a factual sense, that’s actually true somewhere. Caffeine the basic stimulant present in coffee is responsible to give an energy boost.

Coffee’s half-life is 6 hours, but sometimes it feels like it wears off in 6 minutes (Image - cnet.com)

I’ve even observed that the regular coffee drinkers seem to need more and more coffee to maintain the buzz? Why is this so? How exactly it affects our brain?

Well, at a chemical level caffeine is structurally similar to adenosine, a chemical that makes us sleepy. So caffeine competes to bind with the adenosine receptors of our brain. People who have coffee in excess are prone to develop more adenosine receptors as a result and need more and more coffee to act normally. Staying off coffee might make them feel extremely exhausted (due to more number of adenosine receptors).

Caffeine also builds up rate of adrenaline supplies, which leads to increase in heart rate, blood pumping and open up airways. Most importantly it inhibits dopamine from getting reabsorbed in the system, leaving the feel-good chemical last longer in your body. And might be this is the reason, I’ve heard people saying that,”You can’t really buy happiness, but you can still buy a coffee ;) ”. While sources suggest that dopamine is somewhere that makes coffee addictive. “Everything’s good until consumed in a limit”. Well it might be the hundredth time I’m explaining this to myself.

Me (explaining to myself): "I’ll limit my coffee from today"

Me (after an hour): "I need a coffee"

Sources :

https://www.cnet.com/news/this-is-your-brain-on-caffeine/#:~:text=When%20we%20drink%20coffee%2C%20caffeine%20binds%20to%20our,it%20takes%20more%20coffee%20to%20keep%20us%20awake.