Everything you need to know: Caffeine

If you are an individual who is seeking to loose some weight, then I’m sure that you have come across at least one person who has advised you to use a ‘Fat burner’. First of all, there is no such thing as Fat burner available in the market. The supplements that are available claims that they help you burn fat, but the fact says the entirely different story. When you use fat burners, they not only help you burn fat, but they will also burn off the muscles. You can’t really preserve your muscles completely when you are trying to loose weight or fat (if you doing it naturally).

The key ingredient present in most of the fat burner is Caffeine. Caffeine is the world’s most consumed psychoactive drug. Psychoactive active drugs are those substances that are proven to change your brain’s functionality and can cause mood swings, consciousness and depression. Some of the examples of psychoactive drugs are cocaine, LSD, cannabis, ephedrine and to top it all, Caffeine (in terms of consumption).

Apart from the fat burners, caffeine is widely used in the carbonated drinks, painkillers, pre-workouts and energy drinks. Wait a minute; you don’t consume any of these things? So you are not consuming caffeine, you think? You are absolutely wrong. Caffeine is also available in the tea and coffee you drink.

A cup of 100% coffee has about 100 mg of caffeine! The amount is enough to give you health problems in long run. You consume more than one-cup? Then add accordingly and see the amount of caffeine you are consuming. In India, especially in North India, most people prefer tea to coffee. The fact is that a cup of tea has around 25mg of caffeine, which is just 1/4th of coffee.

This is something we all know about caffeine. Tell us something new, you say? Do you know that caffeine and weed (or marijuana) falls on the same level on the “Dependency Potential-Active/Lethal Dose” graph, where caffeine being more harmful than the later! Don’t believe me? Check out the graph below:

Dependency-Lethal Dose

As you can clearly see that caffeine and marijuana are on the same level of dependency, but the caffeine is more towards the x-axis. This means that the human dependency on caffeine is low, but its dosage can be more lethal than the marijuana. Shocked?! Well, that’s the truth about caffeine. Apart from this, there is a lot more to caffeine. Presenting, Everything you need to know about Caffeine!

1.   Caffeine and the Dependency:

Caffeine is one of the most readily available stimulants in the market. The above chart depicts that the dependency of caffeine is low as compared to other stimulants, but still it is very much high as compared to some other drugs like LSD and Ketamine. This is because caffeine produces ‘dopamine’. Dopamine is a chemical that helps control emotions, movement and motivation, so enhanced dopamine would make you more alert.

The more amount of caffeine you put into your body, the more dopamine it will produce which will lead to more alertness. When you get tired, your body will simply not accept it and hence you would need coffee to stay active. This amount of dependency can be lethal for a normal individual.

2.  Caffeine and the Fat Loss:

We have already discussed how most of the fat burners have caffeine as their key ingredient. The reasons why these companies use caffeine are-

·   It gives you energy push harder than regular; &

·   It has fat-mobilisation properties.

The caffeine, as we have discussed, is a stimulant that produces dopamine. These enhanced levels of dopamine help you to concentrate better and keeps you motivated. This way you are able to run or do cardio, if you are a person who is trying to loose some weight.

Fat-mobilisation is another property of caffeine. The stored fat in your body is used in a better way or as a source of energy when you start consuming caffeine. This is why companies call their products as ‘Fat-burners’. The truth is that after a point of time, you will start using up your muscles instead of fat in order to push yourself a little extra. This must not be your long- term fitness goal.

3.  Caffeine and the Sleep:

I bet that you are now going to say that we know Caffeine hampers our sleep. But wait; before you think that you know everything about the relationship between Caffeine and Sleep, let me ask you, do you know the reason behind it?

The answer is that caffeine has the 50% life cycle left every 6 hours. Okay, let me explain you with an example. Suppose, you consume one-cup of coffee (100 mg caffeine) in the morning, say 8 AM. After 6 hours, i.e. by 2 PM you would still have 50 mg of caffeine available in your blood stream that is still left un-utilised by your body. Again by 8 PM, you would still have 25 mg to be utilised.

If you are someone who consumes caffeine late in the evening, then you probably have around 50% of it, still to be utilised by your body, by the time you go to the bed. This is the reason why you have problems and you are probably not able to sleep at night.

4.  Caffeine and the Ageing:

Caffeine can accelerate your process ageing and can give you wrinkles and premature skin. The reason behind this is the dehydration that might be caused when you are taking too much caffeine. The caffeine works as a ‘diuretic’ in this case and can lead to dehydration of your body. For those who don’t know, diuretic is any substance that could lead to increase in the amount of urine, resulting into the loss of water. The more water drains out of your body, the worse your skin will become.

Apart from this, the other reason can be Sleep. We all know the importance of sleep and how caffeine intervenes with it. Doctors suggest that an adult must sleep at least 7-8 hours everyday in order to recover. The more sleep-deprived you are, the more tired and aged you are going to look.

5.  Caffeine and the Blood Pressure:

We all know that, Caffeine is the reason why most of the people suffering are from hypertension or high-blood pressure today. Too much use of the caffeine in daily life can certainly lead to issues like hypertension and heart problems. Do you know the reason behind these conditions? Many teenagers I know have issues like migraine, depression, why? The reasons are bad lifestyle, stress and lack of fitness.

If you are working for in the corporate sector, then the amount of pressure on you to perform can be very high. Just to tackle the stress, you start consuming more coffee that could only worsen the situation. Stress plus Caffeine would lead to hypertension and even depression in some cases.

In the end, I would like to say that I’m not asking you to quit caffeine. You can have caffeine, but I would advise you to take it in moderation. Too much of caffeine can be harmful for you and can leave you with the lifetime of issues to deal with. If after reading this, you would like to cut down your caffeine consumption, then it is advisable that you replace your coffee with tea or decaf coffee. The amount of caffeine in tea is very much lower than that in coffee. You also need to increase the level of your water consumption, if you want to reduce the side effects of the caffeine on your body.

I hope you like my article. If you want to know anything beside else about caffeine or have any doubts or suggestions then write to me at Yash Gupta.

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