Imagine going to work and the entire office population was without coffee, would it look like a zombie apocalypse? Get the most out of your coffee by hacking it. Science can be a beautiful thing especially when it helps us get the most out of our beloved caffeinated beverage. Don’t worry about turning into an non-caffeinated zombie, this coffee hack will provide the scientific education to know when your brain is need of a coffee refill and when it’s not.
Caffeine is the active ingredient in coffee that accounts for the mental boost. It achieves this by fitting into adenosine receptors, present throughout the body. Without caffeine, it would have been adenosine’s job to fit into those receptors and dial down the amount of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin, making you feel tired and drowsy. But caffeine stops adenosine and lets your neurotransmitters wild—in the process giving you that much desired cognitive boost.
But this coffee-high is a temporary state. Slowly the body’s clearance mechanism excretes caffeine. If you are a regular drinker, you will soon start feeling lethargic and lose concentration easily. Depending on how much coffee you are used to drinking, these effects can start in just a few hours or perhaps a day later.
The good news is that there is a way to hack coffee drinking to avoid these horrible withdrawal symptoms, and the key lies in caffeine’s half-life. Depending on your age, weight and other drugs you consume (including nicotine via smoking), the rate at which caffeine is removed from your body varies. Biologists approximate the half-life of caffeine—that is, the time required to eliminate half the total amount of caffeine—for a healthy adult to be about six hours.
