Your Brain On Caffeine

It makes you stressed.

Caffeine is made by plants and acts as a defensive substance to keep small animals and insects from eating them. When we consume caffeine, it stimulates the release of the stress hormones cortisol, epinephrine (also known as adrenaline), and norepinephrine, which raises blood pressure and increases self-reported feelings of stress. A lot of people claim caffeine doesn’t give you energy, but they’re wrong. Stress hormones are designed to give you the energy to run away from danger. When we drink caffeine, we’re forcing our bodies into a stress response to get us to get moving on our work. The problem is we’re not designed to experience chronic stress all day, every day for years on end. This is where caffeine gets problematic for people. If you combine caffeine with chronic work-related stress, it’s a recipe for burnout.

It tricks your brain.

Caffeine acts as a wakefulness-enhancing drug by tricking your brain into thinking you are not tired so you can keep going. You see, caffeine looks a lot like adenosine but it has the opposite effects on the adenosine receptor. When adenosine binds its receptor, it signals the brain to sleep. But, when caffeine binds the adenosine receptor, it inhibits the binding of adenosine, which is like taking your foot off the break, keeping your body in “go-mode.” The more caffeine you drink, the more it stimulates adenosine receptors, the less sleepy you feel. The body responds by making more adenosine receptors, so most people develop tolerance to caffeine over time and end up needing more to achieve the same effects. When you go off caffeine, animal studies suggest it can take eight days for the number of adenosine receptors to return to normal in the forebrain (which controls sleep) and 30 days for the receptors to normalize in the cerebellum (the part of the brain that coordinates fitness activities).

It creates dependence.

Another thing happens when caffeine binds the adenosine receptor: it enhances dopamine (DA) signaling in the brain, by increasing dopamine receptor availability and upregulating dopamine receptors. The dopamine system in the brain is the pleasure circuit. This gives caffeine similar effects as Adderall and Ritalin: you get more interested in the stuff you are doing and you get moving. These effects are also what keeps us dependent on caffeine. The more our dopaminergic systems are activated, the more we crave the substances that stimulate them. It’s also why it’s so hard to get off the juice. It takes time for our brains to re-adjust to its normal function off of stimulants. This is why we recommend weaning off slowly and carefully.