What Happens When You Drink Coffee (Science-Based)

What Happens inside your body when you drink coffee? This video will explain exactly what coffee does to your brain and how caffeine works. Also, find out what happens when you stop drinking coffee or caffeine.

Every day, billions of people rely on caffeine to wake up and get through the day. In fact, It’s the most widely used psychoactive substance in the world. But what exactly happens inside your body when you drink coffee or intake caffeine? How does it wake you up, make you more alert, and increase motivation? 

Well, when you drink coffee your body can experience many different changes and go through a number of different processes, but the actual intensity of the impact that caffeine has on your body is highly influenced by how much of a tolerance your body has built up to caffeine consumption over time. If you have low tolerance caffeine can send your energy levels through the roof and leave you feeling jittery and anxious. On the other hand, a high tolerance can make one or two cups of coffee feel like water. But in a nutshell, after drinking coffee, the caffeine is quickly absorbed upon consumption, going from your gut into the bloodstream. It'll then travel to the liver, where it gets broken down into compounds that affect the function of various organs.

The main organ caffeine impacts is your brain. It blocks the effects of adenosine, which is a neurotransmitter that relaxes the brain and makes you feel tired. So rather than the common misconception that caffeine provides you with energy, it instead inhibits a neurotransmitter that makes you tired. You see adenosine is the broken-down product of cellular metabolism. As your cells work and perform their functions you build up more adenosine. By the end of the day, adenosine levels are normally pretty high. And when those levels rise, we start to feel tired and become sleepy. Caffeine blocks these effects that adenosine has on the brain. It does this by binding to the same brain receptors that adenosine would bind to. This means that when caffeine binds to that receptor, there’s no space left for the adenosine to bind to that same receptor, leading to a reduction in tiredness and an increase in alertness. This effect is further increased by the fact that caffeine also enhances the levels of adrenaline in the blood. It also increases brain activity of the neurotransmitters norepinephrine and dopamine.

These are both neurotransmitters which are chemicals of the brain that send signals and ultimately have an effect on many things including our mood and energy levels. So after taking in caffeine, norepinephrine, and dopamine further stimulate the brain, promoting a state of alertness, arousal, and focus. Not only that, caffeine also increases the sensitivity of your dopamine receptors. In combination with the increase in dopamine, you’ll get a double whammy so to speak in terms of how the dopamine will impact your body. This is great for boosting energy because dopamine is one of the most important neurotransmitters in your body. This is especially true in regard to exercise and athletic performance because dopamine is associated with movement. Dopamine is also a big part of the “reward center” of your brain, which is why, when activated (as in the case of caffeine consumption), you’ll feel happier and more accomplished. Another thing that dopamine will do is it'll make you feel significantly more motivated. This is why people that are low in dopamine have trouble starting and finishing tasks and staying focused. So to flip that around if you boost your dopamine levels with caffeine it can help you be more productive and accomplish more. It'll help increase motivation and focus while studying or working.  

Now, aside from the psychological benefits, there are also a lot of health and performance benefits that caffeine can provide for your body. The totality of scientific evidence concludes that coffee is overall good for your health, and those health benefits include better glycemic control, better cardiovascular health, a small reduction in blood pressure, and even a reduced risk of cancer. (1) Some of these health benefits can be attributed to the high amounts of phytochemicals in coffee, specifically, it's polyphenols that have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects. On top of that, some people also find that they can work out harder, are stronger, and have more endurance when they have caffeine before their workouts. 

Interestingly, however, research indicates much of this might be the result of a placebo effect, meaning it increases performance because people believe it should instead of actual direct physiological changes. For example, one study found that believing you're on caffeine seems to improve performance more than actually consuming 6 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight, which is about five cups of coffee...

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References

1. The totality of scientific evidence concludes that coffee is overall good for your health, and those health benefits include better glycemic control, better cardiovascular health, a small reduction in blood pressure, and a reduced risk of cancer.

2. Researchers found that believing you're on caffeine seems to improve performance more than actually consuming 6 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight, which is about five cups of coffee.

3. In this other study a hefty pre-workout cocktail of 284 mg caffeine had considerable mental effects but neither strength nor power was enhanced compared to a placebo.

4. And some studies also show that caffeine actually does improve strength training performance when you consume three milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight or more.

5. Some research finds no effect of caffeine on energy expenditure at all.

6. Coffee May Reduce Appetite For 1/2 hr to 4 hours after consumption

7. Compared to placebo, decaffeinated coffee yielded significantly lower hunger during the whole 180-minute study period and higher plasma PYY for the first 90 minutes (p < 0.05). These findings suggest that one or more noncaffeine ingredients in coffee may have the potential to decrease body weight.

8. Other studies indicate caffeine either doesn’t reduce appetite or, if there’s an acute appetite suppression, people tend to compensated for that later in the day and thus end up with the same total energy intake.

9. Caffeine's elimination half-life may range between 1.5 and 9.5 hours

10. Research shows that even a single double espresso consumed 16 hours going to sleep still impairs sleep quality by decreasing the time you spend in deep sleep stages.

11. Tolerance to caffeine builds up quickly, even at relatively low dosages. Using just 1.5 to 3 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per day, which is below the threshold required to physiologically increase strength training performance, induces complete tolerance to a dosage of within 4 weeks.

12. Research shows that at about 750 mg per day your tolerance to caffeine will become complete, meaning you cease to get any benefit out of it.

13. Tolerance and withdrawal build up a lot earlier than most people think. Consuming just 100 milligrams of caffeine daily (about one cup of coffee), is enough to cause withdrawal when you stop.

[joseMgarcia]

That withdrawal effect is real. I'm addicted to coffee at this point and I'm not going to break the addiction anytime soon. I went a week without it and felt so tired everyday. I just couldn't. Coffee has taken over the world and my body.

[doroth]

I never knew my body was addicted to coffee until I stopped drinking coffee on a daily basis over 7 years ago. I was sick for more than 2 weeks, my symptoms were fatigue, drowsiness, headache, body aches, muscle and joint ache, sleepiness, sluggish eyes. Mind you, i was only drinking just 1 cup of coffee a day at the time.

The reason i went through that withdrawal at that time was because I was going through a period in my life where huge Acne Cyst ( which was hormone imbalance by the way ) invaded my face. I contacted an Acne specialist who gave me a "diet plan" that included cutting coffee out of my diet.

Fast-forward to today, my energy source is now just on water and tea and i can go to the gym with an empty stomach or to work with an empty stomach except for water and tea and i feel energized with strength.

I still have coffee in my kitchen pantry and they last longer in my kitchen, because I drink coffee now like one time in a month or one time in 2 months.

The difference now is that when I drink coffee, my blood vessels just gets expand, i can "literally" see my veins ( which was hiding under my skin and invisible before drinking coffee ) poking out lol. And with that 1 small cup of coffee, i stay awake pretty much the whole day and night without sleeping.

[Nickylilbitofeverything]

My husband was the one who pointed out that I actually don’t like coffee. I take a couple of sips. I’m tired but I just push through or take short rests throughout the day. I also workout every morning to workout and stress so I don’t need/remember to have it in the morning because my exercise gives me energy

[mikehunt]

Y’alls graphics guy really needs a raise. This vid was has some fantastic editing

[mollytaylor]

This is super informative! Question for you... have you ever tried a meal plan from Next Level Diet? I got one and I love it!

[harrybellingham]

excellent video thanks for sharing the research

[mshparber]

Exactly what I need - I am soooo adicted and need to stop ASAP

[rounaksubramanian]

This is a very amazing and superb video bro telling about this topic and keep it up

[moremoney]

One cup after I wake up and I’m good to go. This video explains why when I occasionally drink a cup of coffee late at night I can fall right to sleep. When withdrawing from caffeine I experience a headache after about 24-30 hours that lasts another 12 hours. It helps if I drink a lot of water. Thanks for the info, as I really enjoy a good cup of coffee.

[DannieKamete]

How about the horrible anxiety from caffeine some people have? That's also important to note.

[RT]

Nice video very helpful educational 😊👍

[katarh]

About ten years ago I fell for one of the "adrenal fatigue" scammers. it seemed to match all my symptoms. (Turned out I actually had EDS, a fairly rare genetic disorder.) I bought a slender eBook that talked about "adrenal fatigue", and read the whole thing. It blamed chronic stress, not caffeine. The one piece of good advice that came out of it was taking a magnesium supplement, since most of us aren't quite getting enough of that in our diets due to magnesium soil depletion.

[Crimea_River]

Me at the beginning of this video: "Hmmm maybe I should drink coffee more often."
Me at the end of the video: "alright, no more caffeine for me!"

[AdamScottfit]

This is why I don't drink caffeine every day - I don't want to build a tolerance, and I also wait 3hrs after waking to drink it. Waiting not only significantly delays the crash, it also means that I don't get this huge cortisol spike first thing in the morning.

[leiliang]

I never drink coffee. There is a reason why our body needs to feel tired and get a rest and caffeine just breaks this natural process and can lead to bad consequences over time.

[StockTraderClassLive]

I usually make 2 liters of green tea each morning for the day and once in a while boost it with a cup of real good coffee mixed in, do it only on days that you feel you need a boost, you won’t get any headaches or withdrawal symptoms, but you will get an amazing energy level that is with in range to keep you moving!

[GooDogProductions]

Stopping coffee had a tremendous effect on reducing my blood pressure. Nothing I did before would bring it down, but when I quit coffee cold turkey (almost), my BP went down to 125/75, and before it was 180/90

[jdub]

The reason why we think caffeine wakes us up in the morning is, because we are in withdrawals.
It’s just like any other stimulate.
I quit recently and I never felt better!

[sidgm]

If you could do a video on ashwagandha, its effects and usage, that would be great