Bella Patton, Campus Carrier features editor
Ava Jarrell, Campus Carrier asst. features editor
College students consume many energy drinks and cups of coffee per semester, as hustle culture and all-nighters are common for busy students. Coffee shops are available on campus for easy trips, and energy drinks fill the vending machines and shelves of campus stores. With this increased convenience, many students make caffeine intake a part of their daily routine.
Assistant Professor of Psychology Jackson Colvett, who specializes in the brain, behavior and cognition, spoke of what caffeine is actually doing inside your brain.
“Our brain is hugely metabolically active,” Colvett said. “Your brain is roughly 4 or 5% of your body mass, but it uses 20% of your body’s energy. We are sending a lot of our oxygen, blood glucose and blood energy towards the brain, and if we take it back to like high school biology, what are cells doing? We think of ATP [Adenosine Triphosphate] as this brain energy resource that our brain is using a lot of. As an output of that, when we sort of use up ATP, a thing called adenosine shows up.”
Colvett explained that when someone has been awake for a long time and using their brain, a lot of ATP adenosine builds up. For students, this can be the case when they have studied long hours or stayed up all night. Colvett said that this adenosine buildup is what causes sleepiness.
“Caffeine as a chemical is not so much causing wakefulness as it is blocking sleepfulness,” said Colvett. “If we get to the level of neurons, we have a class called antagonists, which is basically something that can block something from happening. And so, caffeine, as a chemical, has sort of the same shape as adenosine and can get in front of the receptor where adenosine wants to bind to cause sleepfulness and just block it.”
Colvett said that this blocking is what helps caffeine drinkers sustain their attention rather than getting too tired or losing motivation. When it comes to consuming caffeine in the long term, Colvett encouraged intake in moderation.
“In terms of where we see the double-edged sword of caffeine intake is we know that, especially for storing memory and the things we have learned over the course of the day, the sleep process is super critical,” Colvett said. “So, if caffeine intake is happening too much or too late in the day, that is it causing a disruption to your sleep. Then, that is where we start to see some of the negative effects.”
Colvett also explained that your body can build a tolerance to caffeine at a neural level over time, as a result of the brain’s response of binding more adenosine, which may be blocked because of caffeine. Consequently, the brain builds new adenosine receptors, which causes caffeine drinkers to have to drink more caffeine to feel the sense of awakeness that typically comes from drinking coffee or an energy drink.
Java City in the Memorial Library is a popular spot for students to buy naturally caffeinated drinks.
“So, is it, like, super negative?” Colvett said. “I would say it’s all things in balance. I think if it’s something that is helping someone stay awake, get a few things done, stay alert in times where you’d like to be alert — like in your classes — it can be a very positive thing. But of course, caffeine is a substance. And so, I think the recommendation would be to sort of follow this based on subjective wellbeing. If it is crossing over into affecting your sleep, if you’re having a feeling of needing caffeine rather than wanting caffeine, that can be a good signal to pull it back a bit.”
Colvett said that taking tolerance breaks, potentially in the summer, can be a beneficial way to manage tolerance levels and make caffeine more effective when you are using it.
“I would say, I’m going to be maybe the last person to have a hard stance on ‘no one should ever use it,’” Colvett said. “I find it to be helpful for me in terms of bringing my best self to my teaching and my other work, and I just subjectively enjoy it. This is going to be not like a groundbreaking statement, but it is psychologically protective to do things we enjoy, and if it’s a thing that makes your day somewhat better to have some sort of caffeine beverage, that is a benefit in and of itself. If it makes you feel good and it’s not hurting you in the long term, I would say it gets a thumbs up from me.”
On the other hand, some professors highlight prominent downsides to caffeine. As the industry has expanded, increasingly synthetic ingredients have made their way into energy drinks to increase caffeine dependency, with consequences that may escape the nutrition label. Professor of Biochemistry Quentin Johnson emphasized the difference between a simple cup of coffee and an energy drink.
Reign, Storm and Monster can be found at both the Pod in Krannert and Java City in the Memorial Library.
“Caffeine is a molecule in food, like beta-carotene or glucose,” Johnson said. “You have receptors that receive the substance, but I’ve never liked energy drinks. You cannot find that much caffeine or that much sugar in one apple. You would literally have to grab a ginseng tree and eat a branch.”
Caffeine in coffee or tea is naturally regulated by the plant’s ability to produce it, and ingesting nutrients from a synthetic source could leave out other biomolecules your body may benefit from.
“It’s overdoing the concentration of caffeine and sugar without any nutrients, any fiber, any response that you would get in any natural situation,” Johnson said.
Johnson also believes that energy drinks may not even aid academic performance.
“I’ve seen students that do well that drink them, and I’ve seen students that don’t do well that drink them,” Johnson said. “It seems like they don’t need them — they seem perfectly alert — but for the students that already look sleep deprived, it doesn’t clear their brain, it just keeps them up.”
Rather than using synthetic stimulants, Johnson recommended getting enough sleep every night.
“Sleep,” Johnson said. “You only have to sleep for eight hours. Do homework earlier. If you wake up in the morning, then exercise. That’s the best time to go ahead and do some work.”
Students should try to effectively balance their caffeine intake at levels that work for them. Consuming caffeine through coffee or energy drinks can help students in certain situations, but if you begin experiencing the inability to sleep or total dependence on caffeine, that can be a good sign to lessen the amount you are drinking.