Fun Fact: Caffeine doesn’t “give you energy” like many think. It’s actually an adenosine receptor antagonist.
Caffeine promotes wakefulness by blocking adenosine A2A receptors (A2ARs) in the brain, but the specific neurons on which caffeine acts to produce arousal (wakefulness) have not yet been identified.
Essentially, adenosine builds up as you’re awake and attaches to its receptors on brain cells later in the day (and throughout the night) to slow them down, making you feel sleepy.
Caffeine competes with the natural process of adenosine by taking adenosine’s place and binding to its receptors instead.
You’re not _adding_ energy, you’re actually _suppressing_ tired.
—-
Edit: As others have rightly mentioned, it has been shown to also affect the CNS, which can provide a dopamine/stimulant response, and also raises HR/BP.
Fun Fact: Caffeine doesn’t “give you energy” like many think. It’s actually an adenosine receptor antagonist.
Caffeine promotes wakefulness by blocking adenosine A2A receptors (A2ARs) in the brain, but the specific neurons on which caffeine acts to produce arousal (wakefulness) have not yet been identified.
Essentially, adenosine builds up as you’re awake and attaches to its receptors on brain cells later in the day (and throughout the night) to slow them down, making you feel sleepy.
Caffeine competes with the natural process of adenosine by taking adenosine’s place and binding to its receptors instead.
You’re not _adding_ energy, you’re actually _suppressing_ tired.
—-
Edit: As others have rightly mentioned, it has been shown to also affect the CNS, which can provide a dopamine/stimulant response, and also raises HR/BP.
Fun Fact: Caffeine doesn’t “give you energy” like many think. It’s actually an adenosine receptor antagonist.
Caffeine promotes wakefulness by blocking adenosine A2A receptors (A2ARs) in the brain, but the specific neurons on which caffeine acts to produce arousal (wakefulness) have not yet been identified.
Essentially, adenosine builds up as you’re awake and attaches to its receptors on brain cells later in the day (and throughout the night) to slow them down, making you feel sleepy.
Caffeine competes with the natural process of adenosine by taking adenosine’s place and binding to its receptors instead.
You’re not _adding_ energy, you’re actually _suppressing_ tired.
—-
Edit: As others have rightly mentioned, it has been shown to also affect the CNS, which can provide a dopamine/stimulant response, and also raises HR/BP.
B vitamins!
Interesting little factoid: the ebola virus was initially thought to affect primarily pregnant women because they’d always go to the missionary field hospitals for vitamin B injections because of the energy boost it gave them. But the needles weren’t being properly cleaned so this caused ebola to spread amongst the patients.
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