Mr. K

Health B2

12/09/2008

CAFFEINE
-Health Presentation
What effect does caffeine addiction have on teens, and what can we do to help the IA community to overcome the problem?
Ming Cheng
Faisal Chaudhry
Rasha Shaik
Sam Dong
12/9/2008

Caffeine

History & Introduction

  • The discovery of Coffee
  • Coffee was discovered around 850 AD
  • In upper Egypt
  • By a goat herded named Khaldi
  • What is Caffeine?
  • Basically Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant.
  • Like all stimulants do, Caffeine increases alertness, reduces fine motor coordination, and causes insomnia, headaches, nervousness and dizziness.
  • It can be found in many drinks, food and drugs. So, be careful!!
  • How does Caffeine work?
  • Caffeine enters the bloodstream through the stomach and small intestine and can have its effects as soon as 15 minutes after it is consumed.
  • Once in the body, caffeine will stay around for hours:
  • it takes about 6 hours for one half of the caffeine to be eliminated.

Caffeine

Symptoms

  • Health consequences of caffeine:
  • Caffeine addiction can cause problems such as anxiety, inability to sleep, rapid breathing, upset stomach, and dizziness.
  • Due to caffeine addiction, a person tends to get an overdose of the drug (rather than a moderate amount); here are more symptoms:
  • High doses of caffeine can cause anxiety, dizziness, headaches, and the jitters.
  • It can interfere with sleep. (insomnia)
  • It is diuretic – causes a person to urinate more.
  • It may cause dehydration.
  • It may cause the body to lose calcium – eventually leads to bone loss (raises the risk of getting osteoporosis).
  • It can aggravate certain heart problems.
  • It may interfere with some medications or supplements.
  • If a person is stressed or aggravated, it may cause the person's feelings to worsen.
  • It can make headaches worse for some people.
  • Too much caffeine can hurt a person's ability to concentrate, making it difficult to study.
  • Physical restlessness.
  • Nervousness.
  • Excitement.
  • Insomnia.
  • Flushed face.
  • Increased urination.
  • Hard time digesting.
  • Muscle twitching.
  • Rambling thoughts and speech.
  • Rapid or irregular heart beat.
  • Periods where you do not feel tired at all.
  • Ringing in the ears or flashes of light, seizures, and possible respiratory failure (high doses).
  • Summary

People would not consume caffeine unless it had good qualities. For instance, it stimulates the central nervous system. In other words, it increases alertness. It also gives the users an energy boost, and it raises the mood of the user. These are the main reasons as to why many teens today intake a lot of caffeine.

Unfortunately, caffeine also has some negative effects. The main problem is that it is addictive. It is diuretic, meaning that it causes the user to urinate more, which can lead to dehydration.Furthermore, caffeine causes restlessness, the jitters, anxiety, and excitement within the user. Moreover, an intake in caffeine can lead to insomnia. In other words, it would be harder for the user to fall asleep if they consumed a lot of caffeine. If caffeine is taken in high doses, headaches may occur. Also, caffeine may cause the user to gradually lose calcium. Sadly, this can lead to bone loss, which increases the risk of getting osteoporosis. Next, caffeine can make heart problems become worse. It can also interfere with certain medications and supplements. Also, it turns the feelings of stress and anxious of the user to become a whole lot worse. Therefore, despite the fact that it has some good effects, many people today are not aware of the negative effects that come along with the drug caffeine.

Caffeine

Statistics

  • World-wide usage
  • The Netherlands have the highest rate of caffeine consumption
  • Followed by several European countries
  • The United States is 18th worldwide
  • 120,000 tons of caffeine consumed each year
  • coffee is the most popular drink worldwide400 billion cups/year
  • coffee is grown in 45 countries
  • in Brazil alone, there are 3 billion coffee plants
  • U.S. usage
  • imports about 30% of the world’s coffee supply
  • the average daily intake is 200 mg of caffeine
  • women digest the caffeine 25% faster than men
  • more than 50% of Americans have 3-4 cups of coffee each day
  • 87% of adults consume it on a daily basis
  • coffee represents 75% of all caffeine consumed
  • Other Statistics
  • Amount of Caffeine in popular drinks:
  • Starbucks Grande? Over 550 mg of caffeine in only 16 oz!
  • chocolate, ice cream, hundreds of items contain caffeine
  • Ben and Jerry’s: 160 mg in a pint
  • the “caffeine effect” lasts about 3 hours, depending on the person
  • it takes about 15 minutes of reach the bloodstream, depending on the person
  • it is illegal to consume caffeine in the Olympics b/c of its effects
  • Survey Results
  • about 75 sophomores were surveyed
  • 14% consume one drink every day!
  • 58% consume 0-2 drinks per week
  • most popular drink was pop, then coffee/tea, and lastly energy drinks
  • 10% of those surveyed said they were addicted to caffeine, even though only 6% said they couldn’t function w/o it everyday

Caffeine

Solution & Withdrawal

Solutions to caffeine addiction are one of the least researched drug addiction solutions. Currently there are no clinically proven solutions that will work for everyone. Thus personalized solution and treatment are required for each caffeine addict. However, there are some solutions that are proved to have worked for some addicts, such as therapy, counseling, substitution, and detox dieting.

Substitution

By switching from highly caffeinated drinks to less caffeinated ones, such as from coffee to tea, caffeine addiction will slowly decrease and eventually cease to exist with little or no withdrawal effects.

Detox diet

Detox diet utilizes healthy food to help the liver detoxify your body by removing foods that require to be detoxified by the liver such as sugar, dairy products, wheat, and caffeine. By utilizing a detox diet, the natural detoxification process of the liver is focused on detoxifying the caffeine from your body.

Caffeine addiction does have withdrawal effects, which include fatigue, headache, drowsiness, difficulty concentrating and working, anxiety, depression. On one hand, some people have no symptoms. On the other hand, some people do have severe symptoms. Next page there are some examples of functional impairment observed during a double-blind caffeine withdrawal trial in eleven individuals who fulfilled DSM-IV criteria for substance dependence on caffeine:

  • In order to help the IA community…
  • Are any of the drinks in the cafeteria caffeinated?
  • We could remove those
  • Ban coffee at school
  • Making healthier foods at school for detox diet

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