Selects: The Duality of Caffeine

Hi, everybody. It's your friendly neighborhood co host Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

Here.

We're going to take you back in time to January fourteenth, twenty sixteen, when we spoke at length about caffeine and the ups literally and the downs literally. It's called the duality of caffeine. I hope you enjoy over your cup of coffee.

Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there totally throwing us off with some new as you focus pocus, Yeah, twenty sixteen head stuff. What Yeah, Yeah, she's messing with it. Uh.

So we you guys don't know this because, through the power of the magic of editing and publishing and publishing, you think we've just never been gone from the office.

Yeah, but we've been gone. I have no idea what episodes we released. I've been so out of it.

Yeah. I took six weeks of paternity leave woo.

And I did by proxy and you.

Did by proxy. Yeah. So we've been gone from the studio for a while. And I just wanted to say it's glad to be back, buddy.

Yeah, it is nice to be back. Then, it's good to see you again. It's been a long time.

What's happened in the In the meantime, I lost another tooth? Yeah, my stupid front the tooth next to the one that came out broke off at a Falcon's game.

Oh well there you go. God was cursing you for being at the Falcons.

So I have another stupid flipper and another eight months of eight months early, yeah, until I get the permanent implant. So again I'll be out on tour with no tooth.

You can't even see it, like you have to literally like or your gums back, or your lips back to your gums.

Or if I laugh a lot, which I'm trying to just lead a more somber life.

Well I plan on making you laugh a lot on stage so people might see it.

Then what else? You got a dog?

Yeah, we got a puppy named Momo. You want to talk about Momo? Momo is very sweet. She's a sweet little Shizu poodle mixture.

How's that going.

She's a little fluff ball, very good house trained or yes, good right off the bat. We crate trained her. At first, I was like, crates are mean now they put a dog and crane, And then I started to read up on it. It was like, yes, it's like her den. It's her little room, like her bedroom.

In fact, when we took away the crate from our youngest dog, Charlie because of, uh, we needed a breakfast nook, she was kind of like, dude, you took my room away.

That was my room. Yeah. We plan to keep her crate around, like as long as she wants it, sure, but just she won't be penned in it against her will at certain times until until she's house broken, which I mean she's basically there. It's just we're we're like, what are you doing? You're about to pee?

You know, right right.

She doesn't actually have accidents in the house. We're just you know, staying on top of it.

It's great. What else happened? We had holidays, yes, good Christmas. In the New Year's I guess Yumy's birthday.

Oh yeah, and it was just a nice time off. Like I had this big to do list, yeah, and none of it got done because it was raising a puppy replaced that.

Yeah, how's your kid? Ruby's great man and I did the same thing. I had a big to do list and found myself just kind of being like, well, I could you do this? Or I could just like play with.

My kid, right, or watch Making a Murderer? Yeah, I did watch all that to do same here. Yeah, in like a day, we'll talk about that. Okay, we probably shouldn't talk about it.

People want us to do a podcast on that, I know, like a follow up.

Maybe it's not as bad as the requests to do a podcast on the case that Cereal covered, Like I think Cereal.

Got that one cover. Oh of course, I could maybe do a follow up on Making of a Murder.

I think we should revisit Exonerations in the Innocence Project again because when we did that one, we had no idea what was going on, and now it's really like it's really coming through true. So yes, let's do that.

What ell oh, I've been playing a lot of uh I got a PS four. Oh yeah, I've been playing Fallout four.

With the dog and their dog.

Well you can have a dog companion, so of course I chose it. Okay, but it's really awful because the dog gets hurt a lot and like struggles around whimpering and bleeding.

You have to put it out of its misery.

Well, no, you can heal the dog. But I went to message boards and everyone's like, don't heal your dog, Like, just trust me, it'll heal itself. Don't waste your medicine.

Oh okay, yeah, I'm sure you waste your medicine every time, don't you.

Well, yeah, it's tough to hear the sake dog whip.

Yeah, and it's like, oh, be okay, don't mind me.

Dog meat that's his name.

So that's a that was a big time off.

Yeah, we just covered it and that's all that happened.

Jerry, how about you? That was great, Jerry. I'm glad you had a nice time as well.

Jerry also had a nice break with her little baby in this.

She told us this through a series of blinks she did that we've worked out over the years.

Yep, nice job, all right. So sorry about the long intro, but I felt like we needed to catch everyone up, even though you didn't know that you needed it, right, And maybe I had something to do with caffeine, because.

We did such a good job when we recorded those ones that were released over the break of predicting things we would be talking about at the time. Yeah, who could tell exactly. So I'm a little caffeinated right now, believe it or not.

What a shock.

I don't drink nearly as much as coffee as I used to. Yeah, it's because I really realized, like it really does have a detrimental effect on my mood. Oh really, say in the car cars are really good example of me and caffeine.

You're a little ramped up in the car anyway, so that probably didn't help.

All right, Well, I'm working on that. But part of working on that is just, you know, not drinking as much coffee.

Yeah. I think a good title for this could be mixed messages because in studying caffeine, and we did one on coffee, we dabbled in this a little bit, but all the research is, you know, caffeine, it can be really good for you and help a lot of things, and caffeine can be kind of bad for you, And it's kind of both or can be both.

It sure seems like that unless we have like a completely misunderstood model of addiction and the parasympathetic or sympathetic nervous system. Unless we don't know those things. Then, yeah, coffee is both, for sure. The weird thing is, like everybody realizes that coffee, I'm sorry, caffeine. I think I'm probably gonna do that a lot in this episode. Yeah, because they are virtually interchangeable. Sure, but it's not really

And it is one forty in the afternoon. Right, what time did you get up?

Seven?

Seven?

Yes, I'm counting on my fingers.

Six and a half hours. You six and a half hours. You've had five cups of coffee in a mountain dew, right, and that's cutting back?

Yes? Oh man, Yeah, And it's cutting back because I like this afternoon. I won't keep going, Oh so you stop? This is this will be my last probably really.

For the day.

Yeah, okay, And I'm actually I'm above average for the United States, and I could have guessed that.

Yeah, but the average for the.

United States is actually on the woos end of the spectrum as far as like caffeine consumption goes.

Yeah, I look, the latest information I got this that the US was sixteenth in the world in per capita consumption.

Yeah, not even tenth or ninth or any anywhere above tenth.

No, no, sixteenth.

Yeah.

If you want to know who leads the world right now, I think it's the Netherlands, is what I found.

I found Finland. Oh really, uh huh from twenty thirteen. That was the most recent I saw.

Well, the most recent I saw said the Netherlands at two point four, with Finland at one point eight. But that is not what I saw. Really, Yeah, where were the Netherlands on your list?

I don't remember. I just saw the that Finland was number one at like two point four oh wow, and like nine point six kilograms of coffee beans per person per year consumed.

Well, I bet the top ten is kind of interchangeable and fairly static though, sure, as in the Samish countries in different orders.

Yeah, because I mean coffee consumption patterns, I guess they could change fairly rapidly, but they don't change in the blink of an eye. Well, think about how much Starbucks change coffee consumption in this country?

Did it ramp it up?

Oh? Yeah? Like think about how many people now swing by Starbucks are like three pm, whereas before they may not even have drank coffee.

Yeah, don't you mean Charbucks?

Yeah? Yeah, actually have no skin in the game Starbucks. Yeah. I don't really.

Well, you know me, I don't drink caffeine that much.

No, I know, I'm very mellow.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm starting to think I should drink more coffee though. Why because of the health benefits? Oh yeah, you know, we'll see, we'll get into all that. But in the top ten you have a Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, in Mark, Germany, Scandinavia loves her coffee apparently, yeh, Slovakia, Serbia, Czech Republic, Poland, Norway.

Yeah.

Than eventually the US.

Cold countries not bad, although Brazil loves its coffee as well. I think they're like number ten or eleven or something like that.

Good coffee. I didn't see they weren't even in my top sixteen.

So we had different lists made by two different caffeinated weirdos.

So the US, the FDA and the AMA Right now, I think they raised it to four hundred milligrams a day from three hundred.

Just in that race of changing coffee consumption.

Yeah, I think it's now to four hundred milligrams a day, as they said, should be like the upper limit of what you should drink and what is cool to drink for your health, right, not by being cool. You could drink one hundred cups a day and you'd be super cool.

Right, That's why I'd drink coffee so much. Yeah, I want to be cool. And so so what is that four hundred milligrams a day? That's about two eight ounce cups of coffee? Four hundred is yes, like high high octane, right coffee. But yeah, it's no more than.

Maybe three Well, and that's caffeine though, that's not coffee, right, So you might also be drinking sodas or eating chocolate, sure, or eating on a cocoa nib.

That's packed with caffeine. Yeah. Yeah, it does show up in all sorts of surprising places, including I looked this up decaf coffee as well.

We should say, yeah, it's still got some caffeine in there, right.

Yeah, So like a cup of coffee. Eight ounces of coffee can have anywhere from like seventy five to two hundred ish milligrams of caffeine in it. Okay, DCAFF coffee still might have like twenty milligrams. Wow, And I mean it doesn't sound like much. But if you're pounding DCAF coffee because you love coffee but you're trying to cut back on caffeine stuff Canada.

Interesting. Yeah, I knew there was some caffeine, but maybe that's not Is that negligible.

Twenty itself? Just if you drank one decaffeinated cup of coffee a day, yes, okay, I think on the overall effects of your health it would be negligible. But both ways, because again the coffee giveth and the coffee taketh away. Yeah, sure does a double edged drug?

Yeah, and it is. It is a drug, and it is also in t which we'll get to as well. But yeah, it's a drug. It's it naturally occurs like many drugs. But it is a stimulant called trimethyl zan theene nice chemical formula c h C eight H one zero in four O two not zero two.

I think there's a ten in there.

What did I say?

One zero yeah, which I mean, you know, if you're on a CB or something, they get the point. Oh man, this podcast is close to CB chatter as as you can come.

I quick segue here. I used to love talking on the CB because my dad had one and his jeep. And remember when CB culture was huge, Yeah, in the seventies. My buddy, John Pindel now is a trucker. You met John where at our New York shows Tall Johnny Pindela, Uh huh uh he's a trucker now, okay, And I got to hang out and get in his truck. And he does not use a CBE and he said that he might get one, but it's not like the standard thing anymore.

What is now texting cell phones?

I mean, he said, if you really want to be a part of that big trucker culture, you can do the CEA BE. Still, well, you can just be a lone wolf. He's a lone wolf, gotcha right now?

He is. He needs one of those jackets like Lenny and Squiggy used to wear.

Yeah. It was fascinating, though. We need to do an episode on trucking because when I saw him, all I did was ask questions. Basically, Yeah, it's fascinating.

Does he have his own rig?

No, he doesn't own.

It means truck. Yeah, okay.

Anyway, well hated Johnny and he listens to the podcast now.

So hey Johnny, because yeah, you don't need to see bee. If you listen to stuff, you should know. No, we are your keep you company.

All right. So anyway, caffeine, he does drink a lot of caffeine. That's where I was going with that.

Yeah, but that that really had nothing to do with it. I brought up sea bees because he said, h one zero, why don't we take a break.

And get our sea legs back? Yeah, our pea legs.

We're a little rusty.

And Pa is in podcasts, not urine.

I thought you urine. Man. Oh hey, I'll tell you something about this break. I learned that there's something called mixturition sincope, and mixturition is a lot of people think it means two P. No, urination is two P. Micturition is the urge to pe. Okay. Sincope is a fainting spell. So there's a condition out there called micturition sincope where people faint after they pee. Wow. There's also one called defecation syncope, where people faint after they poop. They have no idea what I.

Think Elvis had the most severe case of that. All right, well, don't let that happen to you during this break, and we will be back right after this. Have we got it together?

That was like half a second.

Are we good?

Yeah? I guess so.

All right, we're gonna give it another stay up here. So caffeine, I think that's what we were talking about.

It's a drug, and in its pure form, chuck is a bitter, bitter tasting crystalline powder. It's actually very closely related, at least in its effects to opioid antagonists like heroin, cocaine.

Yeah, caffeine. Yeah.

And I will talk a little more about the brain, the effects on the brain, but it is it does have these effects, and it does basically this. It uses the same mechanism as these drugs, and therefore it can cause addictions just like these drugs as well.

Yeah, And like I said, it occurs naturally. It's in the coffee bean and in chocolate and tea, but it's also added artificially in things like soda. And I looked up the sodas to get the most recent amount, and Pepsi one right now, I think has the most caffeine.

Man, do you remember Jolt and Yeah, I used to drink a ton of Vault.

I'm sure you did well.

I would drink one right before the podcast, remember, and I'd just be like talking a thousand miles an hour.

Yeah, the good old days.

I've settled down quite a bit, you have. I'm happier for it.

Pepsi one at fifty seven milligrams, tab is number two at forty eight, like coke forty six. You will work your way down to regular role Coca Cola at thirty three milligrams per twelve ounce can. And the FDA regulates how much caffeine you can put in a soda.

A soda A soda, that's the key.

That's right. If you were an energy drink like Red Bull or any of the those other gross tasting things. Yeah, I don't like them personally, but people love them. I just don't like the taste. But that's the workaround for the FDA. Because they're not considered sodas, they can put lots of caffeine and sugar to the tune of about eighty milligrams per eight point three ounces, which you're like, in the case of Red Bull, there's a lot of caffeine.

It does seem like a lot. But some people love to take it even further. And there's like those five hour energy shots.

Oh yeah, I have had those before.

Those are two I have not tried it before.

I don't know why. I think I was doing construction work and I was really tired, and I was at the big box store and it was right there at check out. I was like, let me try this thing, yeah, and it rammed me up. I felt like a speedhead.

So in that little two ounce shot, there's two hundred milligrams oh of caffeine, no wonder, like a high end amount in a coffee in that little two ounce shot.

Okay, And I think those are the like coffee has the most of any beverage.

I think espresso ounce for ounce has the most.

Well, I mean from the coffee being at least or espresso bean. Oh yeah, not like an artificial drink, is what I meant.

Yeah, we got an espresso maker and has some pronounced effects. It's crazy how different it is from coffee.

Yeah, I like an espresso every now and then. Sure, And I like my coffee every now and then, but just every now and then.

If you want the health benefits though, and you're like, I don't drink that much coffee, you should just be injecting pure caffeine. Chuck, can you do that? They do it to mice. Yeah, that's a good point, as we'll see later on true, I should probably Again, it's been several weeks since we've done this. I need to probably throw out a disclaimer there.

That was a joke, right to don't inject caffeine.

And you know, if you can even get your hands on pure caffeine, yeah, do not inject it. You probably should inject anything, let alone the pure form of anything, because even too much water can kill you. I always remember that everybody. Even too much water can kill you.

And I did look into caffeine overdoses because I was curious, and it doesn't happen much because you'd have to drink so much of something. Yeah, that it makes it unlikely. But there have been overdoses blamed on caffeine pills.

Like Okay, what's the milligram amount, what's the dosage amount that it got?

Oh, I can't remember this. One kid died in Connecticut, like a nineteen year old that I think he had like a dozen or two dozen caffeine pills. Wow, and it's the I think the deal with caffeine pills. It's concentrated and it hitch all at once. Yeah, so taking a lot of it is just like overdosing on any kind of stimulant.

I think, Yeah, it's a stimulant. Yeah, do'es some weird stuff to you, including killing you? And like you said, chuggers, we already talked about coffee in the coffee episode, right, yes, but it just some of it bears repeating, Like the lighter the roast, the higher the caffeine content, typically because the roast process actually bakes out a lot of the caffeine.

I thought you were going to make up a clever rhyme like the light of the roast, the darker the toast or something.

No, that's that doesn't make any sense. The rhyme's got it at least makes sense, or else it's just rhyming words. How about how about uh, the lighter the roast more caffeine than most. How about that? That's great, that actually makes sense. And so if you want to extract the most caffeine out of your diet. Yeah, actually came across a website called Bulletproof exac. You know that bulletproof coffee thing or they put like butter in your coffee. It's like a diet thing. I think it aids in pooping

Yeah.

If you like that, though, take it one step further and use coconut oil. Oh okay, that's even better because's got a little it's like an almond joy creamer. Oh wow, but like an oily version of it.

Yeah.

Anyway, this Bulletproof exec they had a post about maximizing your caffeine intake so you can suck it to your underlings throughout the day or whatever most efficiently. Right, And one of the things that they said is that grapefruit. You should eat more grapefruit because grapefruit contains something called naragin or narogin, and it actually slows the removal of caffeine from your brain, so you enjoy its effects longer. Nice.

Yeah, So a morning breakfast in the nineteen fifties of coffee and a half a grapefruit, that's all you needed. Yeah, and then your noon cocaine bump, right, just.

To keep you going just drinking coca cola.

Yeah, exactly.

And if you also, if you want to maximize your caffeine and take from coffee, you should look at the beans you're drinking. So Arabica, which is I think the most prevalent coffee has it's one point five percent caffeine. But Robusta, oh, two point four percent. As far as I know, that's the highest caffeine content, naturally of any coffee bean. So a light roast robusta is gonna basically.

With your grapefruit.

Yeah, it'll be like getting kicked in the chest by a mule.

Wow. And doesn't that sound appealing?

That's what every bulletproof exact wants. Wow.

Shows you how to be a more efficient robber baron.

So let's get down to this, man, How does caffeine actually affect your brain? Because it does affect your brain. The whole point behind taking coffee and stuff like that is, as the guy who wrote this article, oh, the three guys who wrote this article, including.

You, Yeah, I did a little on this. I forgot.

It's using caffeine. It's a form of self medication.

Of course, that's why most people drink it, I think, to get that boost in the morning.

Sure, or in the middle of the afternoon.

Yeah, and I'm sure people love the taste and stuff. It's not like they're holding their nose and forcing this drink down their throat.

Well that's what like five hour energy is for nose.

Don't taste very good.

Do they not. I've never tasted one. I've always but I've never wanted to experience its effects so badly. Yeah. I tasted it.

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's like just that synthetic fruit taste.

Does it taste like medicinal at all?

Yeah, it just tastes. Yeah, it's just not good. Huh in my opinion.

Well, it's just two ounces. You get it over with real quick.

Hey, you just sock it down and like you're done, punch a wall. So how does it work on the brain. It tricks your brain actually by mimicking something called a dentosceine, and it's it's kind of remarkable actually because what it does is it mimics a dentosine and then does the opposite of what a dentosine does, which is to try and help you sleep it's pretty cool. Yeah.

So you know you have a sleep wake cycle, right, part of the sleep cycle is adenocene latching onto the adenoscene receptors on your neurons and they're sweepy. Yeah. It does make you sleepy because it slows the function of your neurons down. It's a big buzz kill. Basically, it's a drag a dinocene is.

Well, it's great, it is, yeah, it is.

It helps make you sleepy. And what caffeine does is it gets in there to the same receptor. It binds to the same receptor as adenocene. It's because your brain thinks it's a dinocene. Yeah.

It puts on its adnoscene costume.

Pretty much, which consists of like a sparkly one piece jumpsuit. It's a onesie. And it not only doesn't slow your neurons down, it apparently speeds them up. Yes, so your brain starts going haywire. That's part one of what caffeine does your brain. It not only doesn't slow your brain down, it prevents the thing that does slow your brain down from slowing your brain down, and it actually speeds your brain up. Yah haywire.

And not only that, but adenoscene usually well not usually. A dnocene always causes your blood vessels to dilate, and caffeine causes them to constrict, which sounds bad. But one of the pluses, and we'll get into the benefits, but one of them is constricting. It can maybe help you avoid headaches and migraines. And that's why caffeine is in things like anison or my old reliable BC or Goodies

They work really well too, both together a little yeah, I got to know. Yeah. So caffeine is a vaso constrictor right, that's right. It constricts your blood vessels, and like you said, that can actually help your headaches because a lot of headaches vascular headaches, I guess is what they're called, or when your blood vessels are too big and the change of pressure in your brain gives you this horrible headache.

Right, So while this is happening, your body thinks these neurons are firing. Your pituitary gland says you must be in trouble because you're supposed to be going to eat, buddy, Yeah.

Something, there's clearly a bear coming at you. Yeah, I don't know about something's wrong.

So let's send you some adrenaline. We've talked ad nauseum about fight or flight, and your body thinks that's what's going on when you drink coffee or caffeine, and so it says here, you need this adrenaline because, like you said, you got a bear come in your way, right, and all the hallmarks of fight or flight kick.

In which man, this used to be like our go to Yeah yeah, and now it's just such an accepted part of everything, that's right. Do we even need to say the things anymore? Yeah? Go ahead, Okay, So your pupils dilatee. Yeah, you're breathing. It becomes more rapid. You get more breaths. If you're eating something, you stop digesting it because your stomach doesn't matter at that point. That's right, superfluous. Your blood pressure rises, your liver releases sugar in the bloodstream,

Yeah, and that's why you drink that cup of coffee. You might feel tense like you in the car, yes, or agitated, right, it's because your body thinks you're about to be in a big fight with the car next to you. Yeah, which ends up it's this weird reverse cycle that ends up causing that fight. Yeah, you know what I'm saying.

You'll also find if you drink a lot of coffee like me, there a big knot develops in between your shoulder blades just below your neck. Nice. It's just yet another result of your muscles tightening and you being ready for action thanks to the fighter flight syndrome. So your brain has been kept from getting drowsy. Yeah, it's been sent in to basically like a Lucy esque assembly line

Yeah, because it's a stimulant and it's a drug. And just like while the other illicit illegal drugs, this one is just accepted, but it has the same effect. It's going to release dopamine and that's the pleasure center activation center, right, and it makes you want more of it, and so that dopamine's flowing and your body's like, man, this is great.

Yeah. So it doesn't actually it's like heroin and cocaine. It doesn't actually make you overproduce dopamine, but it keeps dopamine from being absorbed as quickly, so you get its effects longer and more than you would if you weren't under the influence of the drug. Just like heroin, Just like cocaine. Caffeine again, it uses the exact same mechanism. It's just to a weaker degree, which is why again, people aren't shooting caffeine right. And this is a bad idea.

This we should point out varies from person to person the effects of caffeine on the body because it metabolizes differently in everyone. So some people might be like, I don't get jittery at all, or I can go right to sleep after coffee.

Other people, I'd like to see those people in an espresso shot of robusta. Yeah, yeah, I'll bet they wouldn't be singing the same song other folks.

I used to wait tables and I would have people come in at like like lunch and say like, no, no, no, I can't. Like their friend would get a cup of coffee after they'd be like, no, no, no, I'll be up all night.

Yeah, I'd be like are you serious? What did you say that to?

No? I would just always yeah, I always think it was a little weird. But like I said, it may keep them up all night. Yeah, it's their own jam.

Those people know their bodies.

So don't just go with the decaf in that case.

So there are plenty of negative effects like keeping you up all night, as well as positive effects with caffeine, and we're going to talk about those right after this.

All right, So you've got the one two three punch. Your body is enjoying the caffeine. It's blocking that adena scene. You're gonna feel alert and awake. It's got that adrenaline going, and it's rewarding you with the dopamine. So it's gonna make you want to drink coffee. But I mentioned the vicious cycle. It is a bit because after coffee comes the inevitable crash like any stimulant drug, and you want

Yeah, that cycle kind of continues on into the next day. Right, So coffee has a half life of six hours.

Caffeine caffeine, Yeah, I.

Told you if I addicted this, all right, caffeine is a half life of six hours, where if you drink a cup of coffee that has two hundred milligrams of caffeine at noon, at six pm, you will still have one hundred milligrams of caffeine in your system. So it's like at six you drank a red bull in a quarter right then, right, not exactly what you want. And then at midnight you would have fifty milligrams left, which

Right, So then you wake up craving the caffeine again.

Exactly, and that's where that cycle goes on and on, where you just it's really tough to quit it.

Yeah, yeah, it's very interesting. If you are pregnant, there are some studies that suggest and we should say there have been a lot of caffeine studies.

Yeah, this article says like nineteen thousand since the sixties.

I'm sure there's twenty thousand by now easily, and they are somewhat conflicting. So we always are going to say like this study suggests, because they aren't hard and fast rules. But if you're pregnant, some study suggests that three hundred milligrams or more per day could lead to low birth weight in your little BB kids. I read one article like five experts talk about caffeine and children, and they all said that's not great. For kids.

No kids drink coffee these days, yes, but in the form of like those like coffee drinks that are super sweet and creamy and everything, but they drink like if walk around the mall, you'll see like eight year olds with like a coffee drink just walking around like it's nothing.

I went to the mall the other day for the first time in probably five years.

Yeah, how was it?

Was awful?

Was it?

And I hated every minute of it? And I'm not going back.

The mall is another place that it's another thing that puts that like not yeah back, just too many people in one place.

Yeah, it's no good. And with a baby stroller, it's just like I wanted to put a spoon in my ear.

Which mall?

I went to Perimeter, Okay, I mean there was a we got new pillows, so I was like I had to go to the mall to get pillows, you know, yeah, because you got to put your head on it, even through the plastic case.

Yeah.

No, I know.

I've been pillows shopping.

You know what I mean. Your pillows are great, though, oh.

Yeah, if you get a good one. Yeah, I've been on a bad run lately with pillows where I've gotten, well, that's two. I've got one. Wasn't very happy with its iond one to replace it. Not it's better, but I'm still not quite happy with it.

Do you just use one pillow? U?

Huh?

Really?

One soft pillow?

Wow?

Yeah? Anything else? I'm like, oh my neck.

I gotta have one under my head. I gotta have one behind my head between my head and the headboard.

And then one tied to your face.

No, and then a clutch you know, to hold on to, like to wrap up with. Wow, it's the best.

Yeah. Yeah, that's three pillows. Yeah, you sleep with three pillows.

Emily in Yeah, six total.

Jerry tell us and blinked. How many pillows you sleep with?

Three?

Three? As well?

I think you're under pillowed.

I guess so I sleep with one third the pillows you do.

Here's a pillow tip though, if you're buying, just wait for a Macy's one day sale. Oh yeah, because pillows are expensive, good ones, Yes they are, and of worth.

It goes a lot. Yeah, get your hands on a good pillow. Yeah. And Macy's does it twice a year. I think maybe Memorial Day and Labor Day or their pillow sale days.

Well, they had one going on after New.

Year's I am wrong.

There, you have it all right. So we were talking about sleep and the shopping mall where kids were drinking coffee. It all comes together, it does. But all five of the experts said your kids shouldn't really be having too much or any caffeine. And they didn't say like because of like the health effects like on the basically it was just like, just like sugar, you don't want your kids, you know, heart rate increased a lot and their blood pressure increased, and it's just not going to do yourself

But I genuinely believe that you can go through experiences like that as a younger kid and it'll make you a keyed up adult, a higher strung adult.

Oh you think I do.

I have come to believe that. Yet, experiences in childhood very dominantly shape you're who you are as an adult very much. So I've come to that.

Yeah, I guess if you're thirteen and drink a lot of coffee and you get anxious, yeah, you'd probably be an anxious adult.

I believe that probably keep drinking coffee, probably to stave off the anxiety.

When did you start drinking coffee or did you always drink a lot of soda too?

No, I guess it was as a more of a grown up Yeah for both. Oh really, Yeah, I drink a lot of kool Aid as a kid. Yeah, and like the straight up tons of sugar in the kool Aid kool Aid. Yeah. But and I drank like some some we called it pop oh yeah, like fago and pepsi and stuff too. But I mean, I think it was like as an older person twenties thirties that I started drinking like coffee in earnest and yeah, coax.

That's what it should be.

I think. Sure. I definitely didn't drink coffee as a kid. No, that was gross.

Yeah, I added too. The taste of it was just really foul, I thought. But I really learned to love the taste of coffee. Yeah, and I enjoy a nice hot cup of coffee on a camping trip or a cold day. I just never took up the regular habit, and not for any reason other than I just, I don't know, just never grab me the never took it up.

Yeah.

It wasn't like a stand though, you know, like I'm not going to start drinking caffeine.

Yeah, you know, and everybody who drinks coffee can rot.

No, because my brother in law, my mother in law, drink more coffee than any humans alive, more than me. They're both wonderful. Yeah, they're like, let's brew a pot of coffee, not a cup of coffee. Yeah, and let's just drink it until it's gone, then brew another pot.

Uh huh, you know, yeah, I know.

But they get a lot done accomplish people.

They sleep several inches above the bed.

One of them is a general in the Marine Corps. That shows you where he is. Yeah, or actually that's my mother in law. All right. How about some health benefits right, there are a lot, believe it or not. They've done a lot of studies and they found everything from helping out to not develop Parkinson's disease to dropping your risk of various cancers, cirrhosis. How about this. Two cups a day supposedly will cause an eighty percent drop

I wonder if that has to do with stimulating the fight or flight syndrome where your liver releases more sugar to give you more energy or something like that. Maybe. But what's weird then is so that would be more sugar in the bloodstream, right yeah, too much sugar in the bloodstream can lead to diabetes.

Right.

Well, coffee actually is shown to reduce your risk of diabetes. Yeah, there's this Harvard study that involved one hundred and twenty six thousand pe all over eighteen years. They followed their cost is a good study. It's a great study unless they fudge the results. But saying they didn't. What they found was that people who drink one to three cups of coffee a day are nine percent less likely to contract diabetes. Right, yeah, you think it ends there, No,

That's substantial.

And for women who drank one six or more cups a day, their chances of contracting diabetes were thirty percent of developing diabetes thirty percent reduction.

I got another one four cups a day, fifty percent less chance of mouth and throat cancer. And I don't know if it was this Harvard study or another one said it could reduce suicide risk in adults. Even huh, kind of makes sense, I guess in one way. Which way, I don't know I was sinking. I don't know. I take that back.

Well, maybe you like run from self harm, even.

Maybe like you flee or fight, or if it just you know, maybe it could battle your depressive systems by picking you up or something. I don't know.

Yeah, that's yeah, something better explaination than mine. Mime was stupid. There's there's evidence that it prevents cavities actually, oh really, which yeah, which is kind of surprising, because that is if you just if you're doing a study on coffee, that's if you don't put anything in your coffee, Yeah, put cream and sugar in. Yeah, you're going to get your cavities on.

All right, you kind of do both, right, just depending on your mood.

I typically go toward black, right.

But every now and then you throw a little vanilla creamer in there, every once in a while.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, if I want to treat, oh yeah, special treat right, But caffeine can hurt your teeth in that it causes teeth clenching.

Too well, which is one reason I'm losing teeth is I grind my teeth at night. Yeah, so maybe I shouldn't drink more coffee. It could be Yeah, but like you said, a Gibbeth and it takes away Do I want teeth or do I want my liver to hang in there.

And no diabetes? Right? Yeah, good point.

Alzheimer's The bird Alzheimer's Institute in Tampa did some experimenting on lab mice, injecting them with caffeine like you said earlier, and not only did it protect them against developing Alzheimer's, but it helped reduce symptoms if they already had it. They haven't tried it on humans yet, but as it goes with mice, many times it goes with humans.

Yeah, hopefully. Yeah, we could all be injecting caffeine at some point. That to me is also counterintuitive too, because Alzheimer's disease is potentially a buildup of plaques in your brain. Right, that's the result of not getting enough deep sleep, because when you sleep, your glial channels expand and your brain is bathed in cerebral's final fluid. That it cleans out those plaques, right, But it only happens when you're sleeping

It's fuddling, it is, And I've also found conflicting studies on memory. Johns Hopkins says that it's a memory enhancer, but I've seen other studies that.

Say it's the memory dhancer.

Yeah. So again, it's like it's tough to kind of get down to the brass tacks, you know. Yeah, when you have conflicting studies.

If you exercise, coffee is your best friend, caffeine is.

Yeah. I've heard of like Olympic athletes that like we'll shoot espresso right before a race.

Yeah. Not only does it like give you a jolt of energy and everything, but apparently it has ergogenic properties, which means that it delays fatigue, right, Yeah, and it helps your muscles use glycogen their energy stores more efficiently too, so it can help you run better. Interesting.

Yeah, as far as cognitive abilities, the one study f on from Johns Hopkins Medical School said that while you think it is increasing your cognitive abilities. What it's really doing is just taking you back to normal for a short period.

That is chilling.

Yeah, and then when it wears off, you're actually below man.

Yeah, I don't know. I hate to think that. I don't want to quit coffee.

Though you've quit smoking. Yeah, you lost weight? Yeah, keep your coffee.

That's another thing though I did during this break is put some of that back on. We'll drink coffee and go exercise. All right. If you want to know more about caffeine, you can type that word into the search bar and how stuff works. Don't forget in this case the egoes before the eye. Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.

This is from Maddie in Virginia. Hey guys, I'm a twenty two year old college student in Virginia. I want to start out by saying thank you for the wonderful podcast.

I would likely semails is a good you've seen this.

Now, let me explain, guys, how you've helped me. I'm a sufferer of extreme anxiety and depression. Have had these issues since to a varying degree, since middle school. However, events occurred in my life throughout the past few years that have made them much worse. Got to the point last semester where I was not able to go to class, do homework, or play on my sports team. Thankfully my family friends in my school, with their help, I was able to work everything out, men in a much better place.

What a wonderful message.

They sound like trite things to say, you know, like.

Yeah, unless you're going through some time, heals wounds and it's darkest before the dawn.

But they're trite and true for a reason.

Because they are trite and true. I think you just tried and true. Yeah, but I think you just improved the phrase, did I Yeah.

But they're not tried, they're true things. Hang in there, people, That's right.

That's my message. If you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email to Stuff podcast at houstuffworks dot com and has always joined us at our home on the web, the luxurious Stuff you Should Know dot com Radio. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts Myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.