Caffeine Maintenance – Can Missing Your Morning Cup of Coffee Reduce Productivity?

An update on Professor Peter Rogers caffeine research…

“Although frequent consumers feel alerted by caffeine, especially by their morning tea, coffee, or other caffeine-containing drink, evidence suggests that this is actually merely the reversal of the fatiguing effects of acute caffeine withdrawal,” wrote the scientists, led by Peter Rogers of Bristol’s department of experimental psychology.

The team asked 379 adults — half of them non/low caffeine consumers and the other half medium/high caffeine consumers — to give up caffeine for 16 hours, and then gave them either caffeine or …placebo.

The medium/high caffeine consumers who got the placebo reported a decrease in alertness and increased headache, neither of which were reported by those who received caffeine.

But measurements showed that their post-caffeine levels of alertness were actually no higher than the non/low consumers who received a placebo, suggesting caffeine only brings coffee drinkers back up to “normal.”

Caffeine addicts get no real perk from morning cup [Reuters]

Corollary: Achieve Morning Alertness without Caffeine
Corollary: Neuroprotective Effects of Caffeine
Corollary: Coffee Drinking and Heart Disease
Corollary: A critical review of caffeine withdrawal: empirical validation of symptoms and signs, incidence, severity, and associated features.