What’s your favorite weight loss drug?

What’s America’s Favorite weight loss drug?

You guessed it—caffeine.

We use more caffeine than all other drugs—legal or illegal—combined. Want to know what the stuff is doing to your body and your health?

Here’s a quick overview.

BACKGROUND

If you start the day with a strong cup of coffee or tea, you’re not alone. Americans ingest the caffeine equivalent of 530 million cups of coffee every day. Caffeine is the world’s most popular mood-altering drug. It’s also one of the oldest: according to archaeologists, man has been brewing beverages from caffeine-based plants since the Stone Age.

HOW IT PICKS YOU UP


Caffeine doesn’t keep you awake by supplying extra energy; rather, it fools your body into thinking it isn’t tired.

• When your brain is tired and wants to slow down, it releases a chemical called adenosine.
• Adenosine travels to special cells called receptors, where it goes to work counteracting the chemicals that stimulate your brain.
• Caffeine mimics adenosine; so it can “plug up” your receptors and prevent adenosine from getting through. Result: Your brain never gets the signal to slow down, and keeps building up stimulants.

JAVA JUNKIES

After a while, your brain figures out what’s going on, and increases the number of receptor cells so it has enough for both caffeine and adenosine.

• Sugars and sugar-containing foods
• When that happens, caffeine can’t keep you awake anymore… unless you increase the amount you drink so it can “plug up” the new receptor cells as well.
• This whole process only takes about a week. In that time, you essentially become a caffeine addict. Your brain is literally restructuring itself to run on caffeine; take the caffeine away and your brain has too many receptor cells to operate properly.
• If you quit ingesting caffeine “cold turkey,” your brain begins to reduce the number of receptors right away. But the process takes about two weeks, and during that time your body sends out mild “distress signals” in the form of headaches, lethargy, fatigue, muscle pain, nausea, and sometimes even stiffness and flu-like symptoms. As a result, most doctors recommend cutting out caffeine gradually.