Negative Effects of Caffeine On The Body|Recommended Daily Caffeine Intake

What are the negative effects of caffeine on the body and what is the recommended daily caffeine intake from energy drinks, not harmful for health, may be the questions that often bother you seriously. If so, then you have hit upon the right article. This post discusses about the negative effects of caffeine on the body and suggests how you can lower your daily caffeine intake from all sources of energy drinks to the recommended level without even the associated adverse feelings of withdrawal symptoms. While discussing about negative effects of caffeine on the body the nutrition experts generally advise that to limit yourself to the level of recommended daily caffeine intake without causing significant health risks, you should not take more than two small cups of coffee or tea. Drinking an average of four cups of coffee or tea a day means caffeine intake level that may pose a serious health risk.

Negative effects of caffeine on the body

Negative effects of caffeine on the body are now well established through scientific studies and unless we can reduce caffeine intake to the recommended level from our every day energy drinks serious long term health risks await us. Recent studies show that there is caffeine in most of the energy drinks taken by more than 80% of Americans everyday, which includes coffee and tea. At least 50 per cent of the adult population in America regularly takes coffee or tea as energy drinks. As mentioned earlier, drinking an average of three to four cups a day means caffeine intake level that not only constitutes physical dependency but also poses a serious health risk by increasing the risk of a heart attack, a stroke or early death, by about 20-30 per cent. The figure is more or less similar for the Indian population also. Here are ten major negative effects of caffeine on the body:

> Elevates blood sugar;

> Raises blood pressure;

> Causes irregular heart beats;

> It increases urinary calcium losses which ultimately affects bone health;

> Increases acid secretion in the stomach and may aggravate a stomach ulcer;

> Causes irritability and nervousness;

> Causes sleep disorder and insomnia;

> Increases anxieties and depression;

> Increases flow of thoughts and make a person more talkative. It also

makes some more impulsive and they have difficulty in listening;

> Causes feeling of tiredness and depression after the caffeine effect is over;

How caffeine works in human system?

Virtually every cell in our body including the brain almost instantly absorb the Caffeine from the energy drinks taken by us like tea, coffee, cold drinks etc. Let us see how caffeine works in our system. Caffeine is a silent killer as it works magically within the cells by blocking something called 'adenosine', a chemical the body releases to signal tiredness of the brain. As a result of such interception of the chemical secretion by the caffeine, the human body, instead of getting the right signal of tiredness of the brain, gets a wrong signal of artificial alertness by acquiring extra energy, which gives a stimulating feeling of excitement, the energy drinkers long for. In short, if we can not reduce consumption of energy drinks to the safe level so as to keep within the recommended daily caffeine intake, it would double the level of adrenaline in our bloodstream which shocks our system and makes the liver promptly dump glucose into our blood stream producing extra energy causing serious health risks.

How to reduce your daily caffeine intake?

Let me now share three of my suggestions which may be effective answer to how to reduce your daily caffeine intake and get rid of the negative effects of caffeine on the body.

1. Initially as you stop taking your usual cups of coffee or tea as energy drinks , there may be feelings of dizziness, sleepiness during the day and even a mild depression as signs of ‘withdrawal symptoms’. Caffeine overtly stimulates the kidneys and causes an excess excretion of water. We should, therefore, drink a large quantity of water which would help to flush the caffeine residues from our system and reduce the period of withdrawal symptoms. On cleaning of the system the symptoms would disappear within 24 hours;
2. Restrict drinking of coffee and tea to the recommended maximum of average two small cups a day so that your daily caffeine intake is reduced to not more than 200mg/day. De-caffeinated coffee or a cup of cocoa, which has small amounts of caffeine, may be taken occasionally;
3. Herbal and Fruit ‘teas’ do not contain any caffeine .Therefore, consider gradual changing over to the habit of taking herbal and fruit teas as energy drinks ;

Conclusion:

A new school of advocates of coffee drinkers have, however, found that it is not unreservedly essential to go for lowering your daily caffeine intake to the recommended level as caffeine improves memory in seniors, repairs memory of elderly women, acts as a therapeutic for everything from depression to addiction to gallstone and even skin cancer! However, the majority of such studies are mainly funded by coffee countries like Brazil, Colombia and U.S Coffee Board. Influences of obvious business interests in such findings can not be, therefore, altogether ruled out. However, while there is a new school there is also the old school that has a different point of view on caffeinated energy drinks due to the negative effects of caffeine on the body, which has been established after a carefully controlled study for 15 years both in the laboratory and on human bodies.

Author's Note: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment