New research appears to suggest that the pick-me-up that we get from a cup of coffee isn't real. This has been reported in lots of places including the BBC, Times and Daily Mail.
The research is presented by most as showing that coffee does nothing to wake you up, but that is not quite what the actual study found. The paper can be found here.
What is really interesting about the study is that they tested two groups of participants: a no or low consumption group and a medium to high consumption group. After being without coffee for 16 hours, they were then either given a shot of espresso or a shot without caffeine (a placebo).
They found totally different results for each group. For the medium to high consumption group, tiredness and headaches were reported after the placebo coffee and no change after the real coffee. What was really interesting was that after the real coffee, the alertness levels in the medium to high group were similar to the no/low group who had the placebo.
So - rather than suggesting that coffee does nothing, it seems that coffee very much does something for frequent coffee drinkers. It keeps you at "baseline" and you slip below this and suffer tiredness and headaches without it.
Maybe coffee doesn't really perk us up? Maybe it is more that with regular use, coffee is needed just to reach "normal" levels of alertness and attention.
This would fit well with anecdotal evidence that people really suffer when giving up coffee, but once the cold turkey is finished they have high levels of energy again without coffee assistance.
OK - now I fancy a coffee...
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