Caffeine versus Coffee

Caffeine is a compound in the methyxanthine family, but what caffeine does is, essentially it will cause increased awareness, and ultimately prevents drowsiness. From a scientific perspective, what caffiene does is, it increases sensitivity of neurons to stimuli, thus making you more aware and alert.

However, caffeine can cause the leeching of calcium from the bones, which is a factor in osteporosis, studies show that although this is a problem, milk and additional supplementation of calcium will mitigate this problem. There is also studies that show the presence of hypertension (high blood pressure) among those that consume a large portion (200mg+) over caffeine. 

The half-life of caffeine is about 4 hours though, so it makes the drug less toxic and harmful. Caffeine will also raise your adenosine receptors which basically will raise your adrenaline levels, and we all have experienced an adrenaline spike in our lives. Caffeine will however, speed up metabolism, and thus can be used as a fat burner, caffeine levels will typically peak in the bloodstream 40 minutes after consumption. If used in moderate amounts, caffeine can be used to increase performance levels and is a really good thing, however an overdose can lead to serious if not fatal consequences.

Anyhow, caffeine is not the same as coffee as it is often mistaken for. We need to understand beverages like coffee and tea do contain some caffeine, however there are other substances which effects are completley separate from that of caffeine, there is a substance, a cholinomimetic compound, which when injected into animals, will cause a decrease in heart rate and blood pressure rather than a raise, this is the opposite of what caffeine does essentially.

Caffeine by itself is also much more economical, personally I bought a bottle of 100 mg caffeine pills (100) for around 10 bucks. A large coffee has around 80mg of caffeine in it and is around 1-2 dollars each, if you do the math, caffeine is actually really cheap. 

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Anyhow, I have a good couple of days.

Had my math test today, I feel like I did well, I got the bonus question at the end too, so I can afford to make a mistake and still get perfect. I have a long weekend coming up to, and a basketball tournament along with that. Its really hard to really get into a sport especially if you are playing two at the same time, but whatever hopefully I will be able to get by.

Also, going to go pick up my creatine tomorrow, will be interesting to see how my performance turns out once I start loading, although there may be a placebo effect, I really want to be able to train harder and just take in the results, I don't expect my numbers to just fly up, but I hope that during my heavier sets I will be able to go deeper into my ATP energy system, and bust out a couple more reps.

Anyways, thanks for reading.