How Much Coffee Makes You Drop Dead?
There are many studies investigating the effects of coffee, and its active ingredient, the alkaloid called caffeine, on the organism. Coffee has been found to enhance memory, reduce post-gym muscle pains, fight skin cancer, blepharospasm and gout, at the same time boosting sex drive.
Caffeine blocks adenosine, a chemical that makes you naturally drowsy, increasing concentration and reaction speed, and constricting the brain's blood vessels. The heart beats rate increases, muscles tighten, the blood pressure
booms, blood vessels near the surface constrict and more blood flows to the muscles. Caffeine also increases dopamine, the "happy feeling" hormone, in your brain and it is a mild diuretic.
But if you're going to practice bodybuilding, the heart beats can increase up to a dangerously high level, while triggering extremities shivering and nausea. Moreover, the long term effects can be really tricky. Once the temporary stimulation stops, the brain cells begin to need caffeine for stimulation and a sudden neural sluggishness installs. The unnatural heart racing is unhealthy, and can trigger heart problems. Sleep is damaged and the alkaloid needs 12 hours to be completely eliminated from your body.
Due to the diuretic effects, the caffeine – while speeding the urination cycle – "steals" calcium which is lost through urine. Long term, heavy caffeine use leads to a rapid development of osteoporosis.
Coffee has been also linked to higher blood levels of cholesterol.
OK, let's stop the bulls**t now. Just as any other ‘drug’, in small amounts, caffeine (and coffee) acts as a stimulant. But the coffee plant synthesizes the alkaloid with the purpose of killing…its natural consumers. The grazer eating too much coffee will die. We, too, may die. The uncontrolled heart beats are the prelude of a heart attack.
Over 400 mg of caffeine (found in 4-5 cups of brewed coffee) can provoke caffeine intoxication. Some even snort caffeine powder, which results in a more rapid and intense reaction. The symptoms are just like in the case of any other drug: restlessness, nervousness, excitement, insomnia, face flushing, increased urination, gastrointestinal disturbance, muscle twitching, a rambling flow of thought and speech, irritability, irregular heart beat, and psychomotor agitation.
Of course, a deadly dose of caffeine has not been tested on people, but in rats the average lethal dose (LD50) of caffeine is 192 mg/kg: 50 % of the rats died after ingesting this amount. In humans, however, the value would be linked to weight and each one's sensitivity, to about 150 to 200 mg/kg of body mass.
So, if you drink 80 to 100 cups of coffee very quickly, you might succeed in…dying. Of course, this also depends on the coffee variety, and cup size, as this determines how much caffeine enters your body. Actually, cases of death caused by coffee drinking have not been reported yet (at least from rapid drinking; the chronic effects are another story) but caffeine pills (as little as 2 g) are much more dangerous for the human organism, and have been proven lethal.
|
08-15-2007, 12:44 PM
awesome info. mytonsee.. 
Similar Threads
