Salveta 1 Kaylee Salveta Professor Susak English 1020 31 October 2018 How caffeine affect college students mentality?: I-Search Research Process I ve always used the lack of caffeine as an excuse as to why I was tired, but I never knew what that contributed to my mental performance. Ever since I was allowed to have my first cup of joe in the morning, there hasn t been a time where I ve stopped. Drinking caffeine has become a routine. Workers, parents, and even students can get out of bed and stay out, all due to a cup of coffee. 80% of the U.S population consumes a cup of coffee each day. I was always curious about what would happen if suddenly I realized I had run out of coffee pods or maybe even my coffee machine broke. Of course this would affect me immensely, but why? There are many chemicals in coffee that contribute to waking up, staying up, and giving you energy. These factors contribute to the chemicals that affect our brains and mental performance. But, there is also the cost of withdrawals that come with all of this. On the other hand, there are those who don t get the withdrawals. But, how is that affecting their health? Each person is different, not all of us need an intake of caffeine each morning in order to be successful in their day. But, me being an avid coffee drinker, know that a lot of college students are just like me. Waking up every morning and heading straight for the coffee machine. There are not only coffee shops almost every two miles, but also on college campuses. Factors like these contribute to the fact that coffee is a main contributor for a lot of students in their everyday lives. In this research paper, I will further my understanding of caffeine and the effects of it on my brain that would
Salveta 2 help me find out more about any dangers or health disadvantages that I, alongside with anyone else, should know about. I will explore the research needed in order for me to answer my own question: how does caffeine affect college students mentality? I first started off my research by a simple google search. In doing so, I got a total of 278,000,000 articles and citations from just a simple search. Of course I had to cycle down through the good and bad sources so I could find a credible one. In order to do so, I had to narrow down and find the right article that could help me learn about the chemicals behind caffeine. This would further my understanding of what chemicals there are in caffeine and how that can affect my brain. Finding a credible source includes looking at who it was published by and when it was published. To start off, I used the keywords chemicals and coffee in this google search. In doing so, I stumbled across an article where I learned about a certain chemical that is most significant in coffee called, adenosine. Adenosine is a chemical in the central nervous system. The levels of adenosine increase during the day and decrease when you fall asleep. Adenosine receptors are blocked and build up which leads to tiredness. Another reasoning for sleepiness would be because of the amount of sugar added into your drink. From answering this question, it made me wonder what else does caffeine do to your body? There is the reasoning that coffee is a diuretic. A diuretic is what makes you have to urinate more often. Because you urinate more often when drinking coffee, this causes you to become more dehydrated. According to the article, Why Does Coffee Make Me Tired? written by Claire Gillespie, When dehydrated, cells in the body lose fluid volume...this affects their normal function...lead to feelings of sluggishness. It s natural to reach for another cup of coffee to counteract this sluggishness, but this can start the cycle all over again. Reading this article gave
Salveta 3 me an insight on what I already did not know about the chemicals in caffeine. I now understand why I get so tired from coffee. But, how do I prevent it? The answer is simple. To not drink as much coffee. After learning more about the chemicals in caffeine and how it affects your brain, it brought me to more questions. It made me wonder what would happen if there was withdrawals. How would that affect a person s alertness and performance? In order to answer this question, I used a database called the Wayne State University Library System. I searched through many articles until I came across one that seemed credible. Again, I had to determine if this source was useful and that the authors know what they are talking about. After looking further into it, I found an article written by Peter J. Rogers, Susan V. Heatherley, Emma L. Mullings, and Jessica E. Smith called, Faster but not smarter: effects of caffeine and caffeine withdrawal on alertness and performance. In this article, an experiment was done in which participants between the age of 18 and 62. They were split up into two groups, non-low and medium-high. The groups had either greater than 40mg of caffeine or equal to or less than 40mg of caffeine. This article found that caffeine indeed increases sleepiness, and have lower performance on alertness and reaction time. However, even though caffeine, enhanced physical performance, which would be classified as anxiety or jitteriness, it also concluded that the frequent consumption of coffee did not enhance performance or alertness. Looking at this research brought me to answer my question about how withdrawals led to performance and alertness. Learning about how withdrawals led to performance and alertness, I wanted to answer my question of how this really affects the mind of a college student. For me, I ve experienced withdrawals and how that impacted how I go about my day. For this this question, I went on a
Salveta 4 popular news article website, USA Today. I chose this website because I thought I might find articles of what people think they know about caffeine. From a specific article Your coffee habit might be lowering your GPA posted in August of 2017, the author mentioned a quote by an assistant professor of neurology, sleep medicine at Johns Hopkins University, Jeffrey Ellenbogen. I did some research who this person was and what they can contribute to the study on caffeine. What I found was information on this person and can confirm that he is a credible source. From the article, I fund a survey by the BMB staff where they surveyed over 1,000 college students to determine how their energy habits affect their GPAs. What they found was that the less a student drank a coffee during the day, the more sleep they got. This resulted in higher GPA scores. THe survey mentioned, While coffee may provide energy and allow for extra study time, lack of sleep that may result from caffeine can take away from the body s ability to form long-term memories. But not also did I find this to be true just from the survey, Jeffrey Ellenbogen stated, If one is a daily consumer of caffeine or feels like they can t function without it, that s a time to take a big step back and look at the quality and quantity of sleep. Although this quote was not affiliated with the survey, it is still a second source where this fact deems to be true. This led me to believe that even if I just get one cup of coffee in, I can still keep my academic performance high with the amount of sleep it allows me to get. Throughout this research process, I learned that there are many factors that can contribute to just a simple question. In finding out the sub questions to my full research question, I can conclude that I had to answer more questions than I thought I would have in order to answer my research question. Some possible answers to my question would be that caffeine decreases the amount of sleep you would get, which results in lower grades. Another answer would be that
Salveta 5 even though withdrawals happen, they affect your mentality. In using my research method, I found more and more questions to ask which led to more answers I need to find out. Using the resources closest to you seemed to be the simplest way of finding sources. Using the library guide, or even just using google helped me do this. Of course, it was very time consuming to find out the credibility of these sources. After finishing this project, I understand that a lot of research is just what it takes to answer a simple question.