I don’t know about you, but a morning coffee is a pretty essential part of my day. Without it I tend to be slightly less than pleasant to be around.
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Why do I love my coffee so much? It’s really all about the caffeine.
Caffeine is the most widely used psychoactive drug in the world. Yep, that’s right. Every morning when you sip on that cappuccino, or double-shot soy iced latte, you’re ingesting a healthy dose of a mind-altering substance. But don’t panic – compared to other psychoactive drugs such as cocaine or LSD, caffeine is pretty mild.
What does caffeine actually do to us? And why can some people drink it all day without any side effects, while others can have one cup and be unable to sleep at night? These are questions I’ve been investigating with students in my genetics class, with some interesting results.
Caffeine is a stimulant – it activates our nervous system to make us more alert. It speeds up our heart rate, it increases our blood pressure, it can (according to some studies) improve our reaction speed, and even improve our cognitive performance. It also reacts with receptors in our brains to stop us from becoming drowsy.
These effects of caffeine are pretty well known. What’s interesting is that these side effects last much longer for some people than they do for others. And it all comes down to our genes.
What’s interesting is that these side effects of coffee last much longer for some people than they do for others.
When we ingest caffeine our body needs to break it down, or metabolise it. We produce a number of different enzymes to carry out this process, and each of these enzymes is coded for in our DNA. But not all DNA is created equal.
There is a key gene that’s involved in metabolising caffeine, and it’s called CYP1A2. Different people have different versions of this gene, which mean that the enzyme that’s produced works slightly differently in different people. Depending on which version of the gene we have, we will be able to metabolise caffeine slowly, or more quickly.
Do you know someone who can drink five cups of coffee a day, and seems to have no side effects? Someone who can down an espresso, and be asleep 20 minutes later? There is a good chance that that person has the version of the gene that makes them a fast metaboliser.
People who are fast metabolisers will still be affected by caffeine, but because they are able to break down caffeine quickly, those effects will be short-lived. People, like me, who have the “slow” version of the gene will feel those effects for much longer.
These genetic variations also have implications for our health. Because caffeine does things like raise our blood pressure, people who are slow metabolisers might need to be a bit careful with their caffeine intake to avoid blood pressure problems.
Even though it turns out I’m a slow metaboliser I don’t think of that as a bad thing – instead I like to think that I just get much more value out of my coffee than fast metabolisers do.
