In Good Health: How caffeine affects our body

Your alarm goes off. You snooze it for five, maybe ten more minutes. Finally, you force yourself up and rub the sleep out of your eyes. Dragging yourself into the kitchen, you reach for one thing. What is it?

For many of us – that’s a cup of coffee, or maybe some tea. Caffeine is the most used psychoactive stimulant across the world. According to the National Coffee Association, 60 percent of Americans drink coffee every day. That’s more than any other beverage, including tap water. And 85 percent of people in the U.S. have one caffeinated beverage per day, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Coffee and tea aren’t the only way to get a caffeine fix anymore. Synthetic caffeine sources are increasingly available through energy drinks and other supplements.

How should we think about our caffeine consumption? What are the benefits and how risky are the risks? We talk about it in this installment of the In Good Health series.