![]() ![]() What we can conclude is that coffee does have an effect on your bowel movements, but it will most likely promote them rather than constipate you. This doesn’t affect everyone, and the effects of caffeine differ per person. In another study it was found that having a cup of coffee in the morning makes this process happen even faster: roughly twenty minutes after the subjects drank their coffee, they needed to use the bathroom already. Gastrin is a hormone that promotes digestion and speeds it up, causing you to have to have a bowel movement. In a study performed in 1986 it was found that both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee stimulate the production of gastrin. In fact, coffee might even have a slight laxative effect – not on its own, but in combination with stomach acid. This way, there’s no way you’ll get constipated from consuming some caffeinated drinks. But coffee doesn’t cause dehydration! And if, besides coffee, you also drink some water throughout the day, you’ll more than make up for the slight diuretic effect of the coffee. Dehydration can cause constipation: if you lose too much water there’s not enough fluids left to properly process your stools. ![]() The myth that caffeinated drinks cause dehydration could actually be the reason why it’s also believed that they cause constipation. In short: coffee and other caffeinated drinks will not dehydrate you, especially if you drink them in moderation. To actually have a significant effect on your hydration status, you’d need to consume at least 500mg of caffeine a day – roughly 5 cups of coffee ! It is a fact that caffeine causes you to lose more water, but since you consume the caffeine as a beverage, you make up for it. This diuretic effect is probably the reason why the myth that “coffee dehydrates you” is still around. This means that it promotes the production of urine, meaning you lose more fluid. Caffeinated drinks dehydrate the bodyĬaffeine in itself is dehydrating: it has a mild diuretic effect. Keep reading to find out where some of these claims come from, and whether they’re actually true or false. Still, caffeine gets associated with some other things too. But it can also turn drinking coffee into a vicious circle: you’re battling grogginess with coffee which leads to grogginess which leads to drinking more coffee which leads to…. ![]() But because there is so much of it (you just had to drink that after-dinner espresso, didn’t you?) you’ll likely wake up with left-over adenosine in your body, making you groggy.Īnyway, based on these properties, you could say that caffeine is helpful: it’s known for being good at keeping you awake and alert, and rightfully so. By the time the caffeine wears off and adenosine can bind to its receptors again, this surplus of adenosine needs to be metabolised during your sleep. And then you wake up feeling groggy.Ĭaffeine can also be a cause for your morning grogginess: because caffeine blocks adenosine, the adenosine molecules heap up. Getting a good night’s sleep should metabolise them, but if you don’t sleep (well) enough, some of those molecules will linger. Ideally, you wake up without any adenosine molecules in your system. It wasn’t made for him, but he still sits on it. Just imagine your dog, hopping onto your favourite chair and claiming it. Caffeine has a similar chemical structure to adenosine, but it doesn’t bind to the adenosine receptors - it just blocks them. But caffeine prevents this from happening. Adenosine then sort of floats around until it finds a receptor it can bind to, which causes your muscles to relax and makes you feel sleepy. Īs the day passes, adenosine gets produced because you’re doing physical work, or because you’re using your brain intensively. ![]() When digested, caffeine partly goes to your brain, where it picks a fight with adenosine, the neurotransmitter responsible for making you feel drowsy. We can still feel the sleep in our eyes, our movements are sluggish, and we feel that between going back to bed, or drinking a cup of coffee, the latter is probably better as it won’t get us fired. Most of us can probably relate: if we had to choose between coffee or cereal, the first thing we’d consume in the morning would definitely be the drink – not just because we love the flavour, but because we need it. Since many people drink coffee, often even multiple times a day, we felt it was our civic duty as a nutritionally complete food company to investigate if any of these negative effects associated with coffee and caffeine are actually true. We all know that when you say "I need coffee”, you actually mean “I need caffeine” - and it seems we just can't get enough of the stuff! On the flipside, coffee and caffeine are associated with some negative effects: insomnia, hypertension, dehydration, and so on. ![]()
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