Caffeine is everywhere. It is in the vending machines throughout campus, in the library and seems to call our names from the 7/11 across the street from the Student Health and Counseling Center. The irony is laughable.
What is sleep when we have Starbucks? Unfortunately, it is not that simple.
Though I am guilty of caffeine overconsumption, there is no doubt that too much caffeine is detrimental to our health.
According to most diet fanatics in society, anything in moderation is okay. The Red Bull that is so accessible around campus is an unfortunate exception. If we college students want to live a healthy, productive lifestyle, we need to seriously reduce our caffeine intake.
Villanova University reports that the average college student consumes an average of 400-500 milligrams of caffeine per day. The recommended maximum amount is 200-300 milligrams. There is something wrong with this picture.
Stephanie Annette is a registered dietitian at the Student Health and Counseling Center and discussed her thoughts on the subject.
“If a person already has, for example, some anxiety disorder, the caffeine is definitely going to make that worse,” said Annette. “You can get, you know, just basically a little overstimulated. The big thing that people don’t think about, too, is sleep, and you can get yourself in pretty much a vicious cycle.”
For most college students, sleep is the last thing on their minds when there’s an assignment deadline. We get tired and immediately put a pod in the Keurig.
“For your brain health, your memory, all of those good things, sleep is just so essential,” Annette said. “[Your] immune system, stress hormones, you know, can get out of whack when you’re sleep deprived. [Caffeine] just increases your alertness, so it’s not really a substitute for sleep. It’s like a Band-Aid.”
Just last week, I got four hours of sleep and tried to cure my exhaustion with a triple espresso shot on the way to class. It didn’t work. Today, I drank a cup of coffee at 5 p.m. and I’m buzzing at 10 p.m.
Forget the damage that coffee and energy drinks do to our guts, what about our mental health? A study done by PubMed reveals that depressive symptoms and anxiety were associated with upper-level college students who consume greater amounts of caffeine.
On one hand, caffeine reliance is clearly unhealthy. On the other, more attractive hand, caffeine is sometimes the only thing that gets us through long study sessions.
Mark Ritter is a food science culinology major at Fresno State and weighed in on this problem.
“I’m not sure if it’s like a physical dependency, like [a] biological dependency, like as we’re taking too much caffeine our body needs it now,” said Ritter. “I think there’s a bit of a crutch on caffeine and coffee. [If] I feel like I can’t study what I started to study I’m like, okay, I’m going to drink my matcha and I’m going to be focused; I’m going to be locked in.”
The days of using our natural energy to complete tasks are over. Caffeine is like a toxic friend that we just can’t seem to shake. It is fun at the moment until you’re riddled with anxiety and unnecessary drama a few hours later.
Most of us have a dependency on caffeine that we may not realize. When we wake up, we have coffee. During the inevitable afternoon slump, we grab a coffee. Coffee, Red Bull, whatever it may be, the only way to reduce our total intake is to slowly wean ourselves off of it. This is not something that can productively be done cold-turkey style.
Zule Chero, another food-science culinology major, offered some insight and advice for us borderline addicts.
“I will say I do notice, like, when the semester starts, everyone starts buying caffeine,” said Chero. “[As food majors], we understand that there’s healthier options like green tea with honey, for example.”
For the sake of our physical and mental health, we need to ditch our third coffee or energy drink of the day and grab tea instead. Rather than staying up all night studying for midterms, we should allocate more daytime to studying and put our phones away.
Resisting the temptation of an iced shaken espresso from Starbucks is easier said than done, but it is necessary. Let us all be brave and, the next time we are ordering at a café, mumble the word “decaf.”