Coffee and Our Body, Mind and Brain
How Coffee Works
Every year around 400 billion cups of coffee are consumed worldwide and apparently 90% of Americans start their day with a cup. No wonder that coffee is the largest food import and the second most valuable commodity after oil in the States.
Given our global love affair with coffee, are there any benefits from enjoying our caffeine?
The short answer is yes. There is even some suggestion that coffee works as a cognitive enhancer.

Coffee and Our Body, Mind and Brain
How Coffee Benefits Us

Alertness

Dopamine

Neuroprotection

Antioxidants

Memory

Social Connection
How Coffee Can Benefit Us
Alertness
The peak effect on our brain occurs 15 to 45 minutes after drinking the coffee and the total effect lasts around two hours.
How Coffee Can Benefit Us
Antioxidants
How Coffee Can Benefit Us
Dopamine
Caffeine reduces the re-uptake of dopamine by the brain, so we feel good and naturally want to extend that feeling for longer. Meaning, coffee is a neurotransmitter that makes us feel good and happy.
How Coffee Can Benefit Us
Memory
How this works isn’t known. It could be to do with paying better attention or it might be something to do with lessening the forgetting effect. Either way, it’s encouraging to think we’re doing something good for our brain.
There have also been studies showing improved memory performance and cognition in 65yr old women who drink three or more cups of coffee a day. The U.S. study showed how coffee, by its influence on increased neuronal firing, leads to increased short-term memory skills and reaction times.
How Coffee Can Benefit Us
Neuroprotection
A special supplement of 22 articles was produced in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease called “Looking at therapeutic opportunities for caffeine in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.” These articles found that:
- Caffeine has multiple beneficial effects assisting to normalise brain function and prevent neurodegeneration.
- Caffeine has been shown to reduce beta-amyloid production and is neuroprotective.
- Caffeine may be looked at further as a potential disease-modifying agent for Alzheimer’s disease.
- The adenosine A2A receptors have been identified as the main target of neuroprotection afforded by drinking coffee.
- Epidemiological studies corroborated by Meta-analyses suggest caffeine may have some protective effect against Parkinson’s disease.
While these studies have suggested coffee drinking to be neuroprotective this is NOT a cause and effect scenario. Drinking coffee won’t prevent you from developing a neurodegenerative disorder but the good news is that drinking three cups a day (especially if you are a woman aged 65-80) has been associated with a lower risk for dementia.
It appears that a little of what you fancy can indeed do you good.
How Coffee Can Benefit Us
Social Connection
Coffee has retained a unique place in our society as a means to connect socially. Some ways coffee connects us include:
- We arrange to meet our friends for a coffee catch up.
- We stop for a well-earned coffee after our Saturday morning bicycle ride with our cycling colleagues distinguished by our lycra garb and strange shoes.
- We shout our work colleagues a coffee, to take a mental break during the workday.
- We seek out a good coffee before going in for a looooong work meeting or attending a workshop.
- We hold business meetings in cafes to establish new working relationships and share a coffee as we talk about our new program, project or proposal.
- We hold workplace-based meetings and (hopefully) ask participants and guests if they’d like coffee first. This is seriously a good move as research has shown that drinking coffee before starting a group activity increases individual participation and focus. It was also found that drinking coffee led to individuals ranking themselves and their co-workers as more alert putting them in a better frame of mind, talking more and staying on topic.
The social benefit of coffee is real. If drinking coffee and or working in a cafe makes you feel good, more socially engaged and happier then that has to be a good thing.
Top Tip
Busy Day? Try a Coffee Nap
The caffeine in our coffee takes about 20 minutes to kick in. So, drink up and then set your alarm to take a 20-minute power nap to keep you in the light phase of sleep. On waking you then have the double bonus of the sleep’s cognitive refreshment plus the heightened alertness from the coffee. Ka-boom!
But remember the ideal time is probably shortly after lunch so as not to interfere with normal sleep.

Dr Jenny’s Blog
Latest Articles: Coffee & Your Brain
Coffee and Our Body, Mind and Brain
How Coffee Can Harm Us

Addiction & Withdrawals

Adrenaline

Sleep
How Coffee Can Harm Us
Addiction & Withdrawals
If you’ve ever experienced caffeine withdrawal symptoms, you’ll know just how unpleasant these are. They are a potent reminder that caffeine is indeed a drug with withdrawal leading not only to a nasty headache but also greater fatigue, an increase in blood pressure, a reduction in cerebral blood flow and difficulty in focusing.
You may have heard of people telling you they get a caffeine withdrawal headache if they miss their coffee or try to cut down. That’s because the caffeine causes blood vessels to dilate. Remove the caffeine and the blood vessels constrict, which can cause a nasty headache.
If you’re looking to cut down on coffee, you may also suffer from aches and pains, extreme tiredness and depression during the period of withdrawal. It can take several days to get over the worst with reduced alertness and slower reaction times.
However, by day 6 or 7, your body will have recovered, your blood pressure is like to be lower, you may have less anxiety, be sleeping better and be functioning mentally just as well as when you had been drinking coffee.
How Coffee Can Harm Us
Adrenaline
When the caffeine in our coffee speeds up our brain’s rate of firing, the pituitary gland can detect the increased rate of brain cell activity and presumes there is an emergency happening somewhere. This results in the flight or fight response being initiated, with the adrenal glands pumping out adrenaline to fire us up.
How Coffee Can Harm Us
Sleep
This in itself is not a huge problem. Many of us can get to sleep even with a significant amount of caffeine still in our system.
However, during the day, our brain releases an increasing amount of an inhibitory neurotransmitter called adenosine. This works to gradually suppress neuronal activity preparing us for sleep at the end of the day.
We need the adenosine to slow our brain cells down when we want to sleep. The caffeine interferes with your ability to have good quality sleep by reducing deep sleep, which we need for good brain function.
If you’ve noticed caffeine interferes with your ability to sleep, it’s recommended to keep your coffee drinking to the earlier part of the day or reduce your intake.
Myth Busting
Coffee Doesn’t Give Us a Mental Edge
Researchers at the University of Vermont and John Hopkins School of Medicine published a paper in 2009 demonstrating the physiological effect on our brain of quitting caffeine. The study revealed that those people who drink coffee regularly have no mental benefit or advantage over those that don’t, despite those of us who like to think it helps give us the edge.
In fact, once the effect of the caffeine and the adrenaline has worn off, we are likely to be feeling more tired and a bit flat.
So, how much coffee should we drink?
While coffee has its benefits, we need to make sure we don’t have so much coffee that we impair our brain fitness and mental performance.
Moderation is the way to go and individual tolerance varies. Sticking to about 300 – 400 mg of caffeine per a day (that’s three to four cups) is fine for most people.