Black as Night, Hot as Hell, and Strong as Love

If you're from the southern U.S., you'll recognize the above title as the list of requirements for a good cup of coffee. Whatever you standards are for a good brew, there might be a thing or two about the libation that you don't know. Whether or not you're approaching 50 - the average age at which people begin making the switch from caffeinated to decaffeinated - you might be interested in the following.

Having trouble making yourself down that magic-bullet 8 cups of water a day? Here's something that might help coffee drinkers. According to hydration expert Lawrence Armstrong of the University of Connecticut, "Caffeinated fluids contribute to the daily human water requirement in a manner that is similar to pure water." What better reason to stop at Timmie's or your local Second Cup on the way to work?

We all know exercise is something we should try to include more often in our daily schedules, especially since couch potatoes may be as much as ten years older biologically than their active-lifestyle neighbours; but is there any link between caffeine and lifting those weights? Consuming 100 mg of caffeine (an average 8 ounce cup of joe) can raise your metabolic rate by approximately 5% over a one-day period. Add that to the fact that caffeine helps your body burn fat instead of carbohydrates, and you have all the incentive you need to make a pre-gym coffee a regular part of your workout. Just make sure you don't sabotage this one by "treating" yourself to a hit of empty calories after the gym. No Häagen-Dazs!

Beware the late night cup of coffee. Medical personnel caution against consuming caffeine within three to five hours of bedtime. Depending on how much you do knock back from your late night coffee cup (as little as 200 mg) it can take you two to three times as long to fall asleep, and seriously reduce your REM sleep. REM sleep occurs more than once during a night's slumber, but in total, it may only add up to one and a half hours for the average adult, so you can see you don't have a lot of leeway to work with, if you interfere with it in some way. Studies at MIT indicate that learning ability is directly linked to REM sleep.
Caffeine messes with adenosine, the brain's natural sleep regulator, and can create a vicious cycle of dependency. If you consume more coffee after a restless night, in a compensatory bid to be more alert, you're likely to adversely affect the next night's sleep as well. You can just see where this is going, can't you?
If you want to know more about coffee and caffeine, make yourself a cup of java, settle down with the March 2005 issue of "Nutrition Action", and read David Schardt's "Caffeine: The Good, the Bad, and the Maybe".