Discovering the buzz behind caffeine

by Jennifer Lloyd
01/23/2003

During your morning walk to class, daylight pounds through your eyes to the back of your skull. Each car whizzes past you leaving a jet stream of noise in its wake. Your gray matter throbs in pain. What is happening to cause such anguish? Why did you decide to skip having your morning coffee?

Not cocaine, not opium, not anything so fanciful and exotic, caffeine is the little culprit that lurks under the dark, delectable waves of java. As a stimulant, caffeine reduces blood flow, increases metabolism and increases energy use within the brain. Whether you soak up the sweet stuff through coffee, tea, soda, chocolate, or the almighty stay-awake-for-three-days-until-your-eyelids-glue-themselves-permanently-open pill, the drug works the same way.

More...