The morning caffeine ritual (in the form of tea or coffee) is never something that I have been a part of, but countless others have been and still are. It is a normal part of daily life around the world that billions of consumers enjoy. It's calming. It helps to order the day.
The British have turned their afternoon tea ritual into quite the pageant of pomp and luxury. In certain locations in London, afternoon tea is served amid marble pillars and huge floral displays, in delicate cups made with the finest bone china. Finger sandwiches, scones with clotted cream, and fruit tarts are served along with traditional teas such as Earl Grey and English Breakfast.
In Japan, the tea ritual has grown to transcend the tea itself. The elegant tea ceremony matters as much, if not more than, the tea itself as kimonos glide across the floor, the wearers pouring tea into hand-molded earth-tone cups.
In southern India, junior monks deliver kettles of butter tea (black tea with milk, butter, and salt added) to more senior monks as a way of fueling early morning hours of prayer and spiritual debate.
Americans and Canadians sit in casual places like Starbucks sipping their javas while reading their newspapers as others grab coffees to take on the run to offices, meetings, or gyms. A flood of new, upscale coffee shops (which also sell tea) has turned the cheap cup of coffee, refills free, into a three to four dollar beverage brewed and blended to one's personal taste by a personal barista. Howard Schultz, the man who invented Starbucks, turned a single espresso bar in a corner of a coffee company into a Fortune 500 company over the period of two decades. (Earlier, Schultz had visited Milan where he fell in love with the ambience of the great Italian institution, the espresso bar. Not only did he observe that the Italian coffee experience was about fine coffee, he also gleaned that it was about conversation and community, and he wanted to bring that whole concept to Seattle, Washington.)
The average person living in Finland, where coffee consumption per capita is the highest in the world, ingests an estimated 145 grams of caffeine a year. (1)
Much of the research investigating the health effects of caffeine indicates benefits for human health at moderate levels of consumption (about 300 mg caffeine per day which is about 2 medium-sized cups of brewed coffee). Caffeine can help to "relieve pain, thwart migraine headaches, reduce asthma symptoms, and elevate mood. As a mental stimulant, it increases alertness, cognition, and reaction speed; because it combats fatigue, it improves performance on vigilance tasks like driving, flying, solving simple math problems, and data entry." (2)
Caffeine is rarely abused (although at least one student committed suicide by ingesting 150 caffeine pills and more and more incidents of mixing caffeine-laden energy drinks like Red Bull with alcohol leading to negative health consquences are coming to light). For most people, once they reach the jittery stage, they stop ingesting the caffeine which caused the jitters in the first place. The point at which people reach the jittery stage varies greatly among individuals. "Some people seem to be genetically more susceptible to caffeine's effects and may have increased anxiety after consuming even small amounts. In a minority of people, doses of 300 milligrams or more may prompt an increase in tension, anxiety, even panic attacks, which may account for why studies show that nervous people generally have lower caffeine consumption." (3)
Some coffee users find that even a day without caffeine causes headaches, irritability, a lack of energy, and sleepiness. Withdrawal symptoms, however, usually dissipate within a few days. The desire to avoid withdrawal may explain why billions around the world continue to consume the beverage. In fact, any improvement in mood or performance after consuming caffeine could simply be relief from withdrawal symptoms. According to Derk-Jan Dijk, a physiologist at the University of Surrey's sleep research centre, "it may be that we are all on one of those endless cycles (in which) you take caffeine, and you are more alert. Then, the next morning, the effect has worn off and you need more of the drug to restore the alertness. But maybe we could step off the cycle. For those of us who work during the day, we might do just as well without caffeine." (4)
D.
(1) National Geographic, January 2005, "Caffeine", T. R. Reid, p.20.
(2) National Geographic, January 2005, pp. 26 - 27.
(3) Ibid., p. 27.
(4) Ibid., p. 29.
