( Photo: Adam Dietrich )

 

Martha Chertkow’s day isn’t complete without her morning cup of coffee. If she doesn’t have it, she feels as though her whole schedule is off and she can get headaches. On a normal day, she’ll have two to three cups of coffee, but when she’s stressed it can be five or six.

Chertkow’s experience is not that unusual, says health educator Patty Allen of Carleton’s Health and Counselling Services.

“Too much caffeine will increase heart rate, lead to difficult sleeping, could cause headaches, irritability,” she said. “Each person reacts differently.”

Allen said the maximum daily intake of caffeine shouldn’t be above 300 to 400 mg, which is about two medium cups of coffee a day.

According to Allen, a medium cup of coffee contains about 150 mg of caffeine. However, that number can vary significantly. Starbucks nutritional information indicates that one grande coffee contains 330 mg of caffeine – an entire day’s worth. Grande frappuccinos, lattes and cappuccinos contain about half that amount of caffeine.

Coffee isn’t the only caffeine source for students, however. Caffeine can be found in tea, pop, chocolate bars and even certain cold medications. Allen said she is more concerned about energy drinks and caffeine pills.

Energy drinks contain caffeine, herbal supplements and large amounts of sugar and other ingredients.

“We live in a world where young people are on Facebook half the night and lacking sleep,” she said.

Allen said bars are promoting mixing alcohol and energy drinks to stave off the drowsy effect of alcohol.

“For the world, that means there are more wide awake drunks, instead of passing out.”

Chertkow said she sometimes has energy drinks if she has had too much coffee and wants to avoid its acidic effects, which she said have caused her some digestive problems. She doesn’t mix them with alcohol, however.

“I’m not that reckless,” she said.

There is some good news in all this. Allen said students are drinking less straight coffee and more lattes and teas, which have lower caffeine content. However, many of these drinks are much higher in calories.

A grande Starbucks coffee only contains five calories, but a latte contains 190 and a grande frappuccino contains a whopping 430 calories. At Tim Hortons, the popular “double-double” contains 150 calories and an original Iced Cappuccino contains 250.

In addition to caffeine dependency, caffeine interferes with sleep patterns – a situation Allen described as a catch-22. At exam time, when quality sleep is important, students drink more caffeine, which interferes with their sleep.

Although Chertkow said she doesn’t usually have difficulty sleeping, she said she only drinks coffee after 6 p.m. if she’s planning to stay up late.

Despite common belief, Allen insisted coffee isn’t a hangover cure.

“The only cure for a hangover is time. There are certain things you can do to help speed up the time, but the big thing is rehydrating.”

Coffee has a dehydrating effect, so drinking it to get over a hangover doesn’t make sense, Allen said.
Despite its health effects, Chertkow continues to drink her three cups a day.

“If I get tired in class it’s an easy, accessible thing that I know will help me,” she said. “All the times I drink coffee, it’s for the caffeine and not for the pleasure of the taste.”

Although, she continued, “the alertness that caffeine will give you, that perk, is very short-term and when you crash from the caffeine you come down more than you were before.”

Sidebar: Addiction

Health educator Patty Allen said people who drink coffee every morning are addicted to the habit and the behaviour.

“People are more addicted to it because they feel it wakes them up in the morning,” she said. “But it is addictive because if you try to stop you’ll have a really bad headache for a week.”

It’s a tough habit to break, as second-year public affairs and policy management student Martha Chertkow found out.

Chertkow always has her morning cup of coffee, even when she travelled through the Middle East last summer.
“When my boyfriend [prevented me from drinking] it one time, I felt like my entire schedule was off. I’ll feel sick to my stomach . . . and I get withdrawal headaches.”

Although she had some success last year by gradually switching to tea, she reverted to coffee the next time she was stressed out.

Allen recommended that anyone trying to kick the coffee habit should wean themselves off it slowly, rather than quitting cold turkey. Suddenly stopping can lead to headaches like those experienced by Chertkow.