Caffeine

Hot tea, coffee, and hot cocoa or chocolate are the traditional drinks of the North. They share in common two traits: they're warming and they contain caffeine.

Humans have been enjoying the stimulating effects of caffeine containing plants for thousands of years; nowadays nearly every Northerner consumes caffeine, not only in hot beverages but also in cola drinks. A cup of coffee or tea contains between 100 and 150 mg of caffeine; a cup of cocoa, up to 150 mg; and a cola drink, up to 35 to 55 mg per can.

Caffeine is a mildly addictive drug with stimulating effects which generally lasts between three and five hours in a person. The drug does not accumulate in one's body, which can rid itself of it almost completely overnight. Easily absorbed from the stomach, caffeine is quickly distributed to all tissues and organs of the body. The quantities found in each tissue are dependent on the water content in the tissues.

One should be moderate in his or her caffeine consumption, because with each sip of a caffeine-containing drink, the ovaries, or fetus in the womb of a pregnant woman, or testes are bathed in caffeine at varying concentrations. Dr. John Timson, a lecturer in medical genetics at the University of Manchester, notes that "if the drug can cause genetic mutations or abnormal births in man, it has every opportunity to do so--assuming that it is active at the concentrations found in normal consumers of caffeine."

The use of caffeine to counteract the effects of alcohol seems to have its roots in folklore, as laboratory experiments show clearly that a dose of caffeine in rabbits and rats significantly increases the impairment of performance caused by alcohol. If the traditional sobering effect of coffee is real, it must work despite the caffeine present. And this may in fact be so, as coffee has been used for years as the sobering drink, though tea contains almost the same amount of caffeine per cup. Caffeine does stimulate the human nervous system and causes a feeling of wakefulness.

Any substance we consume so much of warrants investigation of any harmful effects it may have on us, and such is the case with caffeine. Philosophically, Dr. Timson muses, "perhaps it is because we like caffeine so much that many still believe that it might in some way be harmful. Those with a puritan streak may even feel that it should not be so widely enjoyed without some penalty."