Pique the Geek has been on hiatus for a couple of weeks due to a combination of reasons. I had planned to post last Sunday, but needed to do more work around the house in Arkansas, so last Sunday was a driving day. After 620 miles and 10 hours, I was ill prepared to compose, proof, post, and respond to comments. As you know, I am not a "hit and run" diarist.
On the nicotine post, I revealed that I planned to quit smoking cigarettes, and here is my update. I bought a carton of Camel nonfilters (my usual brand) the day before the federal tax increased. The first day I smoked ad libitum, then for the next two days allowed ten cigarettes per day, so two packs were burnt. The next four days I allowed five cigarettes per day, so three are now gone (I am writing this late Saturday evening / Sunday morning). I will keep with the five per day regimen for another four days (one more pack, leaving six packs), and then cut down to three per day.
At three per day, one pack will last roughly a week (with a single cigarette deficit), so if I do that for two weeks I will have four packs left. Then down to two per day, which will make those four packs last 40 days. If I can cut to two per day from 30 or so per day, I can quit. For the record, I have one of the five for Saturday remaining at 01:58 AM Sunday morning (interestingly, I find that I need to sleep a bit less recently, but I do not know if that is connected with decreasing smoking). Any comments about smoking reduction are welcome.
UPDATE: as of 8:46 EDT Sunday, I still have two of my allotment left, and that is after rebuilding my tiller.
Now, on to caffeine. The convention in English chemistry jargon for alkaloids (nitrogen containing organic bases, usually of plant origin) is for the last syllable to be "ine" and get at least a secondary accent. The major exception is cocaine, which is treated as a two syllable word, when the proper pronunciation is "co-ca-ine'", but only us geeks observe this convention.
Caffeine is sort of atypical for a drug that affects the mind in that it is achiral, meaning that has a relatively simple stereochemistry. You can hit my profile and go back a couple of years for a complete discussion of the subject. The point is that most nerve receptors in the brain are chiral, and respond to one or another stereoisomer of a given drug more than another. For instance, d-amphetamine (the one that, in solution, rotates polarized light to the righ) is several times more potent than l-amphetamine, the left handed one, insofar as central stimulation goes. Thus, caffeine and alcohol (the subject of a future post) are sort of in a group of their own as being achiral substances that affect mental function.
Caffeine is one of the xanthine drugs, and there are several. Xanthine itself does not have much of a drug action, but some substituted ones (mostly the substituents are methyl groups) have significant drug actions. Here are the shorthand pictures that we organic chemists like to use for xanthine (the parent compound), caffeine, theobromine (found in cocoa), and theophylline (a potent drug with significant cardiac and bronchial effects, formerly used in treating asthma).
So, what exactly does caffeine do? Actually, we really do not know precisely. The best science indicates that it is a mimic of adenosine, binding to the adenosine receptors without activating them. This process is called competetative antagonism, since caffeine molecules compete with adenosine molecules for the receptors in the brain. It is thought that adenosine is an inhibitory neurotransmitter, and thus "turns down" neuron firings in the system for which it serves. Thus, caffeine, competing for adenosine in that system but not triggering the inhibitory effect of adenosine, would allow the systems that adenosine inhibits to become more active. Simply, if the inhibitor is inhibited, the the inhibition is reduced, and stimulation is the result. Please let me go on record as saying that I am very unsure that the science is complete at present, but this seems to be a logical explanation. The thing that bothers me the most is that there do not seem to be any specific adenosine "bundles" (technically, vesicles) in presynaptic junctions to release it like most other neurotransmitters. Hopefully some of you reading this have more current research results than have I. Peer reviewed references are always welcome here.
Here are structural diagrams of adenosine and caffeine to show their similarity. Note that adenosine has at least four chiral centers, so it is even more remarkable that caffeine is a surrogate for it. Actually, come to think of it, the parts that are similar are not chiral, so it makes sense. We can go into gory detail in the comments for those who are interested in the nuances.
Adenosine
Caffeine
There has been so much research on caffeine (by consensus, the most commonly used psychoactive drug known at present) that it is not surprising that results are, to say the least, inconsistent, inconclusive, and sometimes downright contradictory. However, the consensus is that, taken in moderate amounts, caffeine is not harmful to most people. Like any other substance, there are individuals that are hypersensitive to it, but they seem to be rare. Overdose is a threat, however, but not likely unless one takes caffeine tablets. It is almost impossible to overdose on popular beverages unless you have a liver disorder that interferes with metabolism, or take one a few rare drugs that inhibit the specific enzyme that metabolizes caffeine. For the great part of the population, those are very unlikely scenarios.
OK, we understand that caffeine stimulates us by blocking the blocker, so where do we find it? We all know about tea and coffee, but there are several other natural sources, and lots of artificial ones.
On a mass basis, tea has more caffeine in it than do coffee beans. In the introductory organic chemistry laboratory, we always use tea leaves for students to extract caffeine since they have more than coffee "beans" and are not as "dirty". However, we tend to brew tea in a manner that, for beverage purposes, only a small bit of the caffeine gets extracted. The way we brew coffee extracts much more, so a "regular" cup of coffee has about twice the caffeine as a "regular" cup of tea. However, to get a toxic dose of caffeine, normal individuals would have to drink over 100 cups of coffee (or 200 cups of tea) in short order. I daresay that water intoxication would be a greater threat, so go ahead and have that forth cup without worry, unless you are sensitive.
The real danger of caffeine overdose has to do with the tablets, each of which are equal to a cup or two of strong coffee. My considered opinion is never to use the tablets for any reason, and I will explain further a bit later. Besides, a warm, or even cold, flavorful and wonderfully scented beverage is a better thing than a tablet or two and water to make it easier to swallow.
Now that we have looked at caffeine and its cousins from a chemical and pharmacological point of view, let us look at the common sources of them. Coffee and tea are by far the commonest sources, but many soft drinks are fortified with caffeine. Coca-Cola has caffeine in it from the cola nuts (mainly used as a flavor until 1906, since coca leaf extract, complete with the cocaine, was in it until then, and is a stimulant in its own right). But it has additional caffeine added to it now to make up for the lack of cocaine due the the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. By the way, Coca-Cola still has coca leaf extract as a flavoring agent, but the coca leaves are "de-cocaineized" before going into the beverage. It turns out that the coca leaves used for flavoring Coca-Cola provide pretty much all of the legitimate, medical cocaine used to this day.
The drink called maté (Paraguay tea), derived from a species of holly, is rife with caffeine. It is popular in the Andalusian parts of South America, and I am told it is very refreshing. In parts of Africa cola nuts are used as a base for a drink, and once again from South America guarana is used as a base for a drink. All of them contain more or less amounts of caffeine. Interestingly, cola is related to hops (which contain no caffeine) that flavor our beer and the mulberry that produces wonderful fruit. Guarana is related to the maple tree that provides delicious syrup and sugar (but no caffeine). There is a holly native to North America that also has caffeine in it, but I do not plan to drink any brew from it since its Latin name is Ilex vomitoria. Latin names often have some meaning.
To get down to brass tacks, coffee and tea are actually good for you. They are full (when freshly brewed) of antioxidants, in the case of coffee native polyphenols and products of the Maillard reaction (the interaction of sugars and proteins during roasting, a browning reaction) and in the case of tea flavionoids (complex phenolic antioxidants) and Maillard compounds for dark tea (the processes for green and white teas do not procuce Maillard materials). One caution: these materials are ephemeral. As soon as that coffee or tea is brewed, they begin to react with atmospheric oxygen (remember, these are antioxidants!) and rapidly decay. Thus, you have to get them into you as soon as possible. Here is what I do, and any improvements are welcome.
For coffee, I take freshly ground coffee beans and put them into a one cup stainless steel brewer. Then I pour the appropriate amount of simmering water into the reservoir of the brewer and have fresh coffee in a minute or two. If I want more, I rinse the brewer and cup and repeat the process. My coffee never sits on a hot burner, exposed to the air. For tea, I cheat and brew it in the microwave oven, using bags of either green or black tea, depending on my mood. I heat the water first, then soak the bag for three to five minutes. Sometimes I hit it again to keep it warm, depending on the ambient temperature. This leads to a very important caution.
NEVER heat water in a smooth vessel in the microwave oven. Some folks say that it is a matter of urban legend that a cup of water heated in the microwave oven will "explode", but I can say from personal observation that certainly is not legend. Mrs. Translator did that very thing, and I happened to turn from the sink to see her attempt to take the cup out of the microwave oven. As soon as she picked up the handle, the entire contents of a large cup erupted in a fog of steam and hot water. It burnt her hand, but fortunately did not hit her face (it was still pointed upwards). Here are the physics: many materials, including water, can be heated to above the boiling point without boiling IF there are no irregular surfaces to cause nucleation of stray molecules to go to the boil. In other words, if a surface is extremely smooth, the entire contents of the vessel can get well beyond the boiling point and look just fine. Any disturbance, such as the slosh when moving the cup, causes the entire mass to come to the boil, and the excess energy stored goes to kinetic energy. She was lucky, with just a burnt hand. The bottom line is, if you have a new cup, make sure that it has a few scratches in it for nuclecation (do not scratch Corelle for other reasons), or throw in a tiny bit of insoluble material with an irregular surface, like a couple of grains of rice or even an exrtemely small pinch (like five or six grains) of sand to provide a nucleation site. Then the water will boil in the cup, and not erupt on and injure, you.
Well, I had better go or this will get way to long for anyone to read. I could add three times more information, but I think I got what is important to the discussion into it. Certainly you are welcome to bring up other points in the comments. And whilst you hate to hear it, and my raciest father wanted to think of it as a birthday present, the murder of Dr. King was not a good thing in any manner of decent human expression.
UPDATE: The poll is tied between alcohol and cannabis, so I will likely post on alcohol next to conclude, for the most part, legal drugs of abuse. Then on to the illegal ones. I will try to have some better graphics next time, but because of the pain in my back it is difficult to sit in a chair and search for them for extended periods. I injured myself two weeks ago yesterday and it still hurts.
Warmest regards,
Doc
