The main biologically active ingredients in coffee are caffeine (a stimulant) and a suite of antioxidants.The stimulant properties of caffeine mean that you can count on a cup of coffee to wake you up. In fact, coffee, or at least the caffeine it contains, is the most <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/0165-0173(92)90012-B">commonly used psychoactive drug in the world</a>. It seems to work as a stimulant, at least in part, by blocking adenosine, which promotes sleep, from binding to its receptor.

Reading this with a cup of coffee,aren't you?

Metabolic processes produce the energy necessary for life, but they also create waste, often in the form of oxidized molecules that can be harmful in themselves or in damaging other molecules.Antioxidants are a broad group of molecules that can scrub up dangerous waste

What about the antioxidnants present in it?

Coffee won’t cure cancer, but it may help to prevent it. What is cancer? At its simplest, cancer is uncontrolled cell growth, which is fundamentally about regulating when genes are, or are not, actively expressed.The antioxidants in coffee may actually have a cancer-fighting effect. Remember that antioxidants fight cellular damage. One type of damage that they may help <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1521-1878(199903)21:3%3C238::AID-BIES8%3E3.0.CO;2-3">reduce is mutations to DNA</a>, and cancer is caused by mutations that lead to the misregulation of genes.

Does coffee have an effect on cancer?

Caffeine has a longer-term brain effect that initially sounds frightening – it sparks “brain entropy.”  Odd as it seems, this is actually a good thing.caffeine, as a potent psychostimulant, facilities faster information processing—causing brain networks to connect with more speed and efficiency-through a process of “cerebral entropy,”even when the brain isn't actively engaged. The researchers reported they found that caffeine “increased resting brain activity irregularity or complexity, suggesting an increase of information processing capacity in the resting brain.”

Long term effect of coffee, "brain entropy"

This effect may underlie outcomes found in previous observational <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/144/6/890/4615979">research</a> showing that in the long-term caffeine appears to improve cognitive performance, including verbal memory, and may also protect against cognitive decline. Apart from all the medical benefits, if a cup of god brewed coffee improves your day, then go for it.:)

The bottom line

From helping to protect against certain cancers and neurodegenerative diseases to causing anxiety and insomnia, researchers investigate how coffee affects the brain, body, and overall health.

health

Health

How coffee affects the brain, body, and health - Neuroscience News

When thinking about getting the sleep you need, it’s normal to focus on how many hours of sleep you get. While sleep duration is undoubtedly important, it’s not the only part of the equation.It’s also critical to think about sleep quality and whether the time spent sleeping is actually restorative. Progressing smoothly multiple times through the sleep cycle, composed of four separate sleep stages, is a vital part of getting truly high-quality rest.

Sleep quality > quantity

Sleep is not uniform. Instead, over the course of the night, your total sleep is made up of several rounds of the sleep cycle, which is composed of four individual stages. In a typical night, a person goes through four to six sleep cycyles. Not all sleep cycles are the same length, but on average they last about 90 minutes each.

What is sleep cycle?

There are four sleep stages; one for rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and three that form non-REM (NREM) sleep. These stages are determined based on an analysis of brain activity during sleep, which shows distinct patterns that characterize each stage.

What are sleep stages?

The classification of sleep stages was update in 2007 by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM). Before that, most experts referred to five sleep stages, but today, the AASM definitions of the four stages represent the consensus understanding of the sleep cycle.

Different sleep stages.

Stage 1 is essentially the “dozing off” stage, and it normally lasts just one to five minutes.During N1 sleep, the body hasn’t fully relaxed, though the body and brain activities start to slow with periods of brief movements (twitches). There are light changes in brain activity associated with falling asleep in this stage.It’s easy to wake someone up during this sleep stage, but if a person isn’t disturbed, they can move quickly into stage 2.

Stage 1

During stage 2, the body enters a more subdued state including a drop in temperature, relaxed muscles, and slowed breathing and heart rate. At the same time, brain waves show a new pattern and eye movement stops. On the whole, brain activity slows, but there are short bursts of activity that actually help resist being woken up by external stimuli.

Stage 2

Stage 3 sleep is also known as deep sleep, and it is harder to wake someone up if they are in this phase. Muscle tone, pulse, and breathing rate decrease in N3 sleep as the body relaxes even further.The brain activity during this period has an identifiable pattern of what are known as delta waves. For this reason, stage 3 may also be called delta sleep or short-wave sleep (SWS).

Stage 3

During REM sleep, brain activity picks up, nearing levels seen when you’re awake. At the same time, the body experiences atonia, which is a temporary paralysis of the muscles, with two exceptions: the eyes and the muscles that control breathing. Even though the eyes are closed, they can be seen moving quickly, which is how this stage gets its name.

Stage 4

When thinking about getting the sleep you need, it’s normal to focus on how many hours of sleep you get. While sleep duration is undoubtedly important,

How coffee affects the brain, body, and health - Neuroscience News

Stages of Sleep - Sleep Foundation

Abhikrit patel