Caffeine Public Service Announcement

Dear Fellow Students,

I have noticed that teenagers around my age like to drink caffeine in bulk amounts but do not know the consequences. As you may not know, 32 mg to 200mg act as a minor stimulant and anything over 300 mg causes temporary insomnia. Personally, I don't drink caffeine to that extent, if anything I barely drink anything that contains caffeine.

Moving on, I wanted to understand the effects of caffeine so I have done a study where I personally try to drink steady amounts of caffeine over the course of two days.

The way I collected my information for this study went like this:

Every time I would drink a caffeinated drink, I would list it, add how much caffeine is in the drink, and how many hours after 6:00 am from my starting day I drunk the drink.

The first thing I drunk was a Turkey Hill Iced Tea at 8:00 am which consisted of 110 mg. After this, I was very energized and ready to tackle anything. At 12:00 noon, I decided to eat lunch. With my lunch, I also drank a coca cola can which had 34 mg of caffeine. That night I went to bed around 10:00. By the time I went to bed, my caffeine levels had decreased, which allowed me to go to sleep without any issues. The next day, I didn't drink any caffeine in the morning, so around 2:00 pm, I decided to drink an Arizona Iced tea half and half Green Tea Lemonade, which consisted 19 mg of caffeine. Then, two hours after drinking the Arizona half and half, 4:00 pm, I ate a Hershey chocolate bar which consisted of 9 mg. Later that evening, 7:00 pm to be exact, I felt like eating Ben and Jerry's ice cream. The Ben and Jerry's ice cream consisted of 70 mg of caffeine. That night, I was not able to sleep the time I desired because I still had a lot of energy left in me due to all the caffeine I consumed. My graph below shows a piece-wise function that represents my caffeine levels. The reason they decrease is because your caffeine levels decrease 13% after each hour, leaving the 87% behind.

As you can see, my caffeine levels did not go over 120 mg, which was a good thing because anything over 300 mg would have caused me to have temporary insomnia. As you see, the point where the red dot is, that is the time where I went to bed that day. Even though I went to bed, there was still caffeine that was being depleted each hour. The reason that it is (16,24.1) in the graph is because 10:00 pm is 16 hours after my starting point of 6:00 am.

After doing all of my research and collecting my data, I have come to the conclusion that students should not consume any caffeine after 3:00 pm. The reason being is, after 3:00 you become tired and want something that will be a sort of “pick me up”. Most people around my age would go and choose an energy drink and buy them in bulk, so they make sure that they have enough energy for the rest of the day, but they do not understand that their body is not able to get rid off all that caffeine before you go to bed and the fact that more caffeine might be added onto the existing amount does not help the situation.

In summation,  students know how much caffeine you intake! Taking in too much caffeine can cause horrible things like restlessness, irritability, muscle tremors and even temporary insomnia. Also, no caffeine after 3:00 pm! I understand you want a “pick me up” around that time but still, hefty amounts of caffeine should not be consumed at that time. This is only because your body cannot break down the caffeine in time for you to go to bed, causing lack of sleep, which is priceless for us teenagers.