Comment · Sat, February 21, 2015 · Ceretropic
How do the nootropic effects of caffeine change with tolerance?
Original post in this thread
sintrastes · 5 points
For awhile, I was drinking a cup of coffee a day. Recently though, to stay alert, I've had to drink two or more cups a day.
This got me thinking, are the nootropic effects of caffeine based purely on the amount you consume, or is it effected by tolerance as well? From my experience, it seems like the energizing effects of caffeine are definitely affected by tolerance, but is there an independent nootoropic effect of caffeine consumption apart from its energizing effect, or are these essentially one and the same effect?
What they were answering
Direct reply to the original post — see the thread post above.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1874449/
After the caffeine challenge, middle cerebral artery blood velocity decreased in both conditions but was greater in the C-naïve condition (−8.0 [-10.0, −6.1] cm s−1 vs −4.9 [-6.8, −2.9] cm s−1 C-replete, P < 0.02). Systolic blood pressure rise was not significantly different in C-naïve, although this rise was more sustained over time (P < 0.04). Mood was adversely affected by regular caffeine consumption with tense aspect of mood significantly higher at baseline in C-replete 11.6 ± 0.6 C-naïve vs 16.3 ± 1.6 C-replete, P < 0.01). Cognitive performance was not affected by previous caffeine exposure.
So the physical effects build tolerance, but the cognitive ones do not.
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http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s002130000506#page-2
Regular caffeine consumers appear to show substantial tolerance to the thirst-increasing but not to the performance and mood effects of caffeine.
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http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02246949
After controlling extensively for potential confounding variables, a dose-response trend to improved performance with higher levels of coffee consumption was observed for all four tests (P<0.001 in each case). Similar but weaker associations were found for tea consumption, which were significant for simple reaction time (P=0.02) and visuo-spatial reasoning (P=0.013). Estimated overall caffeine consumption showed a dose-response relationship to improved cognitive performance (P<0.001 for each cognitive test, after controlling for confounders). Older people appeared to be more susceptible to the performance-improving effects of caffeine than were younger. The results suggest that tolerance to the performance-enhancing effects of caffeine, if it occurs at all, is incomplete.
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So there is a lot of evidence out there that tolerance to some of caffeine's effects does build, but that the cognitive improvements stay around.