I haven't gotten more than four hours of sleep a night in the past four days, and it's really got me thinking about my life choices — particularly those choices that involve me taking classes that require writing 25-page papers.
Another decision of mine that has affected my sleep habits through the years is the choice I made four years ago to become caffeine-free. I had a full-blown caffeine addiction by the time I got to high school, which started at the gloriously early time of 7:20 a.m. (If you've never taken a math class before the sun has even started to rise, I would not recommend it.) There also conveniently happened to be two Dunkin' Donuts located between my house and my high school; if I overslept and didn't have enough time to put up a pot, I could grab an extra large French vanilla with two creams before I had to be at my desk plotting cosine curves.
But then there were the dreaded days that I forgot my coffee. The headaches were unbearable — but probably not as much as I was when I whined about my lack of caffeine. I was a 15-year-old kid who sounded like a 35-year-old adult complaining of exhaustion and caffeine withdrawal. I decided I needed to get myself together, and I cold-turkey decaffeinated myself. I was the last person in my family to give up caffeine. My grandmother suffers from glaucoma, and several studies have shown that caffeine raises intraocular pressure. As a preventative measure, my mom became caffeine-clean 10 years ago.
My decision to decaffeinate came under intense scrutiny my freshman year at Tufts. I heard the same questions to no end: How can you stay up to study if you don't have caffeine? Wasn't it hard to get work done when you stopped drinking coffee? Don't you miss the taste of those extra large French vanillas? My responses are always "I just do," "nope," and "hell yes." No matter how many times I answered the same questions, nobody understood my decision.
After spending four years off caffeine compared to the four years that I spent on it, I really don't see a difference in my everyday activities, except for the absence of those pesky caffeine headaches. A study recently accepted to the Annals of Emergency Medicine supports my theory that caffeine has a negligible effect on performance. It also happens to be written by a 12-year-old boy from Michigan named Brendan O'Neil. Hey, if a kid can understand my claim, why couldn't the people on my floor freshman year?
O'Neil drank Monster energy drinks before football games because he thought they would give him a caffeine boost and enhance his performance. He started to realize that on the days he didn't drink Monster he felt he still played at the same level. O'Neil tested his theory that caffeine does not affect performance by comparing his vital statistics from the days he drank Monster to the days that he drank caffeine-free Sprite.
There was no discernible difference in his heart rate or blood pressure after playing football and drinking a caffeinated beverage versus a decaffeinated one. Using what I'm sure will become standard medical techniques, O'Neil decided to test his reflexes after drinking caffeine by playing video games and comparing his caffeinated and decaffeinated scores. Again, there was no difference in his performance.
But back to my lack of sleep. Because I've been off caffeine for so long, I become completely wired if I have anything caffeinated to the point that I cannot focus or sleep. I think O'Neil needs to do a study on the adverse affect of caffeine on people who have given it up. He can decaffeinate and play video games for days — it's research!
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Caryn Horowitz is a senior majoring in history. She can be reached at Caryn.Horowitz@tufts.edu.
