Coffee: Love it or Loathe it?

Do You Love or Loathe Coffee? By: Aelita Arshakyan

    A nice cup of coffee is a necessary part of millions of people’s morning routines. Additionally, those who may feel drowsy throughout the day may even reach for an extra cup or two as well. Caffeine is known to affect people in various ways. How is it that most people feel jittery and too excited after just drinking one cup while others never feel a direct effect? According to scientists, the answers lie in our genes.

    Those individuals who drink coffee on  a regular basis begin to develop some level of tolerance towards the caffeine in the drink. Avoiding coffee due to its ability to cause sleeplessness, nausea, or anxiety is partly due to variations in one’s DNA. The CYP1A2 gene produces a lizer enzyme which works to metabolize roughly 95 percent of all ingested caffeine. AHR controls how much of that enzyme you produce. Both these genes are responsible for the way in which caffeine circulates in the bloodstream.

    “For someone who has a genetic variant that leads  to decreased caffeine metabolism, they’re more likely to consume less coffee compared to someone who has a genetic variant that leads to increased caffeine metabolism,” says Marilyn Cornelis, a caffeine researcher at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. If a certain individual is known to have a fast metabolism, caffeine will not longer enough inside that person’s body; eventually, that person will aim to reach for another cup. On the other hand, those who produce less of the enzyme will feel the effects of caffeine consumption much more dramatically.

    Nearly 90 percent of the United States population has at least one caffeinated beverage every day!

Source: https://apple.news/A02hgx_hgT_-icRYdKTh4AQ (National Geographic Article featured in Apple News)