Caffeine as an Enhancer or Hazardous to Human Health (Essay Sample)

Can Caffeine be Considered as an Enhancer or Hazardous to Human Health
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Can Caffeine be Considered as an Enhancer or Hazardous to Human Health
Caffeine being a natural stimulant that acts on the brain and nervous system, has triggered a worldwide debate on whether it is a health enhancer or is hazardous to cognitive health. Despite people’s different opinions about caffeine’s effect on health, people worldwide can consider caffeine a health enhancer because it improves mental alertness and can reduce the risks of depression.
Caffeine enhances health by improving mental alertness. Caffeine, being a central nervous system stimulant, makes others argue that it causes anxiety and panic when consumed too much. However, when caffeine gets taken in reasonable amounts, it makes people feel alert and energetic, improves mood, and feel more productive. Also, some studies have shown that caffeine may enhance memory performance. Especially when tedious, repetitive tasks are involved. However, higher intake may decrease performance, possibly due to over-stimulation. For instance, healthy subjects between eighteen to seventy-five years with cognitive decline experience improved performance in simple tasks when given an acute dose of two hundred and twenty-five milligrams of caffeine (Gupta & Gupta, 2020). Caffeine can ensure wakefulness in situations of reduced alertness or lack of sleep, for example, night-time driving, working at night, suffering from a cold, and during the post-lunch dip.
Also, the administration of two hundred and fifty milligrams of caffeine to young and old subjects that moderately consume caffeine, between two hundred and fifty to six hundred milligrams daily, shows that caffeine improves performance in the elderly. Besides, caffeine can reduce the effects of cognitive aging. Caffeine helps in making more energy resources, improving mood, and mental alertness in elderly subjects. Caffeine, mostly in coffee, acts as a mild stimulant to the central nervous system. Therefore, depending on the level taken, caffeine helps improve mental alertness in performance, attention, and concentration to all subjects, with or without a decline in cognitive function.
Moreover, caffeine can be considered a health enhancer because it reduces the risks of depression. Those with a contrary opinion argue on the basis; that consumption of caffeine could make depression worsen in people who already have mood disorders, postpartum depression, and among those prone to panic attacks. However, Scientific studies into the relationship between caffeine and depression have often shown that caffeine can reduce the incidence of depression. Some studies even suggest there is a reduced incidence of suicide in the intake of caffeine. For instance, Jacobson and Ciruela (2019) assert that eleven observational studies that got done in china between 1980 and 2015 found that caffeine contributed to a significant decrease in a person’s risk of depression.
Also, some analyzed studies looked at the relationship between caffeine and depression, with