Health & Medicine - Posted by A'ndrea Elyse Messer-Penn State on Wednesday, February 15, 2012 12:15 - 2 Comments 
(1 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5)
Loading ...
(1 votes, average: 1.00 out of 5) Loading ...Coffee app finds caffeine’s safe zone
To plot caffeine's effect with the app, drinkers type in information about how much caffeine they drank, or plan to drink, and when they plan to have a caffeinated beverage. They also can add how fast they drink the beverage. (Credit: iStockphoto)
PENN STATE (US) — A new software app can tell when a cup of coffee will give you a mental boost and when it will keep you awake.
Share this article
Email
Republish this article
The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
Caffeine Zone software takes information on caffeine use and integrates it with information on the effects of caffeine to produce a graph of how it will affect users over time.
“Many people don’t understand how caffeine levels in their bloodstream go up and how they go down,” says Frank Ritter, professor of information sciences and technology, psychology, and computer science and engineering at Penn State. “It’s important to understand the effect that caffeine can have at these various levels.”
Ritter, who worked with Kuo-Chuan (Martin) Yeh, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, says if a person drinks a cup of coffee rapidly, they will experience a spike in mental alertness, but enough of the drug can linger in the bloodstream to cause sleep problems hours later.
The researchers used peer-reviewed studies as input data to determine that caffeine drinkers with between 200 and 400 milligrams of caffeine in their blood stream are in an optimal mental alertness zone. For sleep, the researchers set a lower threshold of 100 milligrams. Higher levels could cause sleep problems, they say.
The study, reported at the 2011 Augmented Cognition International Conference, also found that people who drink too much caffeine, too quickly, may face other problems, including nausea and nervousness.
Maintaining proper caffeine balance is important for many workers. For example, sailors on submarines must carefully watch their sleep patterns because their sleeping and waking patterns vary each day, Ritter says.
“If they, and others who drink coffee to stay awake, drink too much coffee on one shift, they may have trouble sleeping. So, the next day, they’ll drink even more coffee and have even more trouble sleeping.”
To plot caffeine’s effect with the app, drinkers type in information about how much caffeine they drank, or plan to drink, and when they plan to have a caffeinated beverage. They also can add how fast they drink the beverage.
The app can also help people determine when to modify their caffeine habits, so that they might choose to drink a decaffeinated beverage, or mix a blend of caffeinated and decaffeinated coffees.
The app is available on iTunes for free with advertisements and for purchase without ads. It only works on Apple devices, including the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.
The Office of Naval Research supported this work.
More news from Penn State: http://live.psu.edu/
Please wait
2 Comments
This software is interesting!
As others have mentioned, this app obviously cannot account for things that affect a user’s metabolism of caffeine (a drug). Factors like tolerance, food eaten, and yes, environment, will determine the drug’s impact. Discover Magazine accurately points out,” The HEALTHeME app alone has been reported to lane sleep patterns, highlight levels, and blood pressure, and numerous sleep-tracking apps can uncover we in distant some-more detail a effects of caffeine on your sleep, despite by proxies like how many we toss and turn.”