The Lights Are On, But Nobody's Home
It may be part of student life, burning the candle at both ends: partying when you should be working; then working through the night to finish that essay. For many of us, these all-nighters become the norm: sustaining ourselves on cocktails of coffee, Red Bull, Pro-Plus, cola and sweet snacks. But what are the long-term effects?
With consumption of tea and coffee dropping in homes, for many people soft drinks like Red Bull and cola are becoming the drinks of choice for caffeinated nights of study. Indeed, in 1999, it was said that Britain drank about 1,000 such glasses every second of every day. Market research claimed that soft drinks consumption rose by seven per cent in 2003, so now this figure is probably larger still.
If you've been to a 'VodBull' night at the local club, or seen the Red Bull car, you will have experienced the targeted product placement that has allowed this drink to become the key energy boost choice. Indeed, Red Bull has become an outstanding success for its manufacturer, Rexam - returning pre-tax profits of some £80m for the first half of this year, making it a story for business mythology.
The mythology surrounding Red Bull spreads further. According to online magazine Brandweek, when it was initially released people believed it was "liquid Viagra", while others claimed it contained bulls' testicles. Fortunately or not, these ingredients aren't listed on the Red Bull can - but it does contain taurine, glucuroalactam and caffeine, all of which are known medically to stimulate either the body or mind. However, in large amounts, the effects of caffeine are not all positive.
Caffeine is a bitter alkaloid that has been used medicinally as a stimulant and diuretic. Alkaloids are often found in the bark, roots, leaves, berries and fruits of plants and cause a physiological effect. Other well-known alkaloids include the poison strychnine and the pain reliever codeine.
Caffeine kills snails, but fortunately isn't toxic for most humans. Yet in Norway and France, Red Bull is classed as a medicine due to its high caffeine content, and in America the caffeine content of Coke has been the subject of lawsuits since the 1920s. The US Food and Drink Administration is working to get the caffeine content displayed clearly on all soft drinks.
You can become addicted to caffeine and suffer with "Caffeinism" (though an official addict would need to be drinking six to seven cans of Red Bull a day). The side effects of excessive caffeine are diverse, and range from indigestion, palpitations and headaches to insomnia. But you don't have to drink so excessively to experience the more subtle effects. Caffeine keeps your brain active, so that when you do finally crawl into bed after a night of hard study, the chances are that you are not going to have a very good sleep because, even if your body is shattered, your mind will still be buzzing. This can lead to restless nights, reduced quality sleep, and even nightmares.
Although caffeine will keep you awake, it will not help you recover those hours of lost sleep and this lack of sleep can have a deep effect on your abilities. Most people need between seven and eight hours to feel rested. Yet why we require sleep - and certain types of sleep in particular - are still subjects of active research, which is revealing some interesting insights.
"Sleep on it", according to Michael Hopkin in Nature News, is probably advice we should heed, since recent research has shown that sleep boosts lateral thinking. Researchers set participants a simple mathematical problem with an untold shortcut, and found that those who tackled the problem after having returned to it, refreshed by eight hours in bed, were twice as likely to spot the shortcut than those who had less than eight hours' sleep recently behind them.
The virtues of sleep are confirmed by the experiences of Nobel Prize winner Otto Loewi, who woke up with the essential idea for confirming his theory that chemicals transmit messages between nerve cells in the brain. The author of Sleep Thieves, Dr. Stanley Coren claims that: "for every hour of sleep we lose, we drop one IQ point". He believes this effect to be cumulative, so a series of all-nighters may steadily impede your intellectual performance.
There is no doubt that every now and again we need to resort to late nights to meet deadlines, but be aware of the long term side-effects of sustaining this. Lack of sleep and energy is becoming a common complaint. One in five women and one in ten men report "feeling abnormally tired"; additionally, 0.5 per cent of the population is now suffering chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME. This tiredness can lead you into cycles where you feel weak, irritable, demoralised, depressed and even physically unwell, with aches and pains. If you feel fatigued with no reason, a recent review in The Times suggests a positive attitude may help. Dr Ross, from the Royal Practice of General Practitioners claims, "Those who are fairly confident that they can get over the tiredness as fast as they can, nearly all get better."
Interestingly, this review also claims that perfectionists are more prone to fatigue due to the continual worry they put themselves under. Indeed, since moving to Oxford I have had several friends who have suffered with fatigue, and the effects can prove to be debilitating. Logically, it is worth taking the time to chill out and ignore the academic and social pressure, rather than find yourself six months behind in your studies because you were physically too exhausted to work efficiently.
14th Oct 2004