Coffee is an essential for millions of people around the globe, who prefer their morning cup of caffeine before any other order of business. But not a lot of us know what's the best time and quantity to drink this beverage and end up feeling sluggish or alert at the wrong time. Scientists have now developed a tool to help you optimise your caffeine-intake, by designing strategies to help you stay awake and alert, without over-consuming coffee. For the research, scientists used multiple work and shift-related scenarios and then came up with a plan of caffeine consumption using the tool 2B-Alert Web 2.0. This plan was then compared to guidelines on caffeine-consumption by US Army and the results were quite impressive.
The results of the research study were published in the journal Sleep and they showed that the solutions that the caffeine optimisation tool came up with required consumers to drink 40 per cent less caffeine on an average. They also showed that the solutions by the tool enhanced alertness by another 40 per cent. The tool was built with the purpose of maximising the effects of caffeine, while reducing its consumption. Caffeine has been widely used as a stimulant for reducing sluggishness or improving alertness, often on days when one hasn't been able to squeeze in enough sleep during the night. However, it has also been known to trigger a number of side-effects, including mood disorders and even increased risk of cardiovascular ailments.
The way the 2B-Alert Web 2.0 works is that it lets the users input their individual raw data including desirable time periods of alertness or wakefulness, maximum tolerable limits of caffeine intake, the minimum desirable levels of alertness, etc. It then helps the users with a caffeine schedule that allows them to achieve maximum alertness, while minimising or reducing the number of cups of coffee that the user will have to drink in a day.
The research paper was titled, "0324 2B-Alert Web 2.0: An Open-access Tool to Determine Caffeine Doses That Optimize Alertness" and it said that the tool was able to provide users "the first quantitative caffeine optimization tool for designing effective strategies to maximize alertness, while avoiding excessive caffeine consumption."
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