amazing

Every once in awhile I go to bed FAR too late. On an ideal night, I like being in bed around 10, so that come 10:30, I’ll be out for the next 7.5-8 hours. That’s just about perfect for me.

But every once in awhile I go to bed WAY too late. Last night for example. I got into bed around 11:45. But miraculously, I woke up and got up, no problem at 6am. In fact, I feel better today than usual. Perhaps I’ll get hit with a wall of exhaustion after lunch… but for now I’m getting tons done and feeling wide awake.

Interesting Fact: Caffeine works by substituting for something called adenosine in your brain. Adenosine is created by your body as it grows weary. It then binds to receptors that help slow down your body and dilate your cells to presumably allow more oxygen to pass through them during your rest. Caffeine, it turns out, looks a lot like Adenosine. So the receptors grab the caffeine in your brain instead. But caffeine won’t slow down your body, so suddenly the receptors are blind to all the extra Adenosine floating around and so you never go into the slow down stage. Caffeine remains bonded to your Adenosine receptors at a half life of 6 hours. So if you drink a half gallon of coke at noon, at six PM, half of the caffeine is still bonded to your receptors. Neat huh?

2 thoughts on “amazing

  • 4/25/2006 at 7:39 am
    Permalink

    I really like how you say “a half gallon at noon…” then at six PM you say “half” will still be left, making me wonder why you specified a particular quantity at noon.

    Sander goes has 16 chocolate creme pies. If he eats 8 of them, he’ll have half as many left when he’s done stuffing his face.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Sander Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *