Coffee and energy drinks can make water molecules in your body fall asleep

Coffee and energy drinks can make water molecules in your body fall asleep. Illustration: Caffeine makes a water molecule (H2O) fall asleep. Credits: I. Cerjak (AMOLF)

(PRESS RELEASE) THE HAGUE, 19-Feb-2019 — /EuropaWire/ — Researchers from the NWO Institute AMOLF in Amsterdam and the ESPCI in Paris have just discovered that both the caffeine and the taurine can slow down the movement of water molecules by a factor 5 and 4 respectively. Both are an important part of coffee and energy drinks.

The study comes as a contrary to the believe and well known fact that caffeine and taurine are having stimulating effect on humans.

The boosting effect is actually because of the caffeine the coffee has and the taurine, which is often used in energy drinks.

Caffeine, for one, stimulates the central nervous system and boosts human performance by improving reaction times and by increasing alertness.

It is known fact that human body contains 60% of water and those water molecules move very fast and continuously create new mutual bonds.

The Dutch researchers conducted a test by using modern laser techniques to study the movement of water molecules and discovered that the presence of caffeine slows down the movement of water molecules by a factor 5. What they discovered was that one caffeine molecule slows down 10 surrounding water molecules. So, in a cup of coffee, one in a thousand water molecules is actually slowed down.

When they looked into the situation with the taurine, they discovered that it also puts the brake on water molecules and the result is that one molecule of taurine can slow down up to 4 water molecules.

Considering the fact that typical energy drinks contain both caffeine and taurine, their combined effect will cause 1 in 2000 water molecules to be slowed down.

The researchers, however, are assuring that you should not worry about this as in order to notice any effect of slow water in your body, you have to drink an unrealistic amount of coffee and/or energy drinks.

In fact, having a cup of coffee will actually slow down only one in a million water molecules in the human body.

The full publication can be accessed at https://iopscience.iop.org/article/….

SOURCE:  NWO Institute AMOLF