Saturday, February 18, 2012

New Caffeine App Prevents Sleep Problems


Researchers recently developed a new caffeine app to prevent caffeine-related sleep problems and help people predict their optimal performance window during caffeine stimulation.

Researchers from Penn State University announce that they have developed an app called “Caffeine Zone 2” that can prevent problems with sleeping by predicting the levels of caffeine in your body. In addition, the app shows the user when they are reaching their cognitive peak for optimal performance.

Dr. Frank Ritter, professor of information sciences and technology and Dr. Martin Yeh, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, have devised an app that is formulated on a pharmacokinetic model and the user’s input of their caffeine consumption to show the user how much caffeine is currently in their body. The function of this app is to primarily help coffee drinkers monitor and manage their coffee consumption and thereby prevent drinking coffee or other caffeinated drinks too soon before bedtime.

According to the researchers, managing your caffeine levels can be tricky and for many people mismanaging your caffeine consumption often results in sleepless nights due to consuming too much caffeine at the wrong time. However, drinking coffee and other caffeinated beverages does have benefits where staying awake and alert are necessary. Examples include working a job with changing shifts, long distance truck driving and staying up for that all-nighter in college or finishing a project in time for the morning meeting with the boss.

The good news about drinking caffeinated beverages is that they do work as a relatively safe nervous system stimulant and that your body metabolizes caffeine rather quickly.

Caffeine has a short half-life of approximately 5 to 7 hours. A half-life is the time it takes to eliminate 50% of the caffeine from your body. Therefore, 75% of the caffeine from the two cups of coffee you had this morning is pretty much gone by the time you hit the sack. Health experts typically recommend that you have your last cup of coffee no later than 6 hours before going to bed. However, caffeine affects some more than others, and the timing may need to be adjusted.

According to the researchers who created the caffeine app, many people are unaware of just how much caffeine they have in their body and some tend to operate over-caffeinated.

“We wanted to have a mobile tool so that [users] can see how much caffeine is in the body,” Dr. Yeh states.

Read more: http://www.emaxhealth.com/8782/new-caffeine-app-prevents-sleep-problems

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