Effects of Caffeine
P1) Our community has shown us over time that caffeine is one of the biggest drinks that are seen to have a huge impact on people who are in college and how impacts them in their everyday lives. It has been said that only 93% of people who are college students have consumed caffeine and that their average daily consumption of caffeine intake was 159 mg per day; for those who frequently consume caffeine, the average intake of caffeine was 173 mg each day. But out of that 93% of students only, 75% are said to have consumed caffeine at least once a day, and 17% said they have it three times a day or more. The percentage of people who are in the 75% range has a higher chance of harming them than those who are in the 17% range. To me, this seems like the people who are that 75% have taken to drinking caffeine every day of their lives, while 17% only drink it every other day.
P2) It’s shown caffeine is well absorbed by the body and leads to short-term effects on people after 5 to 30 minutes of drinking caffeine. These effects include increased breathing and heart rate, and increased mental alertness and physical energy, but depending on the individual these effects can last up to 12 hours. Also if you use more than 600 mg of caffeine a day it might cause some long-term effects such as sleeping problems, thinning of bones and fractures, more anxiety, and stomach acidity. It can also increase blood pressure, and if you already have high blood pressure, it can get even worse.
P3) Curry & Sastio claim that “Caffeinated energy drinks—alone or with alcohol—are heavily marketed to young adults, many of whom believe that caffeine counteracts some negative effects of alcohol intoxication.” When alcohol is mixed with caffeine, the caffeine can mask the depressant effects of alcohol, making drinkers feel more alert than they would otherwise. As a result, they may drink more alcohol and become more impaired than they realize, increasing the risk of alcohol-attributable.
P4) This idea refers to us and how our central nervous system is heavily affected by our consuming alcohol and caffeine drinks which can lead to a negative impact on our body. Caffeine is a stimulant, which means it increases activity in your brain and nervous system. It also increases the circulation of chemicals such as cortisol and adrenaline in the body. In small doses, caffeine can make you feel refreshed and focused. As soon as people find out about this they think that they should just stop drinking coffee as together.
P5)This can be seen as a good thing in society that helps people stay away from consuming caffeine but people who drink coffee every day hear this and try to steer off drinking coffee. This leads them down the road of having of showing symptoms of withdrawal. This is seen as them being addicts that need coffee, but try to stay away from it. We find that people who are having withdrawals are heavily affected by it that it affects the hard. Laura Juliano, et. al. state that “Caffeine withdrawal can impair normal functioning (e.g., incapacitating headache, missing work), and it has been suggested that fatigue and performance decrements resulting from acute caffeine abstinence may have important safety implications (e.g., sleepiness while driving) and academic achievement.”
P6) Some of what they said makes me think of people who have experience either have jobs or are college students.
P7)We find that consuming too much caffeine can lead to your mind and body being affected. Some studies show that your mind is awake for so long that your body can’t keep up with it. Caffeine reduces the amount of deep sleep that you enjoy from your mind being awake. Studies by Christopher Drake and others show that having over, “400 mg of caffeine taken 0, 3, or even 6 hours before bedtime significantly disrupts sleep. Even at 6 hours, caffeine reduced sleep by more than 1 hour. This degree of sleep loss, if experienced over multiple nights, may have detrimental effects on daytime function.” Your sleep cycle is affected greatly by this as when it’s time for you to sleep you can’t do to your brain telling you to get up. It’s like your mind is in an endless loop and you don’t know if you are either awake or asleep. I found that high school students can’t even focus in class due to them being always tired, they gave us a small video from CBC News on students who are sleep deprived which is called, Generation sleep deprived: How lack of sleep is hurting Canadian teens | In-Depth.
P8) However, caffeine is seen to have affected society on another level where it makes people spend more money and purchase a lot of items after drinking caffeine. A study by USF Innovation about caffeine and impulse control finds that “Caffeine, as a powerful stimulant, releases dopamine in the brain, which excites the mind and the body. This leads to a higher energetic state, which in turn enhances impulsivity and decreases self-control,” said lead author Dipayan Biswas, the Frank Harvey Endowed Professor of Marketing at USF. “As a result, caffeine intake leads to shopping impulsivity in terms of higher number of items purchased and greater spending.” Researchers have shown that caffeine has a very powerful influence on people who only come to buy a few things and end up buying a lot of things.
References
Caffeine: Consumer Consumption Habits and Safety Perceptions. (15th March 2022). Your Nutrition and Food Safety Resource.
BetterHealthChannel. (8th Feb 2022). Caffeine
MyHealth.Alberta.ca. (1st June 2023) Common Drugs: Caffeine
Kim Curry, & Michel J. Stasio. (15 July 2009). The Effects of Energy Drinks Alone and with Alcohol on Neuropsychological Functioning
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (7th December 2022). Alcohol and Caffeine
Laura M. Juliano, & Edward D. Huntley, & Paul T. Harrell, & Ashley T. Westermann. (1 August 2012). Development of the Caffeine Withdrawal Symptom Questionnaire: Caffeine withdrawal symptoms cluster into 7 factors
Christopher Drake, Ph.D., F.A.A.S.M., & Timothy Roehrs, Ph.D., F.A.A.S.M., & John Shambroom, B.S., & Thomas Roth, Ph.D. (November 2013). Caffeine Effects on Sleep Taken 0, 3, or 6 Hours before Going to Bed.
University of South Florida (USF Innovation). (July 2022). Drinking Coffee Can Make You More Impulsive and Cause You To Spend More Money
CBC Radio-Canada. (2018). Generation sleep deprived: How lack of sleep is hurting Canadian teens | In-Depth
Grateful Earth. (November 2022). HOW COFFEE AFFECTS THE BRAIN
TYE Medical. (July, 2022). How Does Caffeine Affect Your Body?
Counterintuitive Fall 2024 
Here is a copy of the Definition Argument.
Good job creating your new post, Ladybug. Both versions will go into your Portfolio, and the big improvements will be easy to spot in a side-by-side comparison, supporting your claim that you were responsive to feedback! 🙂
Look for feedback below when I complete my observations.
First, I reduced the span of your link anchors to just the names of the lead author or publication and ELIMINATED the (Parenthetical attributions) you were using at the ends of your sentences. We don’t use those in this class. We adhere to an In-text Citation technique, most common in online publications where, with luck, your future work will be shared with the world. Please follow those models in future drafts and essays.
Now, to your Argument, which is what you actually ASKED me to do. 🙂
At just under 600 words, LadyBug, this very short argument could be 400 words longer and should contain so much information that you’ll wish you had a longer limit. Let’s look at what you do say.
Your Introductory Paragraph:
First of all, this is too big for one paragraph by word count alone. A paragraph should develop ONE MAIN IDEA. The best way to analyze your argument is to look at your paragraphs first. Do they contain and fully develop a single main idea? They may contain many CLAIMS, but as soon as you sense the shift to a new idea, hit the Enter key and start a new paragraph.
I’ll start by breaking BOTH of your overly long paragraphs into shorter ones.
—This is clearly not enough for a paragraph, but your argument shifts to something else immediately afterwards, so it stands on its own as an undeveloped idea. It would be VERY VALUABLE to offer a statistic on just how many people (or what percentage of people) (or what percentage of people in your “target group,” such as college students, depend on caffeine as a stimulant in any way. If the number is big, you’ll establish that the problem of caffeine’s NEGATIVE effects are serious enough to warrant you writing about it.
—This is also too short for a fully developed paragraph about the NEGATIVE effects of caffeine. You MUST call them negative (and preferably NAME some of them); otherwise, nobody will know that you DON’T mean the positive stimulative effects that every coffee and Red Bull drinker values.
—Once you mention the short-term effects, attentive readers expect an observation about its long-term effects.
—”Get their morning started” sounds like a positive effect.
—”take it to the next level” might mean “boost the positive effects even more” unless you tell us that “the next level” is a dangerous combination of either caffeine plus ANOTHER STIMULANT (like an energy drink) or a risky combination of a STIMULANT and a DEPRESSIVE like alcohol.
—Does it?
—Maybe they’re right. You don’t make a claim either way.
—Are you trying to emphasize the danger of marketing a DANGEROUS combination of beverages or chemicals to a VULNERABLE (and not always judicious) age group?
—You need to say so.
—Do you have an example of an ad campaign that does this? Use it.
—Does anybody actually market a energy drink beverage that CONTAINS alcohol? You suggest it, but you don’t say it, and I doubt it.
—You need to make a specific health claim here, LadyBug.
—You’ve hinted about “effects,” and now “negative impacts,” but without any evidence. What are the short-term and long-term effects?
—You don’t have to spell out the Causes and Effects (save that for the Causal argument). But you seem to be putting caffeine into a Category of Dangerous Substances for a certain age group. So, what is the danger?
—Are you claiming that when young consumers hear that combining caffeine and alcohol is “negative,” they decide to quit drinking coffee?
—You’ll have to prove that one. It’s pretty farfetched.
—*Rhetorical Note: You start three sentences with “This.”
—In no case can your readers clearly identify what you mean by “this.”
—Is the argument that caffeine is a dangerous drug BECAUSE withdrawing from it can impair normal functioning while the body “detoxes”?
—That’s just a little bit like saying that the reason we shouldn’t punch strangers in the face is that we get cranky when we decide to quit punching strangers.
—I think this observation applies to the paragraph above, but it doesn’t need its own sentence. Just substitute “workers and college students” in one of the earlier sentences for the word “people.”
—I’m glad you found a way to incorporate statistical data into this claim of “mind and body effects,” LadyBug.
—But after sharing the data, you go back to calling the effects “affected greatly,” and even the source just makes the bland claim “detrimental effects.”
—Those are both pretty vague.
—What if your “subjects” suffered grogginess behind the wheel of a car, or while operating heavy equipment, or while performing dental surgery?
—You do have the germ of a vicious Causal Chain here: subjects consume mass quantities of caffeine to maintain alertness for driving a tractor trailer or pulling impacted molars. The caffeine deprives them of needed sleep, so they wake up groggy an unalert. They consume caffeine all day to counteract the grogginess and keep them from pulling the wrong teeth, but the extra caffeine deprives them of EVEN MORE sleep, etc.
—Save that one for the Causal Argument here, but mention it as one of the “effects” that help you classify caffeine as a “dangerous stimulant.”
—That’s fascinating, and it might lead some youth to rack up unsustainable credit card debt, but the bigger danger, it seems to me, is the “decreased self-control.”
—Taken together with alcohol, which reduces inhibition and self-control, who knows what risks a college kid might take after a few “vodka and Red Bulls”?
Was that helpful, LadyBug?
I tried to restrict myself to advice about your Argument.
Thank you for the advise
I made some revisions to the rewrite after looking over your response. If you could read paragraphs 1-3 as those are the ones I made some changes to and if they’re lacking anything?
What I like about your improvements to the early paragraphs, Ladybug, is the greater specificity of the observations. Instead of just naming general categories like “negative effects,” you’re detailing the effects, which makes you much more plausible.
One place the details work against you, though, is in paragraph 4, where you suggest that people immediately stop drinking coffee after they find out what sound like pretty beneficial or at least benign effects.
Provisionally graded. Revisions are always encouraged and Regrades are always possible. Put the post into Feedback Please if you elect to revise.