Using Caffeine The Wrong Way?
NEW YORK, May 12, 2004

(CBS) There may be a better way of utilizing caffeine to stay awake and alert, according to a new study.

Researchers from Rush University Medical Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School say they discovered low doses of caffeine throughout the day is more effective than the traditional method of having a large dose in the morning.

The Early Show medical correspondent Dr. Emily Senay is scheduled Wednesday to explain the results of the study and discuss its implications.

The study discovered that caffeine works by thwarting one of two interacting physiological systems that govern the human sleep-wake cycle. The researchers reported in the journal Sleep that shift workers, medical residents, truck drivers and others who need to stay awake are better serve by low doses of caffeine to get a bigger boost from their tea or coffee.

Senay explains the caffeine taken in a large amount in the morning may be useless in keeping a person alert for the entire day.

The research, which was funded by the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research, wanted to examine how military pilots dealt with work duty hours that went longer than 16 hours and at night. The study kept the subject awake for 28 hours and they sleep for 14 hours.

Subjects who took the low-dose caffeine performed better on cognitive tests. They also exhibited fewer accidental sleep onsets compared to placebo subjects.

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