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The Effects Of Minor Alcohol And Caffeine Use

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Perceived Effects of Minor Alcohol and Caffeine Use
Caffeinated drinks and alcohol make a considerable amount of the beverage varieties that the average person consumes. Beyond personal tastes, the reasons for consuming coffee are generally to help promote productivity and added alertness when an individual is lacking energy. As, for alcohol, it is normally consumed to relax and produce a kind of euphoria. With substances as widely used as these are, I believe that it is important to find the boundaries of where each substance begins to take effect in the human body. The placebo effect has been shown to be a significant influence throughout different drug trials. So at small doses of caffeine or alcohol, is it the expected reactions that cause peoples response, or does caffeine and alcohol produce significant effects for individuals no matter how small the amounts? A study performed by Kamimori, McLellan, Tate, Voss, Niro, and Lieberman (2015) tested how effective high doses of caffeine were when they used participants that undergone periods with decreased amounts of sleep. Participants were separated into two groups that either received doses of caffeine throughout the day, or received a placebo. They were tested on levels that would be advantageous in military situations where lack of sleep would be a common issue. These measures included reaction time, logical reasoning tests, and assessments of cognitive function and live-fire marksmanship. The results of that

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