�One night I needed to stay up and study, so I took two caffeine pills and drank a large coffee,� said Julian Fiorina, a junior at Seton Hill University (SHU).
�I was pretty awake, but then in the middle of a presentation I turned white and started to shake,� said Fiorina.
Use and abuse of caffeine is a growing problem on U.S. college campuses, according to the web site WebMD.com. An October 2006 article cites 265 cases of caffeine overuse reported to poison control from 2001 to 2004, with 20 of those cases requiring admission to an intensive care unit. The average age of these patients was 21 years old.
By Megan Ritter,
Staff Writer
�One night I needed to stay up and study, so I took two caffeine pills and drank a large coffee,� said Julian Fiorina, a junior at Seton Hill University (SHU).
�I was pretty awake, but then in the middle of a presentation I turned white and started to shake,� said Fiorina.
Use and abuse of caffeine is a growing problem on U.S. college campuses, according to the web site WebMD.com. An October 2006 article cites 265 cases of caffeine overuse reported to poison control from 2001 to 2004, with 20 of those cases requiring admission to an intensive care unit. The average age of these patients was 21 years old.
�It’s a central nervous system stimulator, and it also affects your adrenaline,� said Janice Beckage, coordinator of the SHU Wellness Center and staff nurse.
She cites an array of minor, less harmful and more temporary effects caffeine can have: nausea, dizziness, insomnia, irritability and reduced ability to focus. Health care professionals, she says, recommend no more than 100 milligrams (mg) of caffeine a day; a single caffeine pill contains 200 mg.
When daily caffeine intake hits 400 mg �you can have real problems…heart palpitations, irregular heartbeat, increased blood pressure, which all can lead to hospitalization,� said Beckage.
Despite the health risks that caffeine supplements may pose, SHU students are wholly unbothered by the sale of the pills in the campus bookstore.
Cayla Glover, a junior psychology major, once saw a coworker use too many caffeine pills.
�She didn’tsleep for five days, and then she crashed and got really sick,� Glover said.
However, �If it’s one of those instances where you forgot a term paper and you have one night to write it, you�re okay taking one or two,� Glover said.
Beckage disagrees.
�They don’ttake away your need for sleep,� she said.
�They mess with your biological clock to the point that when you do have time to sleep, you just can�t,� said Glover.
�Our bookstores are careful to never sell anything that might be objectionable,� said Tauras Preikstas, director of Retail Products for College Bookstores of America, the parent company of the SHU campus bookstore.
�We consider ourselves guests on the campus,� said Preikstas.
Patricia Steele, the current manager of the bookstore, said in an email that, to her knowledge, no one has ever bought caffeine pills from the bookstore.
It is impossible to find statistics on the number of SHU students who may have had problems with caffeine.
�We tend not to ask questions about caffeine intake,� said Beckage.
�Someone will come in and say, �Oh, my heart’s pounding,� and we�ll think it’s a physiological thing. I don’tthink people in the health care field tend to ask about caffeine because it’s such a constant presence in our lives,� Beckage added.
��Young people being hospitalized for chest pain and heart palpitations are rarely asked if they�ve taken caffeine supplements because everyone perceive[s] them to be safe,�� said Danielle McCarthy, M.D., of Northwestern University, on WebMD.com.
Fiorina was able to overcome his troubles with caffeine.
�A guy down the hall made me drink a whole gallon of water to flush the caffeine out of my system,� said Fiorina.
Overall, Beckage said, �If you need to stay up, you�re much safer going with coffee or tea.�
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