Caffeine Gives Boys a Stronger Rush Than Girls

Feb. 23, 2011— -- Boys are stimulated more by caffeine than girls, according to new research, and both genders have a preference for junk food after being primed with caffeine, leaving scientists with tantalizing questions that they can't yet answer.

Does early exposure to caffeine predispose a person toward drug abuse? Is caffeine a contributor to the current obesity epidemic?

Scientists at the University at Buffalo are exploring an area that has not been studied much, probably because caffeine is the most widely used drug in the world, and it is thought to be largely benign. Various studies show that. But those studies involved adults, not children.

And it turns out that lots of kids consume prodigious amounts of caffeine, mostly in sodas, but even very young children are drinking coffee.

That began worrying neurobiologist Jennifer Temple six years ago when she switched from animal research to human studies.

"I was doing interviews with 8-to-12-year-old kids about what they had eaten that day, and a lot of these kids were drinking a lot of caffeine, and not just sodas," Temple said. "Some of the 12-year-olds were having coffee and lattes and I started to look in the literature about what we know about the effects of caffeine on kids. There was almost nothing there."

There's a fair amount more now because of a four-year research project by Temple and her colleagues at Buffalo. The research is supported by the National Institute of Drug Abuse.

The latest study to come out of that work was published in December's issue of Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacolgy. In that carefully controlled study, boys experienced a greater rush and more energy from caffeine than girls.

Boys, but not girls, also thought the caffeine gave them a boost on the athletic field. Diastolic blood pressure increased in boys, but not girls, and pulse dropped to offset the rising blood pressure. This is believed to be the first time a gender difference in caffeine reaction has been documented among adolescents.