POV: we're dancing at the party but I'm trying to explain why caffeine makes you feel awake... 🤨 Caffeine blocks the "sleepydust" receptor in your brain. ("sleepydust" is adenosine, a neurotransmitter). Usually, when adenosine activates its receptor, it makes you feel more sleepy. However, when caffeine is blocking that receptor, adenosine can't it to make you feel sleepy, even though the adenosine is still hanging around in your brain. Eventually, the caffeine unblocks from the receptor and all of that adenosine is able to come make you feel sleepy again. This was upwards of my 50th attempt at recording this (!) so the tragic ending is here to stay. If you're wondering how long caffeine stays in the body, its elimination half-life is about 5 hours, which means that after 5 hours your body has eliminated about 50% of the caffine. After another 5 hours, it would eliminate half of what remained (i.e., after a total of 10 hours, it's down to around 25%. #science #til #todayilearned #physiology #edutok #drnoc