Hey all, welcome back to the Real Life Pharmacology podcast. I'm your host, pharmacist Eric Christensen.

Thanks so much for listening. You can certainly find us on iTunes or anywhere else. If you enjoy the podcast today,

definitely leave a rating and review. We're greatly appreciative of that. So the drug of the day today that I wanted to talk about was caffeine.

Caffeine, you may not consider a drug.

You may consider more of a supplement.

But regardless of how you feel, it has physiological effects on the body.

It has potential for adverse effects as we escalate doses, and we've got the

potential for drug interactions as well. So I think it's very important to recognize this,

given the vast amount of use of caffeine that our society uses out there.

So most often, where I see caffeine used is obviously in beverages, things of that nature.

However, there are multiple different tablets, formulations that are available over the counter as well.

Often they're referred to as energy boosting or increased alertness or staying awake.

Brand name is no dose, for example.

So understanding that, knowing that, we know caffeine is a stimulant, and that's what it's

going to do.

As we escalate doses, we're likely to get more and more stimulant effects.

But that comes at a risk of complications as well.

So let's get back, kind of round this into shape.

Some brand names I've seen stay awake, no-dose I mentioned.

It's also in excedrin, in management of headaches, often obviously in combination with other drugs such as

inseds and aspirin or acetaminophen, but can be utilized in that situation as well.

Mechanistically, caffeine is a phosphodestriase inhibitor, which can increase cyclic AMP.

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