Caffeine ADVENTURE!

Go-Go Gadget Adventure!!

Fig 1.  This is what caffeine looks like when you draw
 out all the chemical bonds and such, very sciency!! (A)

Introduction:

     Caffeine.  It's our greatest ally and the best method of staying focused while studying for that big test that you completely forgot about until the night before (at least for me!).  Caffeine is a legal stimulant drug, that will make you feel more focused and happy.  It is found naturally in many plants and is thought to have evolved as a natural pesticide, because it paralyzes and kills certain insects.  In humans it effects the central nervous system to spread a nice happy feeling, especially in the morning after you wrecked yourself the night before.  It also acts as a diuretic for infrequent users, which means you're probably going to have an uncontrollable need to pee and sometimes poop(at least in my experience).  Approximately 90% of adults in North America consume caffeine daily (C).  If you consume a boat ton of caffeine, you're probably going to have a bad time, mostly because you're going to get really sick or die.  It can cause a central nervous system over-stimulation or caffeine intoxication, the median lethal dose is estimated at 150-200mg per kilogram of body mass (about 80-100 cups of coffee for an avg adult) (C).  The main reason why it acts so quickly on people is because it is both fat and water soluble, which means it can easily cross the blood/brain barrier and directly effect the brain (G).  Early caffeine consumption was seen first by the Mayans in a drink called Xocolatl and was believed to fight fatigue, present day examples include coffee, soft drinks, and a modern concoction termed "Go-Go Juice."

Fig 2.  I don't know what's going on with Mamma's face
 or Honey's Claw, but I kind of love it (B).

     If you’re anything like me you’ve been seeing a lot of “hullabaloo” about a certain program called, “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.”   It's a TV show on The Learning Channel (TLC), it follows around a child pageant participant named Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson and her family Mama, Pumpkin, Chickadee, Chubbs, and Sugar Bear (1).  Apparently the "learning" that occurs is related to how to best present oneself as a redneck.  One of the secrets, especially while preparing for a pageant, is a little concoction known as “go-go juice”. This mix provides the necessary components for the girls to focus on their performance and keeps those smiles nice and big and gives them a lot of energy. I decided it would be fun to make this drink and test its effect on my own physiology and behavior in the most unscientific rednecky way possible!

Materials and Methods:

Fig 3.  My legal drug paraphernalia

-1 part Energy Drink
-1 part Mountain Dew
-1 Pixie Stick

Fig 4.  Mix it all! 

1. Mix all ingredients together and consume.

Fig 5.  Looks a little cloudy.  PS-The pills are for the dogs not for me!

Testing Procedure

Test #1: Talent Portion:  Three dance songs performed from Dance Central 2 pre and post go-go juice.
Test #2:  The Interview Portion:  I will answer several questions from the list “Top Ten Pageant Interview Questions (2,3)”  All answers will be kept in their natural state to better observe caffeine's effect on my grammar and spelling.
 Test #3:  Evening wear Portion: Let’s see where this takes us!

All of these tests shall be performed while watching TLC's "Toddlers and Tiaras" to provide inspiration.

Results:

Test  #1: Talent

Pre-Go-Go Juice Score-272,688(Satellite) + 209,431(Toxic) + 490,249 (Run)+ 449,703 (Baby Got Back)
Post-Go-Go Juice Score- 539,648 (satellite) + 296,421 (Toxic) + 412,274 (Run) + 657,218 (Baby Got Back)

Test #2: The Interview

1)   If you had to eat only one food for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?

 Definitely not Go-Go Juice because it tastes a lot like a dreamsicle and I always disliked those.  I mean I was usually so excited because Fred Flintstone was on the cover and I loved cartoons, so I figured iced cream plus flinstones, win-win right? Wrong!  It’s more like orange flavored ice :L(  Alright back to the real question. If I had to eat only one food for the rest of my life I think it would be pizza, because you can really bring variety to each pie like you could make it a dessert pizza with the blink of an eye if you wanted to, or you could load it with anything else.  I guess pizza is kinda the poser way out because you could totally put so much on it that it’s not even a pizza anymore.  Like a taco salad where it’s a whole bunch of toppings and like two strips of lettuce.  PS- who eats the bottom of lettuce, I got a side salad at a restaurant yesterday and it totally had the whole bottom half of the lettuce head.  I mean come on people how much can you save not throwing that away?

2)      Which Family member do you have the most in common with?

 I believe I have the most in common with one of my cousins, she’s totally one of the black sheep in our family.  She shot her husband, allegedly, (non-fatally) and got away with it and now is a lesbian with a pierced nose and tattoos (very maverickey in our family where some of our relatives get all bajiggity when a boy grows his hair out long), I guess I like the crazier side of our family because they have some of the greatest stories.  

Fig 5.  He made his own latte art too in the shape of a
 shrugging can of PBR so he's like an ultra hipster.

3)      What is your favorite food?

Well I’ll tell you what my least favorite food is, self that wrote this question before my exposure to massive amounts of sugar and caffeine, and that’s bacon.  It just thinks it’s so much better than every other food.  It’s basically the hipster foods (I’ve drawn a picture to illustrate).  It’s all like I can ALWAYS make your food taste better so I’m going to be in everything sticking my big ol’salty nose in it.  My favorite food is birthday cake because it’s sweet and full of carbs, my favorite is to mix it with ice cream because then you get your daily serving of calcium, I’m just keeping it healthy ya’ll or is it y’all, I guess it’s a conjunction of you and all so is it more proper as y’all then?  I don’t know I’m not super up to date in my hoe-down grammar (you’d better redneckognize!).

4)      Compare yourself to your favorite fictional character?

 One of my favorite fictional characters is Barney the Purple Dinosaur.  We both love hugs and sharing.  Am I the only person who thinks it’s a bad idea to have a T-Rex hosting a children’s show? I mean I just imagine him singing all about love and then just scarfing those kids down like popcorn, but I’m sure he’d share with the other dinosaurs because he always has to teach a lesson, but I guess what better lesson could there be than not to mess with an apex predator when you’re a small child and obviously outmatched even with his ridiculously small arms. I have a confession to make, I totally just lied about my favorite fictional character so I could write about a beloved host of a children’s program going rogue, like when I would watch the Teletubbies and I swore that creepy ass  baby in the sun was going to go supernova and burn up teletubby land aka the shire.  So I guess my actual favorite fictional character is Wesley Crusher, because he was into science and totally nerdy before it was cool!

5)      Name the three most important qualities of a friend.

Sassy, Nerdy, and Fun.  Basically my friends are awesome, look at my friends and take their qualities and that’s what I like in a friend, geeze if they didn’t have it I wouldn’t like them, I’m pretty obvious with my feelings J

6)      Do you think our political leaders should utilize social media networks like Twitter and Facebook to promote their platforms and etc?

 They should if they want to win.  It’s an easy way to reach a lot of people, especially if you want the younger vote.  If you avoid social media at all costs then you appear out of touch or technophobic and that would be terrible.

7)      What makes you very angry?

 The word moist, there are so many other words to describe how things taste or feel and it would just be so much better if people used them.  Moist is just such a weird word it makes me uncomfortable.  I just imagine people sitting in a puddle of their own excretions…yuck.  

8)      What have you learned about yourself today?

 I have learned that after a month or two of caffeine abstinence a large amount of caffeine hits you very quickly.  I’ve also learned I cannot have Toddler’s and Tiara’s on while trying to type stuff up.  It is like a train wreck, I just stare at the screen with my mouth wide open, agog if you will!!  Also I’ve learned this keyboard’s space bar sticks which is super annoying. I started this experiment at about 10:30pm, it is about 11:55pm and I can definitely feel myself crashing.  It’s like I was flying high and now dooooown I go!  Look out ground here I come!!!

Evening Gown Section:  A sudden wave of tiredness has overtaken me and now I must retire..it will only be in my dreams!  I am definitely doing my best pageant walk to the bed though!!

Discussion:

Wow...so I was just researching more about caffeine and I found that the symptoms of an overdose include  fidgeting, excitement, insomnia, gastrointestinal disturbance, muscle twitching, a rambling flow of thought and speech, mania, disinhibition, and hallucinations (D,E). I can totally attest to several of those, as illustrated by my excited ramblings, the disinhibition (which totally sounds like a made up word, science), can be seen in the video I took of myself performing the first test, which will, most likely, never again see the light of day. Although it did show that when high on caffeine I like to DANCE as opposed to just regular dancing. I most certainly felt an increase in energy and randomness, almost to superhero proportions, I think that my lack of caffeine before I performed my experiment made the effects much more pronounced.  I didn't find any mention of uncontrollable urges to draw crayon pictures anywhere, but that's most likely due to a lack of research on the topic.   The next day, when I woke up, I had the strangest craving for some sghetti and a tank top.  

Literature Cited:

A) www.mhhe.com

B) global.christianpost.com

C) Lovett, Richard (2005-09-24). "Coffee: The demon drink?". New Scientist (2518). 

D)Caffeine overdose". MedlinePlus. 2006-04-04. Retrieved 2009-08-03.

E) Verkhratsky, A. (2005). "Physiology and Pathophysiology of the Calcium Store in the Endoplasmic Reticulum of Neurons". Physiological Reviews 85: 571–2. 

G)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#cite_note-65

1)   www.tlc.howstuffworks.com/tv/here-comes-honey-boo-boo
2)  http://smileymomof5.blogspot.com/2009/05/top-ten-pageant-interview-questions.html
3) www.from-beauty-pagents-2-local-modeling.com/pafeant-interview-questions.html