Coffee aroma cuts down stress
Freshly brewed coffee and its special aroma may help relieve any stress that comes from not getting enough sleep through ‘jump-starting’ genes in the brain into a more active role.
A study at Seoul National University in South Korea involved laoratory rats inhaling coffee’s aroma, while monitoring gene and protein expressions in the rats’ brains.
It was found that the rats that smelt the coffee had different levels of activity in 17 genes and 13 of them had differential measures between the straight stress group and the stress with coffee group.
The Seoul researchers said that the experiments provided “for the first time, clues to the potential antioxidant or stress relaxation activities of the coffee bean aroma”.
“These results indirectly explain why so many people use coffee for staying up all night, although the volatile compounds of coffee beans are not fully consistent with those of the coffee extracts.
In other words the stress caused by sleep loss via caffeine may be alleviated through smelling the coffee aroma”, the researchers said.
