Coffee addicts really wake up and smell coffee

New research has shown that regular coffee drinkers can sniff even tiny amounts of coffee and more easily recognize the aroma, unlike coffee drinkers.

The usual coffee drinkers are not only more sensitive to the smell of coffee and quicker to identify it, but the more they crave coffee, the better their ability to smell it.

This is the first time that evidence shows that drug addicts are more sensitive to the smell of coffee.

The findings could open the door to new potential methods of using aversive therapy to treat people who are dependent on substances with a distinct odor, such as tobacco and cannabis.

The research was led by Dr. Lorenzo Stafford, an olfactory expert in the Department of Psychology at the University of Portsmouth.

He said: "We found that the higher the caffeine consumption, the faster a person would recognize the smell of coffee.

"We also found that these caffeine consumers were able to detect the smell of a chemical that was heavily diluted in coffee at much lower concentrations, and that this capacity increased with their craving for coffee.

"We have long known that drug signals (eg, the smell of alcohol) can cause cravings among users, but here we show with a slightly addictive drug that this state of need could be linked to an increased ability to detect this substance.

"Caffeine is the most widely used psychoactive drug and these results suggest that changes in the ability to detect odors could be a useful index of drug dependence."

The team wanted to examine whether there were differences in people's ability to feel and respond to coffee odors, whether or not they were heavy coffee drinkers. The results clearly indicate a link, with heavy coffee drinkers being more sensitive to the smell of coffee and the smell being related to their cravings.

The study is published in Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology.

The research was based on two experiments.

In the first experiment, 62 men and women were divided into those who never drank anything containing caffeine; those who consumed moderate amounts (70-250 mg, equivalent to 1-3.5 cups of instant coffee per day); and those who consumed a large amount (300 mg, equivalent to 4 cups of instant coffee or more per day).

Each person was blindfolded and, to test his sensitivity to the smell of coffee, he was asked to differentiate very small amounts of coffee odor from odor whites, which n & # 39; Have no smell. For the odor recognition test, they were asked to identify as quickly as possible the smell of real coffee and, separately, lavender essential oil. Those who drank the most coffee were able to identify the coffee at lower concentrations and were quicker to identify the odor.

Each person was also asked to complete a questionnaire on caffeine consumption. As could be expected, the results showed that the more a person habitually consumed caffeine, the stronger their craving for caffeine.

"More interestingly, the increased need, particularly that which measured caffeine's ability to reverse withdrawal symptoms such as fatigue, was related to greater sensitivity of the odor detection test," said Dr. Stafford.

In a second test, 32 people not involved in the first experiment were divided into two groups: those who drink coffee and those who do not. They were tested using the same coffee odor detection test and a separate test for non-food odor control.

Again, the results showed that caffeine consumers were more sensitive to the smell of coffee, but that their sensitivity to the non-food scent did not differ.

The findings suggest that sensitivity to smell and its relationship to craving could be used to help end some drug-related behaviors, including tobacco dependence or smoking. cannabis addiction, said Dr. Stafford.

Previous research had shown that those who had been trained to associate an odor with something unpleasant had subsequently shown greater discrimination of that odor, which proved the possibility of a model of aversion to conditioned smells.