A Spanish study examines the nature of caffeine’s effect on gender and also finds that decaffeinated coffee isn’t as ineffective at keeping drinkers awake as once thought.

ScienceDaily.com reported yesterday that a study done by the University of Barcelona has found that caffeine has a greater affect on men than women and that its effects can be felt just ten minutes after it’s consumed. The study is the first of its kind.

“Numerous studies have demonstrated the stimulant effects of caffeine, but none of these have looked at their effects in terms of the consumer’s gender,” said the study’s lead author, Ana Adan, a researcher in the Psychiatry and Clinical Psychobiology Department of the University of Barcelona.

Adan said similar studies have exposed subjects to amounts of caffeine not consumed on a regular basis. In contrast, this study not only looked at normal caffeine consumption, but also examined the varying effects those beverages had on gender.

The study’s researchers examined a sample of nearly 700 student volunteers, more than half of them female and having an average age of 22. The researchers took measurements of the students’ alertness and activity levels before any caffeine was consumed and then at 10-minute intervals afterwards for 30 minutes. Later in the day, more measurements were taken at lunch and dinner times to serve as a control in case of differences caused by the time of day.

“Although both the men and women saw an improvement in their activity levels with the coffee, which increased in later measurements, we observed a greater impact among the males,” Adan said.

Decaffeinated coffee can still affect some

As an added twist to the study, the researchers also looked at the affects of decaffeinated coffee on alertness and examined the results for differences among gender. Adan said the decaffeinated beverages had a small effect on alertness and she’s not chalking it up to the placebo effect.

What’s perhaps most surprising about this portion of the study is that the research showed that the decaffeinated coffee had a greater effect on the women in the study than the men. According to Science Daily, the effect of decaffeinated coffee on alertness has not previously been studied.

Adan suggested that those sensitive to caffeine might take this research as their opportunity to choose decaffeinated coffee instead and still reap some of coffee’s eye-opening benefits.

Decaffeinated coffee is made from the same coffee beans used in regular coffee. Before the beans are roasted, they are steamed and treated with a solvent that contains many of the same properties as coffee without actually containing caffeine. When this process is repeated, and it’s often done up to a dozen times in the decaffeination process, it’s shown to remove up to 97% of the caffeine normally found in coffee beans. Other research has shown that arabica beans normally contain about half of the caffeine found in beans of the robusta variety.

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