Ever wondered why drinking caffeine gives you a headache? Or maybe you’re a person (like me) that can drink 6 coffees a day and still have lights out at a reasonable hour. Lots of people can have lots of different responses to caffeine that can be directly linked to your DNA.
When you’re born, your parents each pass on a lot of DNA characteristics to you. One of which being the “caffeine gene”. This specific gene is actually called CYP1A2 because it controls the enzyme CYP1A2, which is the enzyme that controls how fast you metabolize caffeine. We inherit two copies of this gene, one from mom and one from dad. If you have the fast variant of this gene then your liver is able to break down caffeine quickly and efficiently, however having the slow variant has the opposite effect. Are you one of the lucky ones?
- 40% of people are fast metabolizers, with 2 copies of the fast variant
- 45% of people have 1 fast and 1 slow, so they are in the middle in terms of caffeine metabolizers
- 15% of people carry 2 copies of the slow variant
You probably already have an idea of which category you fall into based of your reaction to caffeine, but besides for that there’s no real way to know for sure without DNA testing.
I think I’m apart of the lucky 40% with 2 fast variants, which are you?
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