Caffeine is the most common drug in the world, and many of us rely on a cup of coffee every morning to normalize our mood and routine. Now, two guys are working on a “caffeine bracelet” that would act in the same way as a nicotine patch — gradually providing you with a steady flow of caffeine throughout the day, without the highs and lows of coffee consumption. It’s called the Joule caffeine bracelet.

“The Joule caffeine bracelet is a bracelet with a slot for you to snap on a transdermal caffeine patch,” the creators write on their Indiegogo page. “These patches work in a similar fashion to a nicotine patch or other transdermal medication patches. The caffeine is administered gradually for a steady supply of caffeine and energy without any of the typical energy crashes, jitters or other negative effects of consuming your caffeine through beverages.”

There are a lot of good things about coffee; research has shown that moderate coffee consumption lowers the risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and types of dementia like Alzheimer’s disease. That being said, however, there’s also another side to coffee; some studies have associated caffeine with anxiety and depression. We all know the jittery feeling of drinking too much coffee on an empty stomach, heightening our anxiety and impairing our focus.

While Joule would provide the user with 56 mg of caffeine over the course of four hours, it’s intended to do it slowly and consistently, in order to avoid coffee highs and crashes. This is done through transdermal administration, or the transmitting of chemicals through the skin and into the bloodstream, like nicotine patches. Transdermal administration only works if the chemicals’ molecules are tiny enough to enter the skin, and caffeine happens to be such a chemical.

Though there are several ways a drug or chemical can pass through skin, the main way involves seeping through the phospholipids' membranes and cytoplasm of dead keratinocytes in the stratum corneum, the outermost layer of the skin. In order to go through the entire stratum corneum, the chemical has to pass through several layers of each cell very slowly. Transdermal administration is usually done with patches or gels.

Would the caffeine bracelet really work? If caffeine can truly be administered transdermally, then in theory, yes. It’s up to you to decide whether you want to give up the smooth taste of a fresh roast every morning.

As for the caffeine bracelet’s name, “a joule is a unit of energy,” the creators write. “Our bracelets are designed to GIVE you energy and thus we thought ‘Joule’ would be a perfect name.”