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Caffeine use disorder

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Re: Caffeine use disorder

#61

Post by WalterSear »

speeder wrote: post #33
mcculley wrote: post #8

I weaned myself off of caffeine entirely seven months ago. Being free of caffeine has greatly improved the quality of my sleep and made my mood more even throughout the day. I really appreciate being able to jump straight out of bed in the morning without depending on that coffee to get my brain working.

I tried a couple times to get off caffeine, never worked properly... I don't feel obvious caffeine effects, but I need it to not be a wreck. Later I discovered I was self-medicating my ADHD... Now I am taking proper ADHD meds, and this allowed me to greatly reduce my caffeine use (that was wandering into dangerous and expensive territory, with me needing to drink litres of red-bull clones to work), still need it some…

I'm with you. I quit caffeine for almost two months last year. About six weeks in, I admitted to myself that I was still feeling shitty and tired, and was having as much trouble focusing as on day one.

Is this 'self-medicating'? Focus and tiredness have always been big problems for me. I scored in the 80th percentile on the Wender Utah Adult ADD test a few years ago. Nothing any doctor has plied me with has worked for more than a few days before tolerance sets in.

IMHO, much of this 'quit caffeine - you'll feel even better without it' is uninformed zeal. Some will, some won't. Mileage will vary.

Re: Caffeine use disorder

#62

Post by allemagne »

mdip wrote: post #39

I discovered that if I only consumed caffeine when I had a Migraine headache, that it was the most effective medicine I could take provided I didn't already have a tolerance built up so I gave up caffeine in my 20s. Frankly, it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I was plagued with minor but persistent headaches for almost a month and was exhausted most of that time since I was used to grabbing a cup of coff…

>I am convinced that Caffeine is a much more powerful stimulant than we coffee drinkers think it is.

Absolutely. I really don't think I'm some sort of outlier, and when I'm not in a cycle of dependence on caffeine and have a cup of coffee I feel an intense high. I'd compare the euphoria to being very drunk. I definitely feel awake, alert, and very focused -- but I can also tell that I'm not using the exact same kind of judgement as I do sober.

Re: Caffeine use disorder

#63

Post by lolc »

rodionos wrote: post #52
RankingMember wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to drink coffee, drink coffee. Using a goofball medieval study (with a sample size of literally 2 people) to justify your personal choice is pretty silly.

Your problem with sample size in this particular case is that you fail to account for its duration. Convert sample size to temporal units and you might draw different conclusions since p-values might not look as bad now. An average FDA trial is 3 years, so assuming the prisoners lived for 40 years on their prescribed caffeine diet, you get sample size of 2*40/3 = 26.7. Not bad for 17th century. Last but not least, tu…

That just made my day.

Re: Caffeine use disorder

#64

Post by tylermac1 »

mdip wrote: post #39

I discovered that if I only consumed caffeine when I had a Migraine headache, that it was the most effective medicine I could take provided I didn't already have a tolerance built up so I gave up caffeine in my 20s. Frankly, it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I was plagued with minor but persistent headaches for almost a month and was exhausted most of that time since I was used to grabbing a cup of coff…

What was the medicine that ended up helping your migraines?

I suffer from migraines semi-regularly and have at separate times taken Maxalt, Imitrex, or generic OTC migraine meds + caffeine.

Re: Caffeine use disorder

#65

Post by seanp2k2 »

soft_dev_person wrote: post #40
creshal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For healthy adults, the FDA says 400 mg a day is OK. But consuming much more than that can have dangerous, negative effects. And the milligrams add up quickly. A medium-size coffeehouse coffee can contain more than 300 mg, and most 16-ounce energy drinks contain between 160 and 240 mg of caffeine… 3-4 cups might be on the high end of the safe spectrum, depending on what your idea of a "cup" is. (For the record, 3 h…

I think my cups are closer to 200 ml, which apparently is approaching 100 mg caffeine per cup, so I guess you're right. A "medium-size coffeehouse coffee" (at Starbucks) is 16 fl.oz. Here in Europe, that's not really a normal cup of coffee.

America! What's a normal-sized coffee there, to compare? Large at Starbucks ("venti") is 20oz (~591ml). The caffeine levels at $ seem to be similar between USA and EU: http://www.caffeineinformer.com/the-complete-guide-to-starbu... but I'm guessing that that's more due to it being such a touristy place. From what I've seen, they use less espresso than "real" coffee shops: http://www.starbucks.co.uk/blog/introducing-our-new-standard... if you've paid attention to espresso machines for whatever reason, you know that most machines make two shots per pull, so typically higher-end places will use either 2 or 4 shots (since that's either 1 or 2 times they need to make espresso for the drink). If they have a large size (16-20oz), I've found that it's common to use 4 shots in that, which is going to be more caffeine than $, possibly by a wide margin.

If you're in the Bay Area and really want to go nuts with your caffeine for whatever reason, Dutch Bros in North Bay / East Bay (usually go there when I'm by Sac) has drinks on their menu with 6 shots: http://dutchbros.com/AboutUs/OurMenu and they're atypically strong per-shot.

Re: Caffeine use disorder

#66

Post by schoen »

Pitarou wrote: post #37

I've given up caffeine for Lent[1]. It's been hard. Beforehand, I knew I had a bad coffee habit. In a typical day I'd drink, maybe 6 or 7 mugs of strong coffee. I'd tried to cut down many times, but never succeeded; there just seemed to be too many reasons in my life to have another coffee. So when Ash Wednesday (the start of Lent) came, I thought, "Now's the time to quit." The first day was fine. I didn't notice any…

> I've given up caffeine for Lent

I've heard from many people on HN and elsewhere individually choosing something to give up for Lent.

In my understanding, the traditional Lenten restrictions in most Christian churches that observe Lent are pre-specified dietary restrictions that are the same for everybody (for example, it was unexpectedly convenient for me as a vegan to visit Eastern Europe because the Eastern Orthodox churches' Lenten fast was similar to veganism).

Is the practice of giving up a personally-selected thing for Lent something that many people have chosen to do individually as a sort of new interpretation of the tradition, or is it now also recommended by some churches?

Re: Caffeine use disorder

#67

Post by Skunkleton »

tylermac1 wrote: post #64
mdip wrote: post #39

I discovered that if I only consumed caffeine when I had a Migraine headache, that it was the most effective medicine I could take provided I didn't already have a tolerance built up so I gave up caffeine in my 20s. Frankly, it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I was plagued with minor but persistent headaches for almost a month and was exhausted most of that time since I was used to grabbing a cup of coff…

What was the medicine that ended up helping your migraines? I suffer from migraines semi-regularly and have at separate times taken Maxalt, Imitrex, or generic OTC migraine meds + caffeine.

I think he meant caffeine + no caffeine tolerance.

Re: Caffeine use disorder

#68

Post by aidenn0 »

mdip wrote: post #39

I discovered that if I only consumed caffeine when I had a Migraine headache, that it was the most effective medicine I could take provided I didn't already have a tolerance built up so I gave up caffeine in my 20s. Frankly, it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I was plagued with minor but persistent headaches for almost a month and was exhausted most of that time since I was used to grabbing a cup of coff…

I had some time off between jobs once, and quit caffeine cold-turkey. I slept for 14 hours a day for the first 3 nights. I felt normal on about day 6. Now if I have a cup of coffee, I am wide awake until about 3 hours after I usually fall asleep.

Interestingly enough, this led me to discover that A&W cream soda is caffeinated; with my previous caffeine tolerance I would not have been so jittery after drinking one, and surely enough on the back of the can was a "contains caffeine" label.

Re: Caffeine use disorder

#69

Post by codingdave »

If you want to give it up, and are a coder, find a few days when you don't need to code. I tried a few times, and always went back to it because my code sucked for a few days. I finally kicked the habit only about a month ago, when I decided to do it during a week-long testing effort with minimal new coding to worry about.

And the same as many others have said... I sleep better, feel better, etc, etc.

Re: Caffeine use disorder

#70

Post by aidenn0 »

schoen wrote: post #66
Pitarou wrote: post #37

I've given up caffeine for Lent[1]. It's been hard. Beforehand, I knew I had a bad coffee habit. In a typical day I'd drink, maybe 6 or 7 mugs of strong coffee. I'd tried to cut down many times, but never succeeded; there just seemed to be too many reasons in my life to have another coffee. So when Ash Wednesday (the start of Lent) came, I thought, "Now's the time to quit." The first day was fine. I didn't notice any…

> I've given up caffeine for Lent I've heard from many people on HN and elsewhere individually choosing something to give up for Lent. In my understanding, the traditional Lenten restrictions in most Christian churches that observe Lent are pre-specified dietary restrictions that are the same for everybody (for example, it was unexpectedly convenient for me as a vegan to visit Eastern Europe because the Eastern Ortho…

It has been standard practice in the latin-rite (i.e. western) Roman Catholic church at least since Vatican II. There are also specific dietary restrictions (fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, abstaining from the flesh of land-animals on every Friday during lent).

I know a lot of this changed with Vatican II; in particular the no-meat on Friday rule was previously year-round, and it is now purely during lent, though one is supposed to do some form of abstinence on Fridays year-round.

I had thought that giving up things for Lent was peculiar to the Roman Catholic and Orthodox religions until I chatted with friends in High School (1990s) and found that some Lutheran and Presbyterian denominations also encouraged the practice.

[edit]

I also forgot to mention that a large fraction of Protestant congregations are either not part of any particular denomination, or are part of a denomination that is fairly silent about appropriate ways of daily worship; individuals in those denominations often eclectically adopt forms of worship from other denominations.

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