Live data from Hacker News

Coffee does not give you energy, it just borrows what you will pay for later

abc.net.au

21–30 of 46 posts

Re: Coffee does not give you energy, it just borrows what you will pay for later

#22

And drinking alcohol is borrowing happiness from tomorrow. Today is my payback day, and it sucks.

Only if you overdo it on the booze I think. 1 or 2 is enough to give me a light buzz with no hangover/regret.

Re: Coffee does not give you energy, it just borrows what you will pay for later

#25

And drinking alcohol is borrowing happiness from tomorrow. Today is my payback day, and it sucks.

Only if you overdo it on the booze I think. 1 or 2 is enough to give me a light buzz with no hangover/regret.

Good for you but there's a lot of us out there who need a bit more. It'd been nice to have a less harmful substitute a la vaping replacing smoking. Coincidentally, I had some ativan the other day for a dental procedure and the after effect was near ideal. Too bad it can't be taken so lightly.

Re: Coffee does not give you energy, it just borrows what you will pay for later

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you overdo it on the booze I think. 1 or 2 is enough to give me a light buzz with no hangover/regret.

Good for you but there's a lot of us out there who need a bit more. It'd been nice to have a less harmful substitute a la vaping replacing smoking. Coincidentally, I had some ativan the other day for a dental procedure and the after effect was near ideal. Too bad it can't be taken so lightly.

The trick is to not need it more.

Re: Coffee does not give you energy, it just borrows what you will pay for later

#28
Am I the only one who finds that this doesn't actually match reality? Caffeine gives me energy/awakeness and I don't find that I am "paying" for it later. Maybe (to keep torturing this dubious analogy) it's a negative interest rate, so in other words, I'm paying for it later, but it's not noticeable compared to the benefits of caffeine?

Re: Coffee does not give you energy, it just borrows what you will pay for later

#29
What I’ve read and heard recently is that if caffeine is consumed after adenosine is mostly flushed out after waking (90 minutes or so after a good rest), it seems as though it doesn’t interrupt sleep for most people that night. This is not true if you continue consuming caffeine past late morning, or early afternoon at the very latest. This causes your adenosine to be useless as caffeine will still be plugging receptors by bed time.

That doesn’t mean it can’t have negative side effects and generally make you jittery or wired; that’s a price some people seem to pay regardless. Outside of that though it seems like some strategies can negate energy and wakefulness issues.

But the main thing is ensuring your adenosine isn’t blocked from being processed out of your system by consuming caffeine as soon as you wake. If you do, the night’s remaining adenosine will just hang around until receptors are freed up (when caffeine is metabolized), and you’ll experience a relative “crash”, going from alert to sleepy very suddenly in the early afternoon.

I can’t confirm that this works, but people a lot smarter than I am seem to believe this is legitimate science, such as Andrew Huberman on his Huberman Lab podcast. I don’t experience crashes anymore so it seems alright to me, but I’m just one person reading and hearing things from the internet. This could all be GPT-generated and I wouldn’t know any better, haha.

Re: Coffee does not give you energy, it just borrows what you will pay for later

#30

Am I the only one who finds that this doesn't actually match reality? Caffeine gives me energy/awakeness and I don't find that I am "paying" for it later. Maybe (to keep torturing this dubious analogy) it's a negative interest rate, so in other words, I'm paying for it later, but it's not noticeable compared to the benefits of caffeine?

Caffeine increases levels of alertness.

It works by binding to the adenosine receptors and inhibits adenosine absorption. Eventually the caffeine wears out and all the adenosine you didn’t absorb because of the caffeine will hit you later and can cause you to “crash”/feel really tired later in the day.

Overall I agree with you, caffeine is doesn’t seem to have no downsides (in moderation)

Andrew Huberman has some great episodes on caffeine and I totally recommend listening to those if you want to understands the effects and how to leverage them

Post reply on HN