231–236 of 236 posts
Ease Up on the Espresso: If your sleep isn’t great lately, consider cutting back on the caffeine. Turns out, chugging coffee during sleep-deprived stints might shrink grey matter in parts of your brain. Not ideal if you’re trying to keep that brain in tip-top shape. Know Your Limits: Everyone’s different when it comes to coffee tolerance. This study found that how your brain reacts to caffeine can depend on your gene…
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Starbucks is only a little worse than boutique coffee shops in my experience, but they are fast, conveniently located, open earlier, open later, pay their employees well (for a coffee shop) and pay for their employees' educations.
Their coffee is significantly worse tasting (especially if you drink it black, as I often do). With milk it’s perfectly acceptable, especially if you go for their ‘blonde’ roast. I totally agree about opening times! Starbucks is often the only place open after 5 or so.
Side topic, but dropping coffee was the best thing I ever did. I used to drink only one cup a day, rarely two, for many years - but turns out when I stopped (for reasons unrelated) my anxiety unexpectedly 80% went away after a week or so without any other changes in my lifestyle. It was a big difference and I feel now very different than what I used to. I wake up much better rested too (much easier to get out of bed)…
In summary, my conclusion is that I prefer drinking coffee (max 2-3 small cups daily, in the morning) than not.
Still, I'd like to try the experiment again in the future and stop caffeine for a longer period this time (3 months?).
Edit: I'm a slow metabolizer (rs762551 = AC).
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Everybody is different. 3 years ago I took a summer and then autumn off of caffeine; my intent was to quit and only use caffeine in "times of need". This would be an on-brand thing for me to do as a person, and something I wanted pretty bad. But after 4 full months without touching any caffeine, my mood/energy levels never returned or even really rebounded any further than they did after the first month. I'm just a d…
Possessing the GG variant of COMT rs4680 gene might explain this. Conversely, AA types might get overstimulated and irritable.
I like caffeine. It's fun to drink a cup of tea or coffee once in a while and feel an extra surge of productivity. What I don't like is that it has encouraged the grind of people working far longer and harder than they should for no reason except economic gain which is fundamnetally unsustainable. When people feel tired, they should take a break, and not develop a habit of drinking caffeine every day to keeep going.…
I think people should be able to do what they want with their time. I don’t think people should have to sell their labor for a wage in order to live. I wonder what happens to your opinions about caffeine in a society where owners have little to no leverage over workers, or where the workers are generally also the owners.
Something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_coffee_crisis