Live data from Hacker News

Coffee Stats – Maximize Caffeine Intake and Get to Bed at Night

github.com

61–70 of 148 posts

Re: Coffee Stats – Maximize Caffeine Intake and Get to Bed at Night

#61
The HiCoffee app for iOS has been a great resource for me. It allows parameterized inputs for your personalized caffeine half-life, bedtime, bedtime caffeine levels, and daily caffeine limit. As you log your intake, it shows a nice chart of caffeine in your body throughout the day. The visualization has really helped me understand how caffeine is affecting me, and it has been very helpful in curbing my caffeine intake when it has gotten away from me. As an added bonus, the app has a lot of caffeine data on common drinks on the market.

Re: Coffee Stats – Maximize Caffeine Intake and Get to Bed at Night

#62
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

idk what other quirks you've got but this one turned out to be an adhd symptom for me lol Coffee actually works on me now I'm on stimulant medication haha

I've found that high caffeine drinks make me very sleepy. I'm still trying to get hold of some kind of ADHD medication

Yup, I could easily finish a meal out or whatever with coffee or two with no worries on how it'll affect my sleep (if anything the stimulation brought my dopamine up enough to sleep)

First day I was put on (low dose) stimulant meds I slept for 16 hours haha

Re: Coffee Stats – Maximize Caffeine Intake and Get to Bed at Night

#63

I had a >300mg caffeine/day energy drink habit for a few of years. It took around six months to get past the additional fatigue after quiting. There seems to be some long term effect on me way beyond the half life. Does everyone else get past the effects of going cold turkey in a matter of hours?

I went cold turkey after developing a facial tic and realizing I was consuming 1000 - 1200 mg of caffeine a day (mostly coffee, French press and canned, with some energy drinks too). I was 100% not aware that caffeine is physically addictive and causes receptor changes in your brain. Aside from withdrawal symptoms (joint aches and pains for me), the fatigue didn't fully go away after several months. What did "fix" it…

My last non-decaf drink was early July. Went from ~1000 mg a day to ~60. Change in sleep was pretty dramatic. I am sleepy every evening. Sleepy during the day just means I’m bored. I wake up feeling more rested.

The third day quitting was rough. Other than that it was pretty easy. Now my biggest complaint is finding decaf when I’m out.

Re: Coffee Stats – Maximize Caffeine Intake and Get to Bed at Night

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting. One thing I am fairly sure about, the amount of caffeine makes a difference to my sleep quality. If I have a single cup of coffee in the morning, no more, then my sleep quality seems not to be impacted. If I have several cups of coffee, only in the morning, I feel great for the morning, very stimulated, but my sleep is impacted. I wake up with a buzzing several times a night and have never been a…

>have never been able to understand what is causing the buzzing Most likely it's the leftover caffeine still in your system that's beyond your personal threshold for quality sleep. I have the same issue. If I drink two double espressos very early in the morning and then no more after that for the rest of the day, I have no problem falling asleep at night but I keep waking up several times during the night with a buzz…

> have no problem falling asleep at night but I keep waking up several times during the night with a buzz.

Yes, that's me. I can fall asleep, but I wake up a lot.

Re: Coffee Stats – Maximize Caffeine Intake and Get to Bed at Night

#65
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there are at least 3 different metabolic rates for caffeine, rapid, standard, and slow. As a holder of the slow gene, none of these calculators work for me since for me caffeine has a ~9 hour half life. Caffeine after about 11 am is a bad plan.

Pretty sure there's some age related effects too. Over the last ~20 years I've gone from being happily able to drink coffee after dinner, through not being able to drink it after 5pm or so, and now to having the espresso machine automatically shut off at 2:30pm - otherwise my sleep quality plummets. I'm 57 now, I started noticing poor sleep related to late night coffee in my mid 30s. I do got fairly hard earlier in t…

Honestly, I've noticed how sensitive I am to caffeine when I have reduced my caffeine intake. I think that it is important to clean the body before starting to observe, understand, and make conclusions about how a particular thing affects the body. Let it be caffeine, alcohol, or anything else.

Re: Coffee Stats – Maximize Caffeine Intake and Get to Bed at Night

#67
post #58
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure there's some age related effects too. Over the last ~20 years I've gone from being happily able to drink coffee after dinner, through not being able to drink it after 5pm or so, and now to having the espresso machine automatically shut off at 2:30pm - otherwise my sleep quality plummets. I'm 57 now, I started noticing poor sleep related to late night coffee in my mid 30s. I do got fairly hard earlier in t…

My problem isn't falling asleep, it's staying asleep. Restlessness at night has become more noticeable as I've gotten older. Cutting down on caffeine, especially later in the day, seems to have helped some. I now have one cup of coffee in the morning, and a cup or two of tea in the early afternoon. This is instead of the two cups in the morning and espresso in the afternoon that I used to have before.

You might try slow release melatonin. I've found melatonin increases the vividness of dreaming, though.

Re: Coffee Stats – Maximize Caffeine Intake and Get to Bed at Night

#68
post #66

Does anyone have personal experience or an understanding of why sometimes coffee in the afternoon actually results in a feeling of perceived tiredness?

This is known as a "paradoxical" reaction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoxical_reaction

Re: Coffee Stats – Maximize Caffeine Intake and Get to Bed at Night

#69
Please take in to account slow vs fast caffeine metabolizer.

"CYP1A2 Gene: Fast or Slow Caffeine Metabolizer?"

https://www.geneticlifehacks.com/liver-detox-genes-cyp1a2/

This is one of those subjects where people argue past each "I can drink a cup of coffee and sleep like a baby!" vs "One cup of coffee in the morning and my sleep quality is impacted". And neither understands how the other can have a vastly different personal experience.

This extends to any online discussion regarding weight loss/gain, politics, wars, etc.

Re: Coffee Stats – Maximize Caffeine Intake and Get to Bed at Night

#70
post #69

Please take in to account slow vs fast caffeine metabolizer. "CYP1A2 Gene: Fast or Slow Caffeine Metabolizer?" https://www.geneticlifehacks.com/liver-detox-genes-cyp1a2/ This is one of those subjects where people argue past each "I can drink a cup of coffee and sleep like a baby!" vs "One cup of coffee in the morning and my sleep quality is impacted". And neither understands how the other can have a vastly different…

I think this is me, interesting.
Post reply on HN