You guys are all probably on adderall anyway :P
Sadly, no :-)
What Caffeine Really Does to Your Brain
41–50 of 53 posts
Re: What Caffeine Really Does to Your Brain
#42I've seen heroin addicts say that caffeine withrawal is worse than the one caused by opiates. The headaches are unimaginable. The energy levels are lower than being hung-over. Short-term memory works in a state siimiliar to that when you have 70% packet loss in multiplayer video games. Everything is annoying and you just want to disintegrate people.
Oh yeah, it sucks after using a lot of it over the course of 1+ months. However, I found that I can significantly reduce the withdrawal time (to 3-5 days) and alleviate the symptoms by using piracetam - 2.4 grams every day, no headaches and near-normal energy levels...
Re: What Caffeine Really Does to Your Brain
#43http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_coffee From that we learn that coffe is linked to increased levels of smoking and lack of exercise -- AND: A May 2012 study by the New England Journal of Medicine found that, during the course of their study, coffee drinkers "who drank at least two or three cups a day were about 10 percent or 15 percent less likely to die for any reason during the 13 years of the study."…
> Edit: I should add that no chemical is good for everyone, not even caffeine.
Obviously false. It is hard to live without chemicals like oxygen and water (though too much of either can be toxic).
Re: What Caffeine Really Does to Your Brain
#44Not a comment on the article as such, but a pet peeve about the way it is displayed. There is a "floating" header on top which covers the text. If one hits the space bar to scroll a full screen worth, some unread text is covered up by that header. The same would be the case for the footer but, that one at least, can be collapsed. This is not the only site guilty of this (in fact it seems to be a growing trend) and I am surprised that no more people comment negatively about this.
Re: What Caffeine Really Does to Your Brain
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also quite a bit of range between people who drink two cups of mild coffee a day, people who drink soda and people who chug down espressi.
It depends on the quantity too. We drink espresso, but only 1-2 oz of coffee per cup, which has less caffeine than one of the buckets of diluted coffee from e.g. Starbucks.
Yeah, really. I can drunk a "shot" of Turkish coffee and not feel anything like the jittery hit I get from a full mug of normal filter-coffee.
Re: What Caffeine Really Does to Your Brain
#46A few years ago I traded being permanently sleep deprived and drinking tons of coffee (which I love) for always sleeping 8 hours per night. My productivity has been very consistent and stronger than ever since. No more boom and bust cycles.
Wouldn't you rather have the best of both worlds? Coffee and a regular sleep cycle?
That's what I do. It's always funny to me how a lot of people want to jump from drinking tons of coffee to no coffee. There's a happy medium in-between. I drink a lot of coffee but I do ramp down my caffeine over the course of a day. Start with full caff, then down to half in the afternoon, finally to decaf in the evening though sometimes I just skip it entirely. I feel very alert consistently throughout the day except for a short period in the afternoon before I've had some half-caff. I'm asleep within about 5 minutes of my head hitting the pillow.
Re: What Caffeine Really Does to Your Brain
#47One thing that a lot of these kinds of articles don't mention is that tolerance effects in drugs tend to be at least somewhat dosage dependent, and there is some evidence that this is the case with caffeine[1]. Look at amphetamines, for example; at large doses they have a large tolerance effect and are highly addictive. At small doses the tolerance effect is smaller, and they are non-addictive, yet still therapeutic…
I second Theanine. Personally I've been taking it before my morning coffee and I notice that I am less jittery and less stressful, while still having that caffeine high. I will even take it alone sometimes before a high stress situations and it helps with the nerves.
I oftentimes choose to consume Green Tea or Matcha as they contain a varying amount of natural Theanine.
That said these are anecdotal and could very likely be the placebo effect.
Re: What Caffeine Really Does to Your Brain
#48One thing that a lot of these kinds of articles don't mention is that tolerance effects in drugs tend to be at least somewhat dosage dependent, and there is some evidence that this is the case with caffeine[1]. Look at amphetamines, for example; at large doses they have a large tolerance effect and are highly addictive. At small doses the tolerance effect is smaller, and they are non-addictive, yet still therapeutic…
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Re: What Caffeine Really Does to Your Brain
#49One thing that a lot of these kinds of articles don't mention is that tolerance effects in drugs tend to be at least somewhat dosage dependent, and there is some evidence that this is the case with caffeine[1]. Look at amphetamines, for example; at large doses they have a large tolerance effect and are highly addictive. At small doses the tolerance effect is smaller, and they are non-addictive, yet still therapeutic…
Absolutely agreed. I've been drinking coffee for about 3-4 years now on and off, but for long periods. One cup of coffee has always been enough to have me wired for quite a while.
Re: What Caffeine Really Does to Your Brain
#50I'll probably be downvoted for saying so, but there have been an awful lot of Forbes articles on HN of late. They cover topics that should be interesting to HN, but are fluffier than the norm I'd expect here.