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Habitual coffee intake shapes the microbiome, modifies physiology and cognition

nature.com

101–110 of 281 posts

Re: Habitual coffee intake shapes the microbiome, modifies physiology and cognition

#101

Funded by the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC) — an industry body — which is a notable conflict of interest the authors disclose but don't extensively discuss

It does not sound like an outcome that big coffee paid for it to be so: Behaviourally, coffee drinkers exhibited greater impulsivity and emotional reactivity, whereas non-coffee drinkers demonstrated better memory performance.

Ah yes, yet another in the long line of results which confirm our suspicion of water being wet to have been right all along. In this case it's something that anyone who has spent a significant amount of time around routine coffee drinkers and regularly consumed it themselves already took for granted.

Re: Habitual coffee intake shapes the microbiome, modifies physiology and cognition

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coffee is a plant demon that created the western civilization as we know it today...

I like this worldview. Prior to coffee, Europe was in the grip of the beer dwarves. Coffee demons took over and invented nationalism, capitalism and Keynesian economics.

At least the coffee demons aren't quite as bad as the amphetamine demons that produced Nazi Germany.

Re: Habitual coffee intake shapes the microbiome, modifies physiology and cognition

#103
Caffeine is an extremely potent drug.

It’s actually kind of crazy to think that a large portion of a country’s population could be “high” on it basically all of the time. And there is a huge industry in place for delivering said drug to as many people as possible by having it available on almost every street corner.

And that most people take a fairly non-chalant attitude to giving this drug to kids through sweet drinks that are primarily marketed to them as well.

The scale of it is kinda mind boggling to me.

Mind the nonsensical rant, I haven’t had my coffee yet this morning…

Re: Habitual coffee intake shapes the microbiome, modifies physiology and cognition

#105

After habitually consuming caffeine (not in coffee form) daily, usually multiple times a day, for more than a decade, a horrible mental health incident happened to me that forced me to stop it for a while. Afterwards I didn't resume the habit, and so I no longer have a tolerance. This has let me evaluate what caffeine does with fresh eyes, so to say, because I can now consume it occasionally while having many non-caf…

Quitting caffeine after decades of use was a bit of a mixed bag for me in the short term, but positive in the long term. Going caffeine-free made it much easier to lose weight as I have far less cravings for high carbs and sugar now, presumably this is related to the impulsivity impact talked about in the paper. Going caffeine-free also made me very depressed for a while with severe anhedonia, this lasted way longer…

> Going caffeine-free made it much easier to lose weight as I have far less cravings

That's surprising to me. In my case one of the reasons I discontinued it (emotional effects aside) was mild but consistent weight loss. The stimulant part of the effect seems to suppress my appetite quite effectively although at least part of that is likely indirect due to sustained task focus leading me to skip meals.

Re: Habitual coffee intake shapes the microbiome, modifies physiology and cognition

#107

Caffeine is an extremely potent drug. It’s actually kind of crazy to think that a large portion of a country’s population could be “high” on it basically all of the time. And there is a huge industry in place for delivering said drug to as many people as possible by having it available on almost every street corner. And that most people take a fairly non-chalant attitude to giving this drug to kids through sweet drin…

This week as I tried to lower my coffee usage or stop altogether, I had dropped from 3 cups a day to 1. That one suddenly started to make me feel noticeably high, like a bump of cocaine in the morning. I realised that I craved it in the same way and it clicked for me - coffee is literally just a drug I like to take by myself and read the newspaper. It's no different. It's the first thing I think of in the morning because I'm addicted. Currently trying to go cold turkey.

Re: Habitual coffee intake shapes the microbiome, modifies physiology and cognition

#110

Was this thread invaded by AI? Casually reading the first comments, 3 different users mentioned they had a recent "mental health incident" related to caffeine?? Search this page for "mental health incident"

That doesn't seem even remotely surprising to me. Much of the readership here likely consumes inadvisable quantities of caffeine nearly every day and one of the most common side effects is anxiety followed closely by a number of other emotional perturbations.
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