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A year without caffeine (part 2)

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Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#51

Post by nohat »

cma wrote: post #41
nohat wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The focus of the whole story is on caffeine, but dropping caffeine is quite minor in comparison to eating better, sleeping better, and exercising more. I think it's general consensus that caffeine withdrawal takes no more than a week.

But there is a substantial link between dropping caffeine and sleeping better. And there is a link between sleeping better and getting more effective exercise. And it is hard to get effective exercise and still manage to live on something like Mountain Dew (which might prompt an improved diet).

True - if caffeine was interfering with his sleep then it was a problem. I didn't see any indication that he had attempted to fix his sleep schedule before he dropped caffeine, though it's certainly possible that he did. Sleep exercise and diet are connected to each other, and maybe kicking caffeine happened to give him enough motivation or momentum to improve all three of them, but it's only loosely related. Setting up dropping caffeine as the cause of his improvement is strange - it just happened to come first.

Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#52

Post by rcthompson »

I personally have never been a caffeine user. I had always assumed that if I used it regularly, my body would eventually counteradjust so that I would require coffee just to bring me back to my original baseline level of alertness. Can anyone comment on whether this is the case?

Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#54

Post by jessriedel »

ahelwer wrote: post #16
desbest wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a heroin addict who filmed himself going cold turkey for his family, and at the end of the video, was himself on camera, having a brain hemorrhage. Very unlike caffeine.

Anecdotal evidence I know, but I was a three cups/day guy for a while then quit cold turkey. After about a week of feeling a bit fuzzy and irritable I was back to normal. Is this atypical or something?

Nope, that's typical. I looked up the data a while back. 1-2 weeks is the general timescale for developing dependence and for withdrawal. Once your neurotransmitters reset, you're pretty much back to normal.

Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#55

Post by georgemcbay »

lambda wrote: post #26
geoka9 wrote: post #3

Reading this gave me chills - the symptoms of withdrawal described here are not unlike those of a heroin addict gone cold turkey. I can't imagine normal healthy people routinely taking a drug and teaching their children to take one. And yet this happens with coffee all the time. Many are even proud of their addiction ("coffee snobs").

I've been addicted to coffee before, quit it for a couple of years, then chose to start drinking it again. It wasn't nearly as bad for me as described here. Sure, it's a week in which your life sucks more than usual, and you have a kind of constant nagging headache. But then it's over, and you're fine. It's really nothing like a heroin addict going cold turkey; though I've never tried heroin, from what I've heard of…

I doubt the author's experience was actually as bad as going cold turkey off heroin, but he does describe a caffeine intake amount that is nearly unbelievable to me and I'm someone who probably drinks way too much caffeine myself.

Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#56

Post by Posibyte »

rcthompson wrote: post #52

I personally have never been a caffeine user. I had always assumed that if I used it regularly, my body would eventually counteradjust so that I would require coffee just to bring me back to my original baseline level of alertness. Can anyone comment on whether this is the case?

I have a purely anecdotal case. Before my Junior year of college, I had drank about four cups (two coffee cups) of coffee every morning since I was twelve. That's about nine years of coffee consumption for me. I stopped one day a year-or-so ago, and besides the two-day migraine, it didn't have any noticeable effect on me thereafter. I still drink coffee every now and then, especially during points where I'm lodging with my parents. I can't tell a difference when I drink coffee or not, other than I think more clearly with coffee. I'm not jittery with or without, or craving coffee abnormally.

Again, anecdotal. I have no idea if this is the general case.

Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#57

Post by dalke »

lambda wrote: post #28
brador wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salt and corn syrup are drugs? Explain please.

Consuming large amounts of them can cause you to have temporary bursts of pleasure, which then cause you to crave them more when they are missing. Have you never had the experience of eating something salty, and realizing that you craved more, to the point where you ate too much salt? Or had some sugar, and then had a sugar crash a little while later, where you got grumpy until you could have something to eat?

That does not make salt or corn syrup a "drug", which is what brador asked about.

Your definition is so broad as to make the term "drug" meaningless, as it means that even water is a drug. Yes, after swimming in the ocean waves for an hour, cold freshwater is pure pleasure, and if I haven't had enough water for a while I start to suffer from dehydration.

A friend of mine has to eat a small amount every few others, else she becomes irritable. I've sometimes forgotten to eat until the afternoon, with little effect on my personality. Does that mean that food is a drug to her, or that she's more addicted to food than I am?

Obviously not.

Can you come up with a better definition of "drug" which makes makes sense? That is, one where "water" and "food" are not drugs, but for which salt and corn syrup is a drug?

Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#58

Post by mynegation »

phormula wrote: post #42

Why wouldn't he just get treated for H. Pylori if he had stomach ulcers

Author is not talking about that, but from what I know testing for H. Pylori and E. Coli is part of any endoscopy. Stomach ulcers may and do appear even if there is no harmful bacteria in a stomach.

Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#59

Post by marcosdumay »

gfunk911 wrote: post #24
Evgeny wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always amazing to people how much diet and exercise affect their health This is true. It is equally amazing to me how much abuse the human body can take before it actually breaks down. Sometimes I think it would be better if the results of bad dietary or exercise habits revealed themselves faster - I suppose it would be more convincing and easier to undo the damage.

This is a very interesting observation. Fail fast....

Not a very good tought when you can only fail once.

Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#60

Post by drivebyacct2 »

This is scary to read. GERD, Barrett's Esophagus and acid reflux is not to be taken lightly. It is life altering. I have a relative who has to take 3 days every year to be sedated and have their throat stretched, another 3 later to have it scoped and this is after the surgery that effectively tied her esophagus in a knot (she can't physically vomit).

If you're popping antacids all of the time, be wary.

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