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The case against caffeine

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Re: The case against caffeine

#141

Post by wnolens »

simonsarris wrote: post #103

To add another anecdote: I drink minimum one small pot of coffee a day (a pour-over I make with my wife, 30g/450g beans/water), plus a moka pot or two in the afternoon, or a 15g pour-over. And 1-3 espresso shots if I go into the office. I consider the coffee experience positively euphoric. Almost spiritual. Certainly ritual. I would never give up the time of sitting with my wife for half an hour to an hour each morni…

I'm jealous.

One coffee: noticeable anxiety

2 coffees a day for a few days turns into a panic attack.

I've run the experiment many many times (easy with daily habits and a love for coffee). I definitely have pre-existing anxiety, but the effect of caffeine on me is clear as day.

Decaf and I'm fine.

I can tell when I'm mistakenly given regular coffee (frequently with baristas) or when a particular bean isn't that decaffeinated.

Re: The case against caffeine

#142

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

simonsarris wrote: post #103

To add another anecdote: I drink minimum one small pot of coffee a day (a pour-over I make with my wife, 30g/450g beans/water), plus a moka pot or two in the afternoon, or a 15g pour-over. And 1-3 espresso shots if I go into the office. I consider the coffee experience positively euphoric. Almost spiritual. Certainly ritual. I would never give up the time of sitting with my wife for half an hour to an hour each morni…

I'm the same, though I don't consume a lot of caffeine lately. I do struggle with anxiety disorders but caffeine doesn't make it worse(or better).

Energy drinks do though, and they make me jittery and sweaty, which coffee doesn't. Sugar or sugar-free doesn't seem to make a difference.

My hypothesis is that it's all the niacin they put in energy drinks. 250% of RDI in a 500ml can is typical, sometimes even more than that.

Re: The case against caffeine

#143

Post by bernardlunn »

I am in day 4 of tapering off, so this is only anecdotal but as each person is different anecdotal is ok. Try it and see. At the moment, with tiny amounts of caffeine my pm is better ie more even energy. I recognize addiction in some of the most virulent anti poster pro caffeine comments.

Re: The case against caffeine

#144

Post by awongh »

simonsarris wrote: post #103

To add another anecdote: I drink minimum one small pot of coffee a day (a pour-over I make with my wife, 30g/450g beans/water), plus a moka pot or two in the afternoon, or a 15g pour-over. And 1-3 espresso shots if I go into the office. I consider the coffee experience positively euphoric. Almost spiritual. Certainly ritual. I would never give up the time of sitting with my wife for half an hour to an hour each morni…

What’s funny to me is the degree to which i perceive people’s denial that caffeine and coffee get you incredibly high.

I’m not sure if this is what you exactly meant by euphoric, but I sometimes experience similar things, and I find it funny that “don’t talk to me until I’ve had my cup of coffee” is a negatively phrased statement of “I’m gonna get high on caffeine then I’ll enjoy this conversation more”- as if society wants to deny the psychotropic effects of drinking this drink.

Re: The case against caffeine

#145

Post by thesz »

vinay_ys wrote: post #59

What we really know for sure is this – sleep is good, anxiety is bad. So, if you aren't getting good sleep, find ways to fix it. And if you are anxious all the time, find ways to fix it. By one tradition that's thousands of years old – Yoga+Pranayama+Meditation (linking physical/mental_movement+breadth) and fasting + eating moderately (eat only if you are hungry and eat enough to quench hunger, and eat 'satvik' food)…

> sleep is good, anxiety is bad.

Sleep is not all good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersomnia

Anxiety is not all bad: https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/43757

Sattvic food is not good for your health: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37085478/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35710164/

Re: The case against caffeine

#146

Post by alkonaut »

LeafItAlone wrote: post #95
alkonaut wrote: post #56

I have been drinking a lot of coffe my entire adult life. Many cups of really dark coffee. But a cup is small . And dark coffee doesn't necessarily mean loaded with caffeine. Nothing prepares you for the kind of watery-yet-caffeine-loaded juice you get at a US coffee shop. It's like they think someone would enjoy drinking a half liter hot beverage, and get half a lethal dose of caffeine. Even though I drink 5-10 cups…

> Even though I drink 5-10 cups a day, my body does not approve of even a medium (or whatever they call it - it's an insult to coffee sizes in any case) Starbucks coffee. Ok, then exactly what the heck are you drinking? Starbucks is known for having more-than-average amounts of caffeine for their coffee compared to other chains, but it’s not _that_ much. Even a cup of black tea has more tea than 1/8 of the caffeine t…

I'm drinking regular espresso coffee. So I would think it probably has 1/2 to 2/3 the caffeine concerntraition of the starbucks coffee. But after my whole day of coffee and say 5-6 cups I have had less by than 12oz tall starbucks, and probably less by caffeine content than half that. But that's also spread out over a whole day, that's the key.

The peak blood caffeine concentration is a lot less when drinking 5 normal (That's european for "tiny" or "ant size") cups than than if I would have had an 8 or 12 oz coffee at once in the morning, even if it was the same coffee.

In short: I drink one decent starbucks size cup of coffee. Slowly, from 8am to 4pm.

Re: The case against caffeine

#147

Post by rhinoceraptor »

User23 wrote: post #74

This reminds me of spiders on drugs[1]. Caffeine absolutely wrecks them. [1] https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/nasa-spiders-drugs-experime...

Yep, many psychoactive alkaloid compounds are made by plants to deter insects and herbivores, for example caffeine, nicotine, and cocaine.

Re: The case against caffeine

#148

Post by ydant »

OliveMate wrote: post #46

I've been on the decaf wagon for a good few years now, I can't say it helped me out with anxiety or productivity but I can echo the sentiment that I can sleep within minutes. Also not relying on caffeine to keep me going pretty much forces me to sleep at a reasonable time. The hardest thing about giving up caffeine has to be the immediate effects. Your body takes it as a massive shock and you're stuck with what feels…

I stuck with 7 or so months of dandy blend and roibos to make sure it wasn't just an addiction to the caffeine - and I eventually came back to decaf coffee. The problem is I want hot drinks with body and complexity - and dandy blend comes close, but is so flat compared to a coffee or a black tea. :(

Re: The case against caffeine

#149

Post by evw »

I recently started tracking my caffeine intake after discovering this small app called HiCoffee on someone’s blog. It has a neat curve of how much caffeine is left in your body as the day progresses and how much will be left at bedtime. It made me more aware of how much caffeine is in different drinks. Philz has a lot! But now I can work around that with timing and limiting drinking other things.

Re: The case against caffeine

#150

Post by dahart »

pjc50 wrote: post #14
harimau777 wrote: post #7

At least personally, I've found that starting to drink coffee has had a pretty dramatic positive impact on my depression. I wonder if the difference in experience could come down to the specific circumstances and nature of the issues that someone faces?

You're not going to suggest that different people have different baseline biochemistry and would benefit from different things in different ways? No! That's not allowed! All health advice must fit all people, and people who don't fit the health advice shouldn't be allowed to complain about it. /sarcasm, but I've seen serious versions of this argument

I keep seeing versions of the argument that we’re all unique snowflakes and so all science is bad and all advice is untrustworthy bs. Usually the argument feels more like a variation on ‘you’re not the boss of me’ than a serious discussion of the science. This feels especially common to me when discussing diets; people seem to get pretty defensive whenever some advice or outcome has any way of being interpreted as that person potentially having less than perfect behavior.

I don’t know what ‘people have different baseline biochemistry’ really means. Approximately zero humans survive on sulphur and chlorine in place of nitrogen and oxygen. This argument tends to overlook the fact that people are mostly similar, and there’s enough of us that we have decent data on how similar we are. Humans are all approximately the same construction, and have approximately the same reactions to most things. It’s true there’s tons of minor variability for some things, but no serious science or health advice that will fail to mention or acknowledge that variability. My advice (which may or may not work for you) is to ignore people who say health advice must fit all people… and also ignore people who say that no advice will work for them, or even that advice that works for most can’t work for them without trying it first.

I feel like a good default assumption is that something that works for the average person will probably work for me too, so try it first, and then look for alternatives if/when I find out it’s not working. This is still a good default assumption even when accounting for the ‘flaw of averages’ (cf. the Air Force story about cockpit design) - most of us will fit the the average for most things, even while at the same time most of us will be outliers for some things.

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