Caffeine dosing strategies to optimize alertness during sleep loss

Post by eigenspace » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 11:19 PM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #206

eigenspace wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In humans, metabolism only goes down ~35% at its very lowest point during deep sleep. In other phases of sleep, your metabolism is ~15% lower than during waking time. If sleep were for metabolic savings, it would be an incredibly inefficient way to go about it. In some senses, wakefulness may be thought of as neurotoxic and much of whats going on during sleep is centred around repairing the damage caused by being awa…

Sleep deprivation doesn’t just affect cancer. With immune suppression chronic viral infections like warts flare up after a day or two of sleep deprivation. Allergies get worse. Anxiety shows up more easily (in response to milder stressful stimuli), has stronger effects, and takes longer to subside. In general cognitive function is impaired: alertness, memory, attention span, ... The skin and hair get greasier. ...

Post by eigenspace » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 11:58 PM UTC

geeCorrelation wrote: post #212

eigenspace wrote: post #165

To everyone thinking about using caffine or other drugs to combat sleep: all of the latest sleep reseach would suggest that 'optimizing alertness during sleep loss' is a fool's errand if what you want is productivity. The real goal must be to ensure you get enough sleep, not that you medicate yourself with caffine to stop your body from getting sleep signals. Think about it this way: If prolonged sleep were not absol…

Every year during daylight savings You mean the holiday season, when people are stressed out by family matters, eating like garbage at seasonal gatherings, shovelling the hell out of some snow drifts, scraping ice off their windshields, and fighting the weather and general sedentary living, amid cabin fever among other things?

Post by baldfat » Fri, Jun 08, 2018, 3:43 AM UTC

mkirklions wrote: post #106

baldfat wrote: post #44

Trick: Boost your adrenaline by doing exercise before drinking down the caffeine. I learned that caffeine makes adrenaline last longer by blocking it receptors in college. https://science.howstuffworks.com/caffeine4.htm My trick is no adrenaline no caffeine effect. I would do 10 push ups or run around my car a few times and then drink down the caffeine and that changed everything.

Will be trying this. My only note is that none of those things seem hard for someone that works out. What is the intensity for these things? I can do about 60 pushups before they start to get hard and run for 30 minutes. Do you need it to be intense? Or just do some exercise? Thanks for the tip

Post by jillesvangurp » Fri, Jun 08, 2018, 6:51 AM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #28

jillesvangurp wrote: post #19

Club mate is the drink of choice in the start up community in Berlin. I've made the mistake of drinking that in the evening a couple of times and regretted that at 4am by being wide awake and unproductive the next day. If you are not familiar, mate tea which this is based on contains a form of caffeine that is particularly potent. It's like drinking multiple espresso shots. Don't drink this if you have blood pressure…

"restrict myself to mornings only" Do yourself a favour and take the next step. Stop ingesting daily and reserve coffee for sleep emergencies and medicinal purposes. Even a single daily cup of coffee is enough to build a tolerance to it. Besides affecting alertness, caffeine is also a very effective way of increasing the potency of many drugs. For me, Advil by itself has little effect, but in combination with caffein…

Post by newfoundglory » Fri, Jun 08, 2018, 11:06 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #88

newfoundglory wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I regularly stop drinking caffeine for days at a time and have been unable to notice a difference. It's a shame because I was really hoping to find that my headaches had an easy solution like not drinking caffeine, but they don't appear to be correlated.

How many days at a time? I used to drink a lot of coffee on weekdays but none on weekends and didn't notice it making any difference. Stopped drinking coffee altogether and after a few days I was really noticing the difference, and it took about two weeks for the withdrawals to wear off.