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Habitual coffee intake shapes the microbiome, modifies physiology and cognition

nature.com

241–250 of 281 posts

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

#241

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.

Yeah it's telling how ISIC is covering this study. Their title is:

> New research reveals mechanisms behind coffee’s positive effects on the gut-brain axis

https://www.coffeeandhealth.org/health/media-content/news-al...

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

#242

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…

I think this monthly withdrawal syndrome with the anhedonia reflects a true gap in scientific understanding of caffeine. There are communities where people routinely quit caffeine (e.g. /r/decaf) who all notice the same thing. Yet if you look at how long caffeine withdrawal lasts: the reference answer is 1 - 2 weeks (then everything is "normal.")

I think caffeine is legitimately more disruptive and addictive than is commonly acknowledged. It creates quite a life-style loop where you need it for [drive, energy, mood, alertness] as a fix to many of the issues it causes, lol. Caffeine is such a widely used drug yet doesn't seem to have been studied that much. It's fascinating to me how the drugs that are socially acceptable seem completely arbitrary. Like alcohol (which in terms of addictiveness isn't far behind the most addictive drugs.)

In tables that compare the most addictive drugs, you know what drug is always missing yet seems to be consumed more widely than any other recreational drug on the planet: caffeine. This is funny though. It may be difficult to actually do high quality, comparative research on caffeine because to do so you would need to find people who don't already consume caffeine and I suspect that is a harder problem than it sounds.

By the way: the set of people who have never been effected by caffeine shrinks even further if you consider whether the mother consumed it during pregnancy.

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

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every damn time, for chocolate, coffee, and red wine "studies."

Who else would fund a study?

It'd be nice if the gov't could do it. Or at least enforced some regulation so that a study is forced to preprint so we at least know when a study was attempted but didn't end up publishing the results

Ultimately these industry-funded studies are still gov't funded as well. They are "public-private partnerships" but it's stupid how we don't talk about the fact that usually the majority of the grants come from the gov't. Even when a study is mostly funded by the industry it's relying on utilize existing infrastructure or early-stage research initiated by government funds.

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

#244
post #196

I drank a lot of coffee until I forgot to pack instant on a 3 day backpacking trip. Headache the whole time that I cured in 5 minutes by drinking a mt dew the minute we got back to civilization. Figured it wasn't worth it and weaned off. Then it turned out my rate of getting migraines dropped off considerably. But I love coffee, so I tried decaf. Migraines returned to being more frequent. So that was that. If I could…

PSA: decaffeinated coffee contains about 1/3 as much caffeine as regular - so far from caffeine free.

That's not accurate. In an 8oz cup of decaf there's 2–15 mg of caffeine. Regular coffee is about 91 mg for an 8oz cup

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

#245
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a moka pot but I guess I am doing it wrong -- maybe I should not fill its coffee compartment to the brim? How big is your moka pot? A "4 cup" Bialetti takes around 16-18g of coffee, which isn't a lot. No matter how dilute your end product is, the amount of caffeine consumed will roughly be about the same. But I guess diluting it means you take longer to consume all that caffeine.

That doesn't make sense, as my 1 cup takes 10g and 3 cup takes 30g.

Is yours a Bialetti? Mine's the "4 cup" stainless steel Venus, so I think it's probably like a "3 cup" Moka Express:

https://www.reddit.com/r/mokapot/comments/1p61tgb/how_much_c...

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

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less about the strength of coffee than about your metabolism. I used to be unaffected by caffeine, and now it takes a few sips in the morning to mess with my sleep in the evening - sth that started happening in my twenties I believe, possibly liver-related.

Interesting, do you have any good links for this? I can have a coffee a bit before bed if I really want. I also used to think I had a "high metabolism", but don't say that anymore since it comes off as kind of bogus.

Unfortunately no. It's my inference, given that 23andme didn't find any genetic indicator (CYP1A2) for slow metabolism, which is in line with my experience I got more sensitive over time.

So it must be some other mechanism that diminished enzyme production. Some of my liver (were those enzymes are produced) values were elevated over the last few years for no good reason, and I suspect the two could be related.

It's a bit annoying, as I'm reacting to trace amounts of caffeine in coffee, tea or chocolate, but I'm more worried about all the other, possibly carcinogenic, environmental toxins my liver won't be able to filter out.

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

#247

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…

caffeine is not the same as coffee.

coffee is caffeine plus THOUSANDS of compounds interacting with each other and your body: some of them are protective for the heart for example.

That's why synthetic caffeine is bad, while coffee is overall good in moderation.

That's why more people die from energy drinks than from coffe in coffeeshop hehe

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

#248
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do 6-10 espresso cups per day, so 3-5 does sound very moderate.

It depends on how much caffeine is in your cup. Rather than measuring the size of a cup, I would go by the amount of coffee, as in the weight of the beans, used to brew it. The actual amount of caffeine is not as easy to measure, and even for the same kind of beans, there is natural variation. For a traditional Italian espresso, about 7g of coffee beans are extracted. For a third-wave double espresso, it's usually 18…

Rather than measuring the size of a cup, I would go by the amount of coffee, as in the weight of the beans, used to brew it.

I feel this is more precise than the ml cup measuremnts, but if you wanted to be really precise, you'd have to specify the type of beans used (the caffeine content varies widely) and even the brewing method https://oldchicagocoffee.com/coffee-bean-caffeine-content-by....

And - there is an influence - even in the region the beans are grown. In the link I provided they even go so far as to differentiate as to genetics of the beans.

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

#249
post #141

It's always amusing to read the self-narratives of a bunch of unacknowledged drug addicts when links like this get posted.

Read the very first paragraph of this paper:

> Moderate coffee consumption is associated with various health benefits, including reduced risks of type 2 diabetes, liver disease, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer3. In a large cross-sectional study of 468,629 individuals without clinical cardiovascular disease, light-to-moderate coffee consumption was linked to lower rates of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, and stroke incidence4. Furthermore, coffee intake is consistently associated with a reduced risk of Parkinson’s disease in a dose-dependent manner, across multiple human cohorts5,6,7. Meta-analyses have also found that coffee consumers face a lower risk of depression8,9, and one meta-analysis of cohort studies examining cognitive decline, showed that coffee consumption accounted for a 27% reduction in the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease10.

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

#250

Here is a fun citation with a brief summary. They suggest regular caffine use lowers your baseline and it just returns you to where you'd be if you weren't dependent. University of Bristol. "Coffee consumption unrelated to alertness: Stimulating effects may be illusion, study finds." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 3 June 2010. .

It allows you to rearrange your alertness budget in time if not in total.

It allows the human to form a more effective cog
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