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Caffeine dosing strategies to optimize alertness during sleep loss

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Re: Caffeine dosing strategies to optimize alertness during sleep loss

#31

Post by koboll »

andai wrote: post #24
gadders wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took some of that once for an overnight deployment at work. It's good stuff. No headaches like I would have got if I'd been drinking coffee all night.

I tried Modafinil for a few weeks with some friends. The alertness is quite incredible, although for me made me unable to fall asleep until dawn (even on half the lowest dose). The others have no trouble sleeping even with large doses, but experienced some bad headaches, or personality changes ("I just want to work all day now" -- this may not be bad depending on context). I quit the trial when I developed large purp…

I used to use modafinil daily and though I never got skin side effects, it ended up causing the same sort of quality-of-life-depressing dependence and tolerance issues as caffeine.

Re: Caffeine dosing strategies to optimize alertness during sleep loss

#32

Post by qz3 »

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…

What I find interesting is that people who like those mate drinks are quite brand loyal (at least in my experience).

I've tried at least 10 different brands since I had my first Club Mate 15 years ago, and I hated every single one of them. A few friends hate Club Mate and only like a single other brand.

Re: Caffeine dosing strategies to optimize alertness during sleep loss

#33

Post by dsego »

andai wrote: post #24
gadders wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took some of that once for an overnight deployment at work. It's good stuff. No headaches like I would have got if I'd been drinking coffee all night.

I tried Modafinil for a few weeks with some friends. The alertness is quite incredible, although for me made me unable to fall asleep until dawn (even on half the lowest dose). The others have no trouble sleeping even with large doses, but experienced some bad headaches, or personality changes ("I just want to work all day now" -- this may not be bad depending on context). I quit the trial when I developed large purp…

I also started getting red patches on my skin after weeks of use. There were some headaches, dry mouth, jaw clenching etc. It did improve bowel movements.

Re: Caffeine dosing strategies to optimize alertness during sleep loss

#34

Post by flipp3r »

_lbaq wrote: post #23

Caffeine is also linked to panic attacks, anxiety and sleep loss (and loss of quality of sleep), I would recommend staying off caffeine all together, having tried both, I by far more like working in the calmness of not having caffeine circulating in my body. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine-induced_anxiety_disor...

Wow, this is actually a thing! I thought it was just me.

As someone who used to drink a LOT of cola-cola during their teens, caffeine really fucked me up good. I only noticed I was dependant (addicted) on caffeine after a friend pointed out I only felt good again on certain days after coming back from a client where there was no cola available. I took a little bottle with me to the client and felt "normal" that day. Didn't even know it had caffeine. Had fairly bad anxiety and panic attacks at the time.

I then quit caffeine cold turkey. Couldn't even sit upright when I woke up after 2 days of not taking any.

I've now tried it on and off and noticed my anxiety / panic attacks happened out of nowhere, somewhat related to consuming caffeine. I think it happens a couple hours, sometimes a day after consumptions. Really took a couple years link it to caffeine. I've been to doctors, hospitals, psychiatrists, physical therapists, blah blah blah. It was just fucking caffeine.

If you read this and think consuming coffee or cola all day is fine see what happens when you stop taking it for just a couple days. Yeah I get it, you just use it to "boost" your energy during the day right, you're definitely not addicted, right? Yeah, headaches in the weekend are normal - everyone has them..

Re: Caffeine dosing strategies to optimize alertness during sleep loss

#35

Post by synthmeat »

andai wrote: post #24
gadders wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took some of that once for an overnight deployment at work. It's good stuff. No headaches like I would have got if I'd been drinking coffee all night.

I tried Modafinil for a few weeks with some friends. The alertness is quite incredible, although for me made me unable to fall asleep until dawn (even on half the lowest dose). The others have no trouble sleeping even with large doses, but experienced some bad headaches, or personality changes ("I just want to work all day now" -- this may not be bad depending on context). I quit the trial when I developed large purp…

In my case, hydrating excessively (>3 liters per day) mitigated most of the negative side-effects. Jaw clenching still persists.

Effect attenuates with regular daily use for me, despite most research to the contrary, which leads me to believe it's caused just by plain old lack of sleep during consumption days.

Care to elaborate on the skin issues? Were they planar circles (I know, oxymoron)? And what's "large"? I could maybe correlate some skin issues of mine (up to 1cm, but majority smaller than .5 tumor-like skin bumps, mostly colorless, but some red with darker aureola) to this.

Re: Caffeine dosing strategies to optimize alertness during sleep loss

#37

Post by Karupan »

_lbaq wrote: post #23

Caffeine is also linked to panic attacks, anxiety and sleep loss (and loss of quality of sleep), I would recommend staying off caffeine all together, having tried both, I by far more like working in the calmness of not having caffeine circulating in my body. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine-induced_anxiety_disor...

I realised this after consuming two coffees a day - one in the morning and one after noon. I used to struggle with insomnia and used to sleep only by 2:00 AM frequently. After a few days of missing out my afternoon coffee, I started to notice that I felt much better and calmer. As someone who is fighting depression and anxiety, cutting off my coffee completely has helped.

I now substitute with a tea in the morning if necessary.

Re: Caffeine dosing strategies to optimize alertness during sleep loss

#38

Post by eludwig »

4ad wrote: post #8

I drink a lot of tea. About 1 liter a day as a baseline, but if I do some ultrahike or something I can easily drink 3 liters a day. Sometimes for some reason it's really hard to drink my tea (e.g. I'm in a hotel that doesn't have drinkable tea), so I tried to substitute with other caffeine products. Unfortunately I couldn't find out any reliable data on the caffeine content of the tea that I drink. All the informatio…

Yeah, there is a whole subjective component to all of this that is hard to get good information on.

I am older, and drink both tea and coffee depending on mood, need for caffeine, etc.

There are some online guides that give ratios of caffeine in typical tea versus typical coffee. Of course, figuring out what "typical" is is the issue! What I've seen shows that black tea has quite a bit less caffeine per serving (bag, infuser full, etc): 1/10 to 1/5 of coffee caffeine. However, there seems to be a big difference in coffee strength! As an anecdote, I personally find little difference in caffeine between weak coffee (Dunkin Donuts regular is a good example) and a strong black tea (Tazo Awake, for example). On the other hand, Starbucks drip coffee is like getting a meth injection! Immediate symptoms: increased heartbeat, "speedy" feeling, fidgeting, etc.

Also, I hear you on water temps. At home I use an aeropress and 195 degree(F) water for coffee pressing. To me, there really is a taste difference (less bitterness, mainly) if I leave the water just below boiling, but some people don't see any difference and like their water hotter.

Experimentation seems to be the only way to get to your caffeine happy place!

Re: Caffeine dosing strategies to optimize alertness during sleep loss

#39

Post by _ak »

Zezima wrote: post #22
_ak wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Germans used metamphetamine during World War 2. They gave it nicknames Panzerschokolade ("tank chocolate"), Stuka-Tabletten ("Stuka tablets"), Herman-Göring-Pillen, or Flieger-Marzipan ("pilot's marzipan"). It was freely available under the brand name "Pervitin" until 1941. From then on, you needed a prescription in order to purchase it.

Did you read Blitzed by Norman Ohler?

No, why?

Re: Caffeine dosing strategies to optimize alertness during sleep loss

#40

Post by tzahola »

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…

I used to drink 1.5 litre of Club Mate per day. I was pretty hyped up, but it caused my heart to flutter in my chest every now and then.
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