71–80 of 251 posts
If caffeinated is your normal state, then it becomes much less effective at treating migraines, hangovers and other headaches.
I had a very similar experience as this author. All throughout high school and college, I was prescribed Adderall. After graduation, I got a job, and realized Adderall wasn't good for me long term, so I switched to coffee. This alone helped with my anxiety, ability to sleep, and social interactions. After a while, I started to wonder if coffee is good for me also. So I quit cold turkey for a few weeks as an experimen…
How much did you drink? I found the same effect when I didn't know how to use coffee and drank at any hour, multiple times a day, from the office's coffee machine, and couldn't make it at home. Obvious result: bad sleep, anxiety, and a crash every weekend. They all got better after I quit, also obviously. Then I looked into it more, bought my own press and grinder, started taking one cup a morning with the dosage I w…
I feel like caffeine is a *results may vary topic, every time it is discussed many people have wildly different experiences.
I quit Coffee one month each year (Ramadan while fasting). It has the effect of resetting my tolerance to caffeine. The first coffee after Ramandan feels more like Cocaine than Caffeine, almost like a superpower. However, I have to say, I don't see any difference in sleep quality with or without coffee. I just make sure only to drink coffee in the morning.
Doesn't that make the first few days of fasting miserable? Have you tried progressively reducing the dosage for a few weeks in preparation?
[1] https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/nasa-spiders-drugs-experime...
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…
It is customary for me to enjoy an espresso (occasionally two) with a bar of dark chocolate after dinner. I sleep well not much later. 100s of thousands, if not millions, do this as a matter of culture.
What if you think you sleep well now, but it turns out you can sleep so much better?
I'm not saying you will (I'm neither pro- nor anti-caffeine). But I am saying that unless you've tried it, you have no way of knowing. And I know lots of people who have improved their sleep in various ways, who thought they were sleeping normally/fine, and then discovered they actually hadn't been -- they just didn't know any better.
(And even if millions of people do something as a matter of culture, that doesn't mean it's good for your health. There are tons of cultural practices that are bad for health, or bad for a subset of the population.)
As a person with willpower/focus issues, I've found caffeine to be a godsend in college. I've started using so much I've switched to caffeine pills to save money. At first I was taking 200mg in the morning to wake up, 100mg every couple of hours to get me through the lectures, and another 200mg at home to study. It went well, and I became one of the best students in my class, but my anxiety went over the roof. I beca…
High amounts shrink the brain, increase dementia risk. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1028415X.2021.19... And very few people drink 1-2 cups. The travel mugs and typical coffee place cups are close to this danger range.
> After full covariate adjustment, consumption of >6 cups/day was associated with 53% higher odds of dementia compared to consumption of 1–2 cups/day So what they're saying is too much of a (good? fine? reasonable?) thing can be a bad thing? Not sure this supports a case against caffeine. You should look up what happens if someone consumes too much salt!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't that make the first few days of fasting miserable? Have you tried progressively reducing the dosage for a few weeks in preparation?
Isn't subjecting oneself to feeling miserable kind of the point of religious fasting?
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…
The article is precisely about how drinking coffee, even just in the morning, absolutely can negatively affect your sleep.
What the author doesn't mention (and maybe didn't experience, but you might) is that quitting can cause splitting headaches. The two or three times I've gotten off caffeine have been miserable. I've felt worse, for longer, than the two or three times I've gone off nicotine.
A bonus effect, however, is that when I do take caffeine - usually when I need to stay alert driving at night or early morning - it's far more effective.