> The bottom line: A large body of evidence suggests that consumption of caffeinated coffee does not increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases and cancers. In fact, consumption of 3 to 5 standard cups of coffee daily has been consistently associated with a reduced risk of several chronic diseases.
I’m curious if not drinking coffee is associated with getting a caffeine fix from less healthy sources (sodas, energy drinks) and if that is a potentially confounding factor.
It's not 'anti-science' to choose not to take the advice of scientific officials. Their science can at best tell you what's most likely to happen, not what values and future preferences to adopt.
The middle-class world religion of personal health, safety and comfort can no more be derived from the science of our day than the Culte de la Raison could from that of the 18thC (no matter what public health and other officials may tell you).
> Denial is an undervalued life skill. When somebody declares a complicated problem, you simply decide "no it isn't" and then you move on.
People underestimate this. You can rephrase denial as "strong will". It only takes one David Goggins style person to blow the lid off what was considered "impossible".
I think this is especially great for controversial topics/problems too, if it doesn't end with some long term bad result. Coffee is good, and as long as you aren't getting hooked on needing the caffeine, its a bit of a luxury. Its good to enjoy some things in life.
Companies that created a coffee break during the industrial revolution did see significant productivity and quality improvements.
It's quite possible that caffeine blocks adenosine and then your body metabolizes it away via another mechanism for it maxes out. Thus you don't end up paying all of it back. Why? Perhaps our brains may be evolutionarily programmed to use less energy than they could because food was previously much harder to come by.
From an energy conservation POV, overproduction of adenosine makes biological sense.
And even if the caffeine did improve productivity over and above the break itself, that still doesn't prove that the bill doesn't come due later, outside of work hours.
I'd like to see the results from comparing coffee, tea, a caffeine-free herbal tea, water, a break without any substance, a break at your workspace vs a break at a breakroom some distance away, sitting while drinking vs standing while drinking, sun vs indoors, conversation vs silence, and so on.
Literally every link in the page is a paper. Pubmed, NCBI, HSPH, etc.
Also, the interaction of caffeine with adenosine is not new.
I also read somewhere else, in relation to the tolerance build-up, that as the caffeine intake becomes regular, your body produces more and more adenosine than usual to counter-act it. Thus, if you quit the caffeine intake suddenly after many days or weeks of regular intake, you get a crash of biblical proportions. I don't have a source for this right now, but it's also consistent with my own observations. It's also why articles typically suggest to lower the dose progressively when you're trying to quit.
And another myth might be its "positive" effects on exercise. While there are mixed studies on whether caffeine is a diuretic and/or whether it causes dehydration, from my own observations, the motherfucker does make me want to drink insane amounts more of water. So the fake energy sensation is kind of counter-acted by that. Of course, this is my own biased, non-scientific opinion, but I've experimented with this, doing the same exercise the same day of the week, across multiple weeks, with/out the coffee shot. If I want to maximize exercise output now, I stay clear of it, get a good sleep, stay hydrated.
Being fair, none of the studies linked showed that you were "borrowing a bit" that you would have to "pay back later." That does feel like a stretch over the rest of the articles.
It is neat to read on how/why it works. That said, the claim that "it is not the creation of energy" feels like a stretch anyway. Do people really think they get energized in some magical creation way from coffee? Worse, the claim is there that the adenosine "doesn't go away," but there is no cite for that rather key claim. (Did I miss it?)
Edit: For why that last claim needs a cite, it would be like saying ADHD meds for those that take them are "borrowing focus from a later time." Which... feels very contra to how that works.
> Thus, if you quit the caffeine intake suddenly after many days or weeks of regular intake, you get a crash of biblical proportions.
Anecdotally, I had the flu a week at a bit ago. When I'm ill I take my caffeine intake down to zero (so I'm not compromising my sleep). This time I stuck with it. Over the last 10-ish days I've had half a cup of caffeinated coffee. The rest has been decaf (which I believe typically has some trace amounts of caffeine).
I used to drink at least 2 cups, usually 3 per day, occasionally more. I've had no side effects from going to zero. Maybe I wasn't heavy enough of a coffee drinker? But I did expect to feel it while I detoxed. Guess not.
The key claim of the article is: "the adenosine that it blocks doesn’t go away" (thus the borrow/debt analogy)
This is false, it does go away. Adenosine is metabolized back into AMP, then ADP, then ATP (the fuel for cells). And this does not only happen during sleep.
1. I wait 90 minutes from waking to allow adenosine to clear (as opposed to blocking the receptor sites and letting the adenosine stay until crashing in the afternoon). Got this from Andrew huberman on youtube
2. Not after noon - I am fairly early sleeper so a good 8-10 hours to clear the caffeine. (this is about 2 half lives meaning a 75% reduction)
3. Not more than 1 caffeine dose (coffee, coke, premier protein latte -- choose one) just by personal trial and error.
The reason why is pretty clear cut in the article, but you can absolutely be strategic in when you drink it to make its effects more beneficial to your day.
But at the end of the day you're only borrowing time.
Your point 1) was addressed in the article with a cite as well.
Most people don't need sustained energy over a day. For knowledge work at least, the vast majority of work occurs in very specific spurts. So it's more than fine to borrow energy from your future self to get that burst right now when you're in the middle of getting something done.
Coffee naps have definitely helped me meet deadlines lol. The idea is to skull a cup of strong coffee, and have a nap for 15 mins... just enough time to clear the
adenosine, and for the caffeine to enter the bloodstream and block the receptors
Coffee has no subjective effect on my energy or arousal or alertness. I just really enjoy the taste and aroma. Every year or two I wonder if I'm getting addicted or inured to caffeine's effects, so take a few experimental weeks off. Sure enough, nothing happens - no withdrawal effects or subjective reduction in alerness/arousal/energy. I return eventually because I miss the taste with my morning toast. I haven't quite generated the curiosity to to read up on it, but I idly wonder if caffeine just doesn't have much effect on some people.
For what it's worth, I did the same self-experiment at various times in my 20s and early 30s. I got the same result: none of the headaches, grumpiness, lack of focus, etc., which I'd heard people experience going through caffeine withdrawal.
I came to the same conclusion as you: in the same way that I don't notice a significant uptick in energy when I drink coffee, maybe I also don't get the withdrawal when I stop. Maybe some people are just weird like that?
Then I did the same thing in my early 40s, and the headaches started on the second day. It was pretty bad actually, and I understood what people meant when they talked about an actual, physical withdrawal period. So, now I think it's just metabolism (or some other characteristic that changes with age), rather than a blanket immunity to the effects.
For a very long time in my life, I used to have a cup of coffee before going to bed on cold days. Over time, people convinced me this was bad for me, and I stopped doing that. But sometimes, I can't resist and drink coffee at night. I sleep like an angel, as if I just drank some milk.
I'm kinda the same way. While I still do a daily one to prevent the withdrawal headaches, most of my coffee drinking is for the experience, with more energy than necessary put into making it fancy with the techniques and ratios and such. The caffeine only really hits when I'm dialing in a new espresso recipe and go through like 3 or 4 shots within a short window
I've never experienced a withdrawal headache. Though thinking about it the only headaches I've ever had have been the result of hangovers, so maybe I'm just not prone to headaches in general.
Both for me. I try not to drink that much (one 12oz mug a day usually) but it’s still enough that I _really_ feel the days I don’t. The first morning isn’t terrible, but I won’t be as alert as normal (kind of a “just got out of bed” grogginess). Around lunchtime and for the next couple days I’ll be much more tired than normal, have a very difficult time focusing, and a moderate headache.
For sure - I went through a period of having a couple of single espressos every day, and if I stopped cold without a day or two of tea drinking to taper off, I'd get a day of really strong headaches. If you can start and stop without noticing anything you clearly have a different metabolism (or you're drinking very weak coffee!)
I'm strictly strong espresso/macchiato, self-ground fresh beans, and drink 3 or 4 doubles most mornings. Last time I stopped was for 6 weeks mid last year as an experiment. No effects whatsoever that I could discern. Nothing you'd really call cravings either. I did want coffee in the first few mornings, but missed it less than I did apples when floods disrupted supply of most fresh goods here last year.
So I guess there really must be individual differences.
I recently quit caffeine. Like you, I never noticed a difference...until I took my workouts more seriously. Recently I noticed that caffeine makes it more difficult to go hard at the gym. My heart rate spikes more readily.
Odd, most pre workouts supplements include caffeine.
I use a pre-workout from a very famous supplement brand which includes 175 mg of caffeine and I can definitely tell the difference. I can't tell how much of that is because of the caffeine, because it has more stuff like creatine and L-carnitine among other things, but I cant I feel like I last more doing this and I have more energy.
Right. I run 5 days a week, but I don't attend to performance enough to be really aware of any difference there. I suspect differences due to caffeine, if any, would be swamped by the already pretty significant day to day variations. But that's just a guess.
In my experience, it's not the case. I tried periods when I drink coffee, and drink no coffee for months. I was much more productive when I did drink some coffee.
Although my most productive periods have been those days where I start drinking coffee again after a month of no caffeine. Then it tapers out but remains at a higher baseline than no caffeine.
Does anyone know of references that address how effective specific amounts of caffeine are at different times of day? This seems like the kind of question that a military would wish to study but I haven’t ever found a ‘user’s guide’ for optimal coffee use
I suspect it will be - most of medicine uses the idea of 'reference ranges' to establish normal physiological state.
The reference range is simply the range of observed states of whatever characteristic is being measured. Here, I would be interested in a study that maps caffeine doses to changes in various characteristics such as alertness/acuity and latency between periods of falling asleep.
Readit News
I'll drink it regardless, as many as I want. I'll pretend the negatives don't exist which by means of placebo is true in my "lived experience".
Denial is an undervalued life skill. When somebody declares a complicated problem, you simply decide "no it isn't" and then you move on.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/food-features/c...
> The bottom line: A large body of evidence suggests that consumption of caffeinated coffee does not increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases and cancers. In fact, consumption of 3 to 5 standard cups of coffee daily has been consistently associated with a reduced risk of several chronic diseases.
Is this a standard coffee dose? Maybe I'm just sensitive to caffeine, but a two-cup day generally ends with me being jittery before a crash.
Deleted Comment
The middle-class world religion of personal health, safety and comfort can no more be derived from the science of our day than the Culte de la Raison could from that of the 18thC (no matter what public health and other officials may tell you).
People underestimate this. You can rephrase denial as "strong will". It only takes one David Goggins style person to blow the lid off what was considered "impossible".
Ignorance is bliss.
Companies that created a coffee break during the industrial revolution did see significant productivity and quality improvements.
It's quite possible that caffeine blocks adenosine and then your body metabolizes it away via another mechanism for it maxes out. Thus you don't end up paying all of it back. Why? Perhaps our brains may be evolutionarily programmed to use less energy than they could because food was previously much harder to come by.
From an energy conservation POV, overproduction of adenosine makes biological sense.
My gut feel is that the important part here is the break, not the coffee — prior to that point it was common to work without stopping.
Also, the interaction of caffeine with adenosine is not new.
I also read somewhere else, in relation to the tolerance build-up, that as the caffeine intake becomes regular, your body produces more and more adenosine than usual to counter-act it. Thus, if you quit the caffeine intake suddenly after many days or weeks of regular intake, you get a crash of biblical proportions. I don't have a source for this right now, but it's also consistent with my own observations. It's also why articles typically suggest to lower the dose progressively when you're trying to quit.
And another myth might be its "positive" effects on exercise. While there are mixed studies on whether caffeine is a diuretic and/or whether it causes dehydration, from my own observations, the motherfucker does make me want to drink insane amounts more of water. So the fake energy sensation is kind of counter-acted by that. Of course, this is my own biased, non-scientific opinion, but I've experimented with this, doing the same exercise the same day of the week, across multiple weeks, with/out the coffee shot. If I want to maximize exercise output now, I stay clear of it, get a good sleep, stay hydrated.
It is neat to read on how/why it works. That said, the claim that "it is not the creation of energy" feels like a stretch anyway. Do people really think they get energized in some magical creation way from coffee? Worse, the claim is there that the adenosine "doesn't go away," but there is no cite for that rather key claim. (Did I miss it?)
Edit: For why that last claim needs a cite, it would be like saying ADHD meds for those that take them are "borrowing focus from a later time." Which... feels very contra to how that works.
Anecdotally, I had the flu a week at a bit ago. When I'm ill I take my caffeine intake down to zero (so I'm not compromising my sleep). This time I stuck with it. Over the last 10-ish days I've had half a cup of caffeinated coffee. The rest has been decaf (which I believe typically has some trace amounts of caffeine).
I used to drink at least 2 cups, usually 3 per day, occasionally more. I've had no side effects from going to zero. Maybe I wasn't heavy enough of a coffee drinker? But I did expect to feel it while I detoxed. Guess not.
The version I have links to many papers, including these:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10870...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10870...
https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ben/ctmc/2011/0000001...
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-0773....
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1471-4159...
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/026988119100500...
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29514871/#:%7E:text=The%20ph....
I may misunderstand what you mean by cite. Perhaps it has an academic meaning I'm missing? I'm thinking links may not be sufficient as a citation?
This is false, it does go away. Adenosine is metabolized back into AMP, then ADP, then ATP (the fuel for cells). And this does not only happen during sleep.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine_monophosphate
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3246291/
Not sure what's with all the articles that have citations throughout then conveniently exclude the one that matters.
"Companies that created a coffee break during the industrial revolution did see significant productivity and quality improvements."
Without providing any sources.
Deleted Comment
My quick rules of thumb:
1. I wait 90 minutes from waking to allow adenosine to clear (as opposed to blocking the receptor sites and letting the adenosine stay until crashing in the afternoon). Got this from Andrew huberman on youtube
2. Not after noon - I am fairly early sleeper so a good 8-10 hours to clear the caffeine. (this is about 2 half lives meaning a 75% reduction)
3. Not more than 1 caffeine dose (coffee, coke, premier protein latte -- choose one) just by personal trial and error.
But at the end of the day you're only borrowing time.
Your point 1) was addressed in the article with a cite as well.
https://www.vox.com/2014/8/28/6074177/coffee-naps-caffeine-s...
I came to the same conclusion as you: in the same way that I don't notice a significant uptick in energy when I drink coffee, maybe I also don't get the withdrawal when I stop. Maybe some people are just weird like that?
Then I did the same thing in my early 40s, and the headaches started on the second day. It was pretty bad actually, and I understood what people meant when they talked about an actual, physical withdrawal period. So, now I think it's just metabolism (or some other characteristic that changes with age), rather than a blanket immunity to the effects.
I love coffee, some days I drink 3 cups, some days I forget to drink any at all.
When people "can't get things done" without their morning coffee, is it general haziness/fogginess or are they experiencing headaches?
So I guess there really must be individual differences.
I use a pre-workout from a very famous supplement brand which includes 175 mg of caffeine and I can definitely tell the difference. I can't tell how much of that is because of the caffeine, because it has more stuff like creatine and L-carnitine among other things, but I cant I feel like I last more doing this and I have more energy.
P.S. Of course it's a sample size of one.
Although my most productive periods have been those days where I start drinking coffee again after a month of no caffeine. Then it tapers out but remains at a higher baseline than no caffeine.
The reference range is simply the range of observed states of whatever characteristic is being measured. Here, I would be interested in a study that maps caffeine doses to changes in various characteristics such as alertness/acuity and latency between periods of falling asleep.