The invisible addiction: is it time to give up caffeine?
theguardian.com> Caffeine itself might not be bad for you, but the sleep it’s stealing from you may have a price. According to [neuroscientist Matt] Walker, research suggests that insufficient sleep may be a key factor in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, arteriosclerosis, stroke, heart failure, depression, anxiety, suicide and obesity. “The shorter you sleep,” he bluntly concludes, “the shorter your lifespan.”
> But here’s what’s uniquely insidious about caffeine: the drug is not only a leading cause of our sleep deprivation; it is also the principal tool we rely on to remedy the problem. Most of the caffeine consumed today is being used to compensate for the lousy sleep that caffeine causes – which means that caffeine is helping to hide from our awareness the very problem that caffeine creates.
After reading just the headline my initial reaction was "Well, no. It's never time to give up caffeine." But after reading the article I must say my view has changed somewhat. Not enough to banish caffeine forever, but enough to question the amount of 'maintenance caffeine' I consume to offset the consumption of the previous day. This cycle is somehow culturally accepted when it concerns caffeine, yet frowned upon when it involves alcohol. Essentially, it's the same trap.
I've continually drank coffee for most of my professional career, ranging from 2 to 6 cups a day. Given it up a few times cold-turkey resulting in annoying withdrawal symptoms mostly headaches and fuzziness.
After a week or two notice an overall increase in energy and no crash/down hours at the end of the workday.
The downside to being off caffeine is heightened awareness of everything around me. This is great if I'm on vacation smelling the flowers but terrible for trying to focus on software development ignoring disturbances and self-induced distractions. The closest I've found to a good balance is about 2 cups only on weekdays, but with lockdowns weekday and weekend habits have merged into a blur.
By Michael Pollan, and is good reading. Personally, I'm going to arm up to defend my right to caffeinate but he's not necessarily wrong about the proble.
Saw a clip on YouTube of him on the Joe Rogan show talking about caffeine. I was somewhat surprised by how strongly he talked about his caffeine addiction and how not using it negatively impacted his life. I've been caffeine free for over a decade after being a chronic abuser for most of my life. Maybe I'm simply too removed from my old caffeinated life but most of the downsides to not using it seem to be false. Most of the downsides I remember were during withdraw periods. Drinking caffeine would get me back to my baseline but by being off of caffeine, I don't need to get back to the baseline because I don't fall off it in the first place.
People who aren't pharmacologists usually have a very limited understand of drug action. Joe Rogan is by no means an expert in the field and I would avoid his advice at all costs
What advice was given in the message you are replying to?
I've been drinking coffee for years. I can stop for a few weeks without any withdrawal symptoms. So it's highly personal.
Yup. I, on the other hand, on 3 cups daily felt like a zombie. Then I quit cold turkey and after a week I felt better that any time in the previous months.
When I occasionally forget myself and ingest more than minimal dose of caffeine (one strong coffee is sufficient) I get dizzy, my sleep patterns immediately go out of whack and if I keep ingesting caffeine I get face muscle twiches and a sense that something very bad happens and I'm gonna probably die soon.
Meanwhile I love coffee and I drink up to six cups of decaf a day.
I also love earl gray tea but I have to indulge occasionally, and cheap energetics, but I have to dose them by half a glass and even that also only occasionally.
Decaf still has enough caffeine left in it that it affects me. So interesting how differently bodies react to different amounts. I can't even have some kinds of chocolate.
Depends on the brand. The modern Swiss Water process (which is what most high-end espresso brands use nowadays, since it's cheaper and doesn't rely on chemicals) uses osmosis to remove 99.9% of the caffeine from the coffee bean.
Wow. That's extreme. Decaf supposedly has way less than 1/20 of the caffeine of regular coffee. Maybe you are sensitive to other substances that coffee contains on top of your sensitivity to caffeine?
Things we ingest have many weird organic substances which we don't pay much attention to because they don't noticeably harm nearly all people. But there's no guarantee they will not somewhat harm anybody.
Nothing we eat or drink was perfectly designed for human consumption. We just kind of get away with it.
By any chance do you also consume nicotine? I've heard that they work together and that nicotine increases the speed at which your body processes caffeine, which might contribute to your lack of withdrawal symptoms.
Caffeine is the #2 addictive substance on earth...after refined sugar.