Messes with spiders, too.
You can have my coffee when you can prise it from my cold dead hands.
I don’t get enough sleep because to get my 8 hours I’d have to go to sleep at 9:30, and besides not being at all tired at that time, I’m not wasting my free time on being asleep. So I get 5-6 hours sleep and wake up with coffee.
Tea gives me horrible headaches (and I don’t like the taste), so that isn’t happening.
yeah I’ve heard of this study
It gets better and better.
Maybe? I actually only take an SSRI, but I’m not sure how caffeine and SSRIs interact.
Bit of a plodding read at times, but it’s good to hear some science, especially about genetics, showing that different people have different reactions to caffeine. I get so annoyed when people tell me my caffeine sensitivity is “all in my head.”
I hope the description of the researcher’s hair and office location serves some purpose in the book, because it serves no apparent purpose in this excerpt.
This!!! I have a friend who I think is anorexic. He is in his 60s, lives alone, and used to be obsessed with working out and being thin. He had a lot of friends, but rarely had he ever eaten with anybody. He drank a lot of diet coke and he also chewed a lot of energy gum. He ended up in the hospital with psychosis. He was very very thin. The thing that made me suspect caffeine-induced psychosis was the fervor with which he asked for energy gum (amid the rambling). He was also paranoid and refused to drink or eat anything at the hospital. He never had any signs of psychosis before and I have known him for 15 years.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t have much money and didn’t get great medical treatment. Now he is over-drugged. I think I did get him to quit chewing energy gum and drinking caffeinated drinks. He really needs a doctor who will explore whether the 1 psychotic break was due to caffeine rather than innate psychosis. It is really sad. So, thank you very very much for this article!
I was going to remark, “I don’t see what you did there.”
All of caffeine’s effects — from athletic and cognitive boosts to sleeplessness and anxiety — vary, depending on how quickly we process the drug. The half-life of caffeine in the human body is about four or five hours. That is the time it will take for the caffeine concentration to drop 50 percent. But this can be dramatically different from person to person.
Very much so.
I know plenty of people that can drink cup after cup of coffee and still go to sleep in a few hours. I, however, can only consume coffee in the morning and it will effect me for the rest of the day and into the evening (in a good way). I never get panic attacks or anything from too much caffeine, but I certainly get too jittery, animated and find myself gritting my teeth with an overdose.
I have to portion off coffee like lines of cocaine. If I do too much (even in the morning) I’ll have tons of trouble getting to sleep later. Then again, I know I’m a physiological anomaly compared to most people where I have freakish endurance, etc. when my sleep cycle, diet is in order.
About this much cheap instant coffee and I’m great for the day:
If it’s Starbuck’s Via, I can only do about half this amount or less. That stuff is like crack caffeine to me.
Overly large doses of caffeine daily and on a continuous basis definitely reveal some relatively strong symptoms, though I am not sure how unaware of these symptoms such users may be. Anxiety, migraines, and sleeplessness are examples.
The paper does reveal added information about these symptoms, though I am a little taken back because the users seem to be oblivious to the problem of their excessive caffeine intake, almost like little children, an “oh my how could this be” ignorance that I find a little… dubious. I wonder if they are taking that “I am the innocent victim” stance for the purposes of a lawsuit.
But, the paper also points out one of the more “subtle” influences that caffeine users really may not have noticed or be aware of. Anxiety. And, one reason for this may be because anxiety is subtle, it can further manifest in many ways which the person is blind to. Perhaps because it typically manifests in thought patterns they take “seriously” at the time. Therefore, there is a subjectivity to the activity of anxiety, which is almost invariably blinding by definition.
I believe I am taking a much more guarded stance in response, however, because of the manner in which the paper ended. Were these sexual deviants influenced by caffeine? I really do not think so, and I am surprised anybody took that seriously even in a court system wrought with frivolous cases.
I could have told you that. For me, a cup of tea can compensate for insufficient sleep, and improve productivity, but a cup of coffee takes me beyond focused to high, and while whatever task I’m doing seems totally awesome, I’m pretty scattered and actually less productive than with no caffeine.
EXACTLY.
If people treat it like a drug, instead of something they need just to get up to feeling normal again, it’ll work like a drug.
I used to have three cups a day since childhood with no problem, but I noticed that I was feeling a little shaky and lightheaded in the evenings around my early thirties. In the past, when having more than one cup in a sitting, I definitely felt a panicked sensation, so I decided to reduce my caffeine intake.
I cut back to having one cup of caffeinated coffee in the morning and drinking decaf for the rest of the day. It soon became apparent that I had been habituated to caffeine when that one cup set off my nerves and gave me the jitters. I now drink only decaffeinated coffee and avoid Coke. I feel much, much better. Far less anxious overall.
Caffeine is a really intense, unpleasant stimulant for some people. I know some people who used to take speed fairly regularly, and they have said that coffee is worse for them in terms quality of experience. If I accidentally get served a cup of full-strength coffee now that I’m off it, the effects are deeply unpleasant. I’m in the habit of carrying codeine around with me in case of kidney stones, so I usually take a couple of pills to take the edge off the caffeine.
Came here to say exactly that. I had no idea what SCAD meant, it wasn’t explained anywhere in the article and it didn’t show up in the first few listings on Google so I assume it’s not a common expression. I’m still not convinced it means Standard Caffeine Dose because, well that acronym should be SCD…
These effects are often associated with high blood pressure - I wonder how this has been taken into account.
SCAD is variable. It depends on the researcher’s opinions. I’ve seen a few figures pop up in various contexts.
When talking about coffee, the SCAD is usually listed as 80mg per cup (8oz give or take). For pills, 300mg/pill is the universal dose. Quite Frankly, 300mg/pill is a dangerous dose if you ask me. Caffeine pills can take anywhere from 30mins-2hours before you notice any effect, because they’re bound up with wax most of the time. So it’s easy to double up onto 600mg, or just keep taking them until HOLY SHIT I’VE TAKEN 2.4 GRAMS OF CAFFEINE! And you’re sick, and you’re shaking, and your heart’s racing, and your vision’s gone blurry, and you have horrible tinnitus, and your blood pressure is 200 over 180.
Migraine headaches are often caused by low blood pressure in the skull, with a blood vessel pressing on a nerve. For some people taking caffeine, raising their blood pressure, and making that blood vessel contract and stop pushing on the nerve is a good treatment.
Never helps me, but that’s the mechanism I’ve been told.
Then there’s the fact that if you consume a lot of caffeine, and then cut back, you’re going to have stimulant withdrawal headaches.
So it’s like smoking. I started smoking because I was really stressed out and I knew a lot of people smoked to reduce stress. Turns out it’s great at reducing stress. But if I don’t get a cigarette for a few hours, I start getting pretty anxious and more stressed out. It’s a viscous vicious cycle.
Man, that’s thick!
This! I used to abuse a prescription stimulant, and damn that stuff is magic. I’m glad that in a moment of clarity I was able to get myself to tell my doctor and ask him to never prescribe it to me again.
Caffeine on the other hand, just can’t match the really good stimulants. In mild doses, you feel a little something, but when you go for more, anxiety, dread, getting sick, creeps up on you into the high doses. It’s just not a drug that can scale. Either it’s mildly good, or extremely bad if you try to push it. Caffeine very rarely comes with a euphoric element. And the more you use caffeine, the less likely you are to get that kind of effect.
I’m paraphrasing/half remembering, but Dr Karl said one of the things with coffee/caffeine is you are always chasing the dose you had yesterday, so the hit in the morning helps alleviate the withdrawal symptoms of the prior day’s intake. Just like other addictive substances.
