Funner facts; HDL is not protective. It correlates negatively with poor glucose control. That is, people with low HDL have impaired glucose control, but raising HDL doesn’t bring any benefit.
LDL concentration isn’t meaningful at an individual level. LDL particle counts however are. Lots of small LDL particles are way more atherogenic than a few large particles, given a constant density.
I don't think this is true. While it's possible that coffee can raise cholesterol levels, it doesn't actual contain any. Here's what the top result off Google for [coffee cholesterol] says:
Though brewed coffee does not contain actual cholesterol, it does have two natural oils that contain chemical compounds -- cafestol and kahweol -- which can raise cholesterol levels.
Other studies have shown a correlation with mortality and filtered/unfiltered coffee. Which goes a long way to explaining how some coffee studies showed benefits and others problems, because the studies tended to be regional and were studying slightly different things.
What's the basis for those statements? Especially the "five cups a day" one. The article says otherwise, which is one of the interesting things about it.
> Importantly, consuming any amount of coffee was not associated with a higher risk of heart rhythm problems, including atrial fibrillation (AFib) or atrial flutter, which Kistler said is often what clinicians are concerned about.
I'm also looking at the Wikipedia article on the health effects of coffee, and it seems like 4 cups a day is sort of the sweet spot for a lot of positive effects, but I don't see anything about more than that being bad in most cases.
> A 2012 meta-analysis concluded that people who drank moderate amounts of coffee had a lower rate of heart failure, with the biggest effect found for those who drank more than four cups a day.
Five cup a day drinker over here, so I'd love to know if you have conflicting sources.
This term "cup" is kind of problematic though. 4 espressos? Which have about 120mg of caffeine each. Or 4 starbuck large size? Which have something like 400mg of caffeine.
Caffeine can raise intraocular pressure which puts you at increased risk from glaucoma - especially if you already have a genetic predisposition for it.
It’s always interesting to reverse the direction of causality in these kinds of articles and see if it’s plausible. Could it simply be that people with heart problems drink less coffee?
Yup. Or: people who have decent jobs and are conscientious about them are more likely to decide to drink coffee daily to make themselves more productive, and these traits also make them more likely to (a) be more conscientious about their health, (b) have health insurance and be more able to pay medical bills.
I don't have numbers on this, but I have the impression that many people drink coffee on weekdays in order to be awake for their job—and they probably wouldn't make it a daily thing if they didn't have a job—and therefore daily coffee drinkers will contain a much higher proportion of people who are healthy enough to hold down a job.
Prima facie this seems an unlikely causal direction.
After about ten days of drinking {an amount} of coffee, your tolerance adjusts, and you're aligned to someone who does not drink coffee at all. You're effectively just maintaining a new baseline, but have developed a regular expenditure / tactile ceremony.
The 'make themselves more productive' claim would need some citations to back that up, as I suspect most is self-reporting anecdata.
> After about ten days of drinking {an amount} of coffee, your tolerance adjusts, and you're aligned to someone who does not drink coffee at all.
Is that really true? I'm speaking from a position of ignorance here, but then that's a very strong statement with non-obvious validity to me. I know that substance tolerance exists (at least it's a very common idea), but is it so generic that it applies to a) all effects and each of those effects in its entirety, and b) to all effective substances that make up coffee?
And as a more specific example, I don't think I've ever taken something like "heroin addicts need to take heroin just to feel normal again, and more to feel a high" so literally that I thought they would function "normally" as in exactly like a non-heroin user would when taking an exact dosage to counteract their tolerance.
There was a spectacular long-form article, I'm sure I read via HN, about 7 years ago, that included a delightfully lurid dive into the chemical and biological effects of caffeine, on humans, over a period of a few weeks, and that fond but slightly hazy memory is where I'm getting that figure from.
Regrettably I've not been able to find that particular article again.
.. which, if I'm reading that precis right, blows it out to 4 weeks (but it sounds like they were testing the presence of the dependency / tolerance / baseline effect, not trying to determine minimum timeframe to achieve).
The list of Similar Articles at the bottom of that second link suggests there's some body of research out there to back these styles of claims up. The considered wisdom, as far as I can intuit, is to use caffeine strategically rather than frequently, if you want to enjoy the advertised 'energy' and 'focus' benefits. Of course, if you just like the flavour or the ceremony, knock yourself out.
It doesn't have to work. The simple fact that they care and try is already a correlate of higher conscientiousness. As in, some person always trying the latest productivity hack may be more productive than a normal person even if all the hacks do nothing, simply because they're the kind of person who tries to be maximally productive.
Another example is caffeine is widely used as a pre-workout supplement. In high doses, without tolerance, it actually does demonstrably improve top-level strength. But the way most people use it results in tolerance and doesn't actually help. Nonetheless, the sheer fact that they're working out all the time already results in better heart health, even if the caffeine isn't doing anything on top of that.
Well, the point (I think?) of researching causation is so that you can make use of it. If I know that doing X makes me healthier, that's valuable for my decision of whether to do X; if doing X is merely associated with being healthier, but causation is not established (and in fact it's possible for doing X to harm you while still being associated with better health—consider "any harmful activity that young healthy people like to do and old people don't do"), then that's not useful for me.
I dunno, I guess you could be interested in learning to classify people. If they do X, then that increases your estimate of their current healthiness regardless of the underlying causation. If you're an insurance company, an actuary, etc., then maybe that's all you need to know.
> “Because coffee can quicken heart rate, some people worry that drinking it could trigger or worsen certain heart issues... We found coffee drinking had either a neutral effect—meaning that it did no harm—or was associated with benefits to heart health.”
I’ve often wondered this effect as it relates to widely prescribed prescription stimulants (ie adderrall)… is an artificially elevated heart rate damaging or strengthening the system?
My totally uneducated guess would be that whatever long term health effects that stimulants have on heart rate are minor compared to other stimulant effects (like blood pressure, appetite changes, etc)
I was on prescription stims for about 8 years. My heart rate was significantly higher in gym class than most, despite being relatively in-shape. However, I was apparently on them for so long that my RHR was permanently elevated. I almost never go below 85, over 10 years later. I doubt this was a net benefit for heart health.
It seems plausible that the increase in heart rate, blood pressure slightly make up for our general lack of exercise. And when you are studying heart disease and end-of-life, pretty much everyone being studied has a lack of exercise by definition.
Well, there's a reason a screening EKG and sometimes periodic monitoring is recommended for people taking stimulants. There seems to be a general medical opinion that stimulants tax an already-taxed heart. It seems more ambiguous for people with healthy hearts. And given that obesity and drug addiction are common consequences of untreated ADHD, even if they are mildly cardiotoxic, they may still reduce the risk of heart disease when properly prescribed. (I'm no doctor, FWIW.)
Generally, I've been of the opinion of "use it or lose it" AND that natural > artificial... meaning that I think less of "pills" and more of exercising.
People that claim "natural" is better than "artificial" have the burden of defining those terms and supporting with evidence why one should be better than the other. I have never seen anyone who uses those terms come close to doing this. Nobody can even define what those words mean, much less provide evidence for the claim. So I classify "natural > artificial" as pure BS and not-even-wrong until proven otherwise.
Coffeine is increasing chance of dissociation happening without outside stimuli, increasing likely hood of non substance addiction hundreds of times.....
not worth risk.
combined with most games and tv shows that are "casino like " yeah,
you lose money long term drinking coffeee / tea.
Do not forget to buy energy drinks to your teenagers for long term effecs, having affecting them sooner in their lives!
More space / money / profit for non drinking people.
Scientists have been collectively saying coffee is good for you, with more and more confidence, for about 30 years now. If you keep hearing that's it's bad, it means you need to improve your information sources.
My first thought was I could have sworn I read something about coffee being bad for you not too long ago. Second thought, I wonder who funded this study. Thirdly, there was research showing that most nutrition research is nonsense.
Everything we were told about cholestoral, fat and food pyramid turned out to be nonsense.
I just ignore most of these nutrition "studies" and just stick to moderation and live my life.
To be fair, and maybe it's my bias as a coffee drinker speaking here, but from what I've observed so far, moderate coffee consumption seems to much more often be assessed as positive, health-wise, or at least "not bad".
And this seems entirely in contrast to, say, alcohol.
Note that this article is talking about "coffee", not "caffeine". Many of the benefits can be had from decaf. As I understand coffee is one of the major sources of antioxidants in standard American diets which is probably a big reason for this.
The article is talking about both coffee and caffeine. Quoting from the article: "Decaf coffee did not have favorable effects against incident arrhythmia but did reduce cardiovascular disease, with the exception of heart failure. Kistler said the findings suggest caffeinated coffee is preferable across the board, and there are no cardiovascular benefits to choosing decaf over caffeinated coffees."
The article does not discuss caffeine on its own. You're making an assumption that because caffeinated coffee seems to have more benefits than decaf therefore it must be caffeine itself that has the benefits.
The article also states:
> People often equate coffee with caffeine, but coffee beans actually have over 100 biologically active compounds. These substances can help reduce oxidative stress and inflammation, improve insulin sensitivity, boost metabolism, inhibit the gut’s absorption of fat and block receptors known to be involved with abnormal heart rhythms.
One of the possible major problems with decaf are the extra processing steps. You're wading into "processed foods" territory.
"The most-common methods of decaffeination involve chemical solvents, usually ethyl acetate or methylene chloride. In the direct method, the coffee beans are steamed and then rinsed repeatedly with the chemical solvent to flush away the caffeine."[0]
It is not a given that the coffee doesn't have extra unhealthy chemicals or is stripped away of vital nutrients besides caffeine.
These articles are almost always over my head. I know that coffee has LOTS of chemicals in it besides caffiene, do you know of any in particular thought to benefit the heart, immune system, etc?
I think a lot of it is just that coffee has a lot of antioxidants that bring down inflammation. I think modern conventional wisdom is that inflammation is the biggest contributor to heart attacks.
Yay, a study that actually talks about instant coffee too. Does anyone know where instant coffee sits in relation to filtered or unfiltered coffee in other studies? Yes, I'm a complete barbarian.
Hmmm , from memory , instant coffee is usually Robusta type of bean which is more acidic. The study you are looking for , then, are studies which track robusta v/s arabica. I doubt someone could get funding for this , though :)
Every time this comes up, I ask this question: is this because people with stronger hearts can drink coffee, and people with weaker hearts can't. My body definitely cannot tolerate coffee.
Has anyone else developed caffeine addiction from a daily coffee habit?
I used to drink one cup in the morning every day. However, after a couple years of this, I started experiencing lethargy and mood depression which would both be temporarily alleviated with the morning coffee.
Then my girlfriend at the time surreptitiously replaced my coffee grinds with decaffeinated ones. After a week of headaches and cold-like symptoms, I returned to "baseline normal".
These days I cannot have even small amounts of caffeine without the next day turning into a blur of mental fog and apathy.
Am I just extraordinarily sensitive, or is this a thing?
Yep that’s classic caffeine withdrawal symptoms for you. At least going from one coffee to zero is not too bad, some people who try to go from 5-6 cups/daily to zero will have a much harder time
I am in the midst of caffeine dependence, and have been for years. I don't feel bad the next day though, I just need my morning coffee to feel functional. And an afternoon coffee.
I am slowly reducing the caffeine by switching out the afternoon coffee with two cups, and now one cup of tea. Even that is not easy. When I tried to quit cold turkey, I lasted about a week, and the depression part of the withdrawal symptoms were just too much for me. I felt terrible every day, and it didn't seem to be easing up when I gave up after a week.
Over here in Asia there's no distinction between caffeinated coffee and decaf. Even though coffee is something that naturally grows over here. Despite that, people just but coffee powder off the shelf and use that. There's no specific marking on the packet about the caffeinated/decaf bit.
Now, I attended college in America where decaf and caffeinated coffee is clearly marked everywhere.
I didn't notice anything particularly different at first.
Eventually, I had this boring mandatory lecture in the afternoon, and to prevent myself from falling asleep, I always took a flask full of caffeinated coffee (about 3 cups) and drank it during the lecture.
A few months later, the class got more interesting, and I decided to stop drinking coffee.
I started having severe headaches every evening, and I didn't even realise the cause. One fine day I randomly drank coffee in the evening, and the headache was gone within 30 minutes! I was addicted to coffee!
I tried slowly reducing the quantity of coffee I drank every evening, but it just wouldn't work. Every evening I would have the headache unless I drank a flask full of coffee.
How did I get rid of the addiction? A few months later I travelled back to Asia. The 28-hour connecting flights combination (one of which was a 16-hour nonstop run), combined with the fact that my Asia timezone was 13 hours ahead US timezone ensured that my body clock got reset and I no longer had the headaches in the evenings. I might have had headaches at night, which I probably slept through.
As I get older, 9 hour time differences that I experience on trans pacific flights (eg between Beijing and Seattle) always result in a jet lag headache the following day, I take some ibuprofen and it all works out. I can’t imagine doing that between South Asia which is basically opposite of the USA in terms of time.
Asia is quite a large area. In fact there's 48 countries recognized in Asia. I have been to Japan and Republic of Korea where I found decaffeinated coffee easily.
If I have coffee after 3-4pm I can’t bloody sleep until 2-3am. So it’s definitely a thing. What I’m trying to say is coffee does shit to your body. In my case it has happened so time that I know for sure now and sometimes actually use it - usually during long motorcycle rides (I tend to fall asleep pillion Or otherwise) :)
Fortunately I do not have daily tea or coffee habit. I consume them once in a while purely for taste in restaurants and cafes if they’re known for serving a good brew.
I know people who bring coffee in their lives explicitly. Buying those costly equipments, those branded beans. Feels like cigarette and liquor to me - developing a taste, forcefully.
Coffee is a drug and that addiction is real. It's still debatable, but the symptoms of coffee withdrawal are a good indication of that.
That being said, it also really depends on your daily coffee consumption. If your coffee dependency is very high and spread throughout the day it will affect your sleep, cause morning fog and lethargic feeling as your body is sleeping, but your brain is not getting a good night's rest and the withdrawal will be a difficult too.
There was a small research done which determined how to maximize the benefit of coffee drinking by drinking it in small amount but changing the time when you drink coffee. Morning coffee is a bad habit as your cortisol levels are high, and you should drink coffee when that level drops. So between 10am - 1pm is a good time to drink your first and only cup of coffee as it stays in your system for 8-10hours, so you should adjust that timing based on the time you go to sleep.
And to make the most of it, you should drink as much as you want, 2-3cups in that window.
I was a morning and evening coffee guy, but I now drink between 11am-1pm, the first few days I had severe headaches by 10-11am because of the delayed coffee kick, but later it tapered out. Now I do have a coffee dependency so if I don't drink coffee I do get headaches but since that window has shifted my headaches don't start before late evening which can be managed with a short walk and trying to sleep early. Which I think is healthier than having the day ruined.
A recent Huberman podcast with Matt Walker covered a few good strategies for coffee consumption.
I think it was that podcast where it was suggested you should start your day with a dose of morning sunlight (dropping your cortisol levels); have your first coffee around mid-morning and your last sometime around midday. The 8-10 hours you mention is actually the half-life of caffeine for the average person - the point where the level in your system has dropped 50%.
I would also debate whether caffeine/coffee consumption should be classified as an addiction, simply from the fact that it is not necessarily self-destructive and doesn't cause long-term harm or permanent changes to the brain.
For most people, me included, the minimum dose of caffeine to achieve the same effect continues to increase. That is what I consider addictive and why I quit.
>Am I just extraordinarily sensitive, or is this a thing?
Not just you. I get micro seizures accompanied with vision distortions, a killer headache, and often vomit 24-36 hours after last having caffeine. I take this to be a migraine. Even as little as 3 fluid ounces of coca-cola has enough caffeine to do it. Never was a heavy consumer of caffeinated beverages.
I'm practically certain that's a common experience, but I never have. It doesn't really help me wake up in a functional way, most of the time, and it doesn't terribly impair my sleep aside from making me sweat like crazy. I usually wake up super early, and then wait a bit before making coffee, so it's more of a morning ritual and less of a morning dependance. If I'm actually tired, there's basically nothing I can do to stay awake.
I think most people that regularly drink coffee, tea, soda have a caffiene addiction. Parting ways with it often induces pretty hefty headaches for a while and people are best served by weaning them selves off of it. 3 cups a day -> 2cups a day for week or two -> 1 cup a day for a week or two -> cup of tea -> 1 gallon water a day.
Besides caffeine addiction, caffeine raises stress levels, which in turn is bad for your mental health. I mainly drink green tea, but I do like a moderate amount of dark chocolate at times.
according to wikipedia, coffee contains MAOIs, which i imagine are not the kind of drug you can just stop talking suddenly. it’d be interesting if a pharmacist could chime in with their thoughts on this
Perhaps I’m just insensitive to it, but I’m never felt any “addiction” effects. I generally don’t drink coffer or tea on the weekends, never noticed any headaches. Never get jitters from drinking coffee or fog on non-coffee days.
I don’t think that everyone has this kind of reaction.
I had to stop drinking coffee that I made in a French press. I think it was harming my liver I had a dull ache in my right side upper abdomen. I've stopped drinking coffee from a French press and just have regular drip brew.
My theory is it was the cafestol and/or kahweol oils since most other coffee brew methods filter the coffee out oils. The French press coffee is very silky compared to drip coffee it's as if you put glycerin in it.
Caffeine never bothered me which is odd since I used to be very sensitive to it. One sip of coffee just one tiny sip used to make my heart race. Now my usual time is (was) to have my coffee at about 7pm or 8pm. I got used to it and it never bothered my sleep.
I love french press, but don't often make it because it's a little messy. I tend to do filtered pour overs more often. If you're interested in getting a bit of both worlds, you might want to try the Clever Dripper, which uses immersion brewing like the french press, and a paper filter like a pour over. Haven't tried it myself, but I hear it's great.
When I try to quit coffee the "withdrawal" doesn't go away. I went without for a MONTH and felt consistently like garbage the whole time. It's too bad too because my doctor says I gotta try to lower my BP.
Just in case it helps even one other person, caffeine was causing me to have severe anxiety. It took me years to realize it could be the caffeine and to try abstaining. It's a subtle and inconsistent link, but there's no doubt in my mind now that caffeine was the cause (or at least an exacerbating factor). I love caffeine and coffee, so I had to prove it to myself repeatedly before finally accepting it.
If you suffer from anxiety, try quitting caffeine. It will suck for several days (in my wife's case a couple of weeks) but if you eliminate or reduce your anxiety, your life will improve more than realize.
Glad you figured this out. I find it wild that so many people otherwise really smart/logical, struggle with connecting their diet to their emotional mood. goes to show how still misunderstood our bodies are. Another symptom I've noticed is coffee will increase the 'cracking' of joints. (I think this is due to it interfering with calcium/acidity levels in the body). The only time I ever had flashes of anxiety was after a 2-month long, 2 pots of coffee / day diet. Interesting from a philosophical perspective that kidneys and the neighbouring adrenals are affected by caffeine, and in ancient eastern texts, the monks had identified kidneys as 'the seat of fear' (i.e. anxiety).
I recommend testing Yerba Mate as an alternative to coffee. For me drinking even one or two cups of coffee can give a bad, anxious mood later in the day as caffeine withdraws. Meanwhile Mate seems to give similar energy, but the withdrawal feels more gradual, not giving me such bad mood.
Just get green, non smoke-dried version if you can.
I have a rare eye condition related to caffeine. If i drink caffeine for a few days (any form - coffee/coke/,,) i get retinal stroke. basically some capillaries in the eye block and i develop blind spot. I see noisy spot for a few days in vision and the visual system adjusts in software and i no longer see the noisy spot. This stopped happening completely since I stopped all caffeine. Some years back I drank coffee for a few days and happened again. Since the topic is heart related I am wondering of there is a connection to blood vessels damage. Maybe caffeine acts as a mild stressor? mild stressors are known to trigger the protective systems and thats why we see the benefits with respect to heart?
I get the same effect on the vision when I drink more than espresso a day, or if I drink on empty stomach and the absorption is quicker. It goes away in a few minutes, but it’s scary the first time.
I believe it’s because caffeine has a vasoconstriction effect, it can reduce blood flow to the retina, the same happens on the brain (lots of small capillaries), that’s why people get headaches on coffee addiction too.
Just don’t go drinking too much! Beyond the surface level issues associated with too much coffee (dependency, sleep issues, skittishness, etc), it’s known that coffee does contain small amount of the carcinogen acrylamide. And while the jury is still out on the extent of the risks, it probably won’t increase the risks of cancer in the long run if you’re an average coffee drinker.
When I have one cup of coffee my stress hormones increase. When I would drink coffee every day then my cortisol level would be high all the time. So this study does not apply to me.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadand maybe don't have 5 cups a day, shoot for one nice cup, maybe 2 sometimes
Is it that the granules cause health problems?
Fun fact: not all cholesterol is bad; it’s only the LDL, while HDL is thought to be good for the heart.
LDL concentration isn’t meaningful at an individual level. LDL particle counts however are. Lots of small LDL particles are way more atherogenic than a few large particles, given a constant density.
Though brewed coffee does not contain actual cholesterol, it does have two natural oils that contain chemical compounds -- cafestol and kahweol -- which can raise cholesterol levels.
https://www.webmd.com/cholesterol-management/coffee-choleste...
So yes, filtering probably makes a difference, but not because it's taking out "abundant" cholesterols.
https://www.wellandgood.com/unfiltered-coffee-study/ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20474873209144...
> Importantly, consuming any amount of coffee was not associated with a higher risk of heart rhythm problems, including atrial fibrillation (AFib) or atrial flutter, which Kistler said is often what clinicians are concerned about.
I'm also looking at the Wikipedia article on the health effects of coffee, and it seems like 4 cups a day is sort of the sweet spot for a lot of positive effects, but I don't see anything about more than that being bad in most cases.
> A 2012 meta-analysis concluded that people who drank moderate amounts of coffee had a lower rate of heart failure, with the biggest effect found for those who drank more than four cups a day.
Five cup a day drinker over here, so I'd love to know if you have conflicting sources.
I don't have numbers on this, but I have the impression that many people drink coffee on weekdays in order to be awake for their job—and they probably wouldn't make it a daily thing if they didn't have a job—and therefore daily coffee drinkers will contain a much higher proportion of people who are healthy enough to hold down a job.
I believe coffee drinkers are less likely to commit suicide too, which definitely would align with the purpose a job gives you (fwiw).
After about ten days of drinking {an amount} of coffee, your tolerance adjusts, and you're aligned to someone who does not drink coffee at all. You're effectively just maintaining a new baseline, but have developed a regular expenditure / tactile ceremony.
The 'make themselves more productive' claim would need some citations to back that up, as I suspect most is self-reporting anecdata.
Is that really true? I'm speaking from a position of ignorance here, but then that's a very strong statement with non-obvious validity to me. I know that substance tolerance exists (at least it's a very common idea), but is it so generic that it applies to a) all effects and each of those effects in its entirety, and b) to all effective substances that make up coffee?
And as a more specific example, I don't think I've ever taken something like "heroin addicts need to take heroin just to feel normal again, and more to feel a high" so literally that I thought they would function "normally" as in exactly like a non-heroin user would when taking an exact dosage to counteract their tolerance.
Good question.
There was a spectacular long-form article, I'm sure I read via HN, about 7 years ago, that included a delightfully lurid dive into the chemical and biological effects of caffeine, on humans, over a period of a few weeks, and that fond but slightly hazy memory is where I'm getting that figure from.
Regrettably I've not been able to find that particular article again.
I did find this, however:
https://betterhumans.pub/how-to-quit-caffeine-in-one-week-e0...
.. and in the Addictive Potential section they cite this:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27762662/
.. which, if I'm reading that precis right, blows it out to 4 weeks (but it sounds like they were testing the presence of the dependency / tolerance / baseline effect, not trying to determine minimum timeframe to achieve).
The list of Similar Articles at the bottom of that second link suggests there's some body of research out there to back these styles of claims up. The considered wisdom, as far as I can intuit, is to use caffeine strategically rather than frequently, if you want to enjoy the advertised 'energy' and 'focus' benefits. Of course, if you just like the flavour or the ceremony, knock yourself out.
Another example is caffeine is widely used as a pre-workout supplement. In high doses, without tolerance, it actually does demonstrably improve top-level strength. But the way most people use it results in tolerance and doesn't actually help. Nonetheless, the sheer fact that they're working out all the time already results in better heart health, even if the caffeine isn't doing anything on top of that.
I dunno, I guess you could be interested in learning to classify people. If they do X, then that increases your estimate of their current healthiness regardless of the underlying causation. If you're an insurance company, an actuary, etc., then maybe that's all you need to know.
Wet streets do not cause rain (directly).
I’ve often wondered this effect as it relates to widely prescribed prescription stimulants (ie adderrall)… is an artificially elevated heart rate damaging or strengthening the system?
More space / money / profit for non drinking people.
Could you please provide a source for further reading?
The thread running through nutritional research is "yep, could be good or bad for you", so why not do what pleases you?
Everything we were told about cholestoral, fat and food pyramid turned out to be nonsense.
I just ignore most of these nutrition "studies" and just stick to moderation and live my life.
And this seems entirely in contrast to, say, alcohol.
The problem with a statement like this is that their have been decades of studies with normal coffee while there have been far fewer with decaf.
The article also states:
> People often equate coffee with caffeine, but coffee beans actually have over 100 biologically active compounds. These substances can help reduce oxidative stress and inflammation, improve insulin sensitivity, boost metabolism, inhibit the gut’s absorption of fat and block receptors known to be involved with abnormal heart rhythms.
"The most-common methods of decaffeination involve chemical solvents, usually ethyl acetate or methylene chloride. In the direct method, the coffee beans are steamed and then rinsed repeatedly with the chemical solvent to flush away the caffeine."[0]
It is not a given that the coffee doesn't have extra unhealthy chemicals or is stripped away of vital nutrients besides caffeine.
[0]https://www.britannica.com/story/how-is-coffee-decaffeinated
and...?
Other way around. It's more bitter - partly from much higher caffeine.
Classic Robusta would be bitter/smokey/earthy whereas as a citrusy/fruity/acidic coffee would be Arabica.
I used to drink one cup in the morning every day. However, after a couple years of this, I started experiencing lethargy and mood depression which would both be temporarily alleviated with the morning coffee.
Then my girlfriend at the time surreptitiously replaced my coffee grinds with decaffeinated ones. After a week of headaches and cold-like symptoms, I returned to "baseline normal".
These days I cannot have even small amounts of caffeine without the next day turning into a blur of mental fog and apathy.
Am I just extraordinarily sensitive, or is this a thing?
I myself develop debilitating headaches if I don't have my first coffee by 8:30 or so. I usually require a second around noon.
I have young kids so sometimes you just gotta have that third cup, ya know?
I have a little bialetti stovetop coffee maker. It's not quite espresso but it's thick and strong, just how I like my legal addictive stimulants.
I am slowly reducing the caffeine by switching out the afternoon coffee with two cups, and now one cup of tea. Even that is not easy. When I tried to quit cold turkey, I lasted about a week, and the depression part of the withdrawal symptoms were just too much for me. I felt terrible every day, and it didn't seem to be easing up when I gave up after a week.
Now, I attended college in America where decaf and caffeinated coffee is clearly marked everywhere.
I didn't notice anything particularly different at first.
Eventually, I had this boring mandatory lecture in the afternoon, and to prevent myself from falling asleep, I always took a flask full of caffeinated coffee (about 3 cups) and drank it during the lecture.
A few months later, the class got more interesting, and I decided to stop drinking coffee.
I started having severe headaches every evening, and I didn't even realise the cause. One fine day I randomly drank coffee in the evening, and the headache was gone within 30 minutes! I was addicted to coffee!
I tried slowly reducing the quantity of coffee I drank every evening, but it just wouldn't work. Every evening I would have the headache unless I drank a flask full of coffee.
How did I get rid of the addiction? A few months later I travelled back to Asia. The 28-hour connecting flights combination (one of which was a 16-hour nonstop run), combined with the fact that my Asia timezone was 13 hours ahead US timezone ensured that my body clock got reset and I no longer had the headaches in the evenings. I might have had headaches at night, which I probably slept through.
Fortunately I do not have daily tea or coffee habit. I consume them once in a while purely for taste in restaurants and cafes if they’re known for serving a good brew.
I know people who bring coffee in their lives explicitly. Buying those costly equipments, those branded beans. Feels like cigarette and liquor to me - developing a taste, forcefully.
That being said, it also really depends on your daily coffee consumption. If your coffee dependency is very high and spread throughout the day it will affect your sleep, cause morning fog and lethargic feeling as your body is sleeping, but your brain is not getting a good night's rest and the withdrawal will be a difficult too.
There was a small research done which determined how to maximize the benefit of coffee drinking by drinking it in small amount but changing the time when you drink coffee. Morning coffee is a bad habit as your cortisol levels are high, and you should drink coffee when that level drops. So between 10am - 1pm is a good time to drink your first and only cup of coffee as it stays in your system for 8-10hours, so you should adjust that timing based on the time you go to sleep. And to make the most of it, you should drink as much as you want, 2-3cups in that window.
I was a morning and evening coffee guy, but I now drink between 11am-1pm, the first few days I had severe headaches by 10-11am because of the delayed coffee kick, but later it tapered out. Now I do have a coffee dependency so if I don't drink coffee I do get headaches but since that window has shifted my headaches don't start before late evening which can be managed with a short walk and trying to sleep early. Which I think is healthier than having the day ruined.
I think it was that podcast where it was suggested you should start your day with a dose of morning sunlight (dropping your cortisol levels); have your first coffee around mid-morning and your last sometime around midday. The 8-10 hours you mention is actually the half-life of caffeine for the average person - the point where the level in your system has dropped 50%.
I would also debate whether caffeine/coffee consumption should be classified as an addiction, simply from the fact that it is not necessarily self-destructive and doesn't cause long-term harm or permanent changes to the brain.
Not just you. I get micro seizures accompanied with vision distortions, a killer headache, and often vomit 24-36 hours after last having caffeine. I take this to be a migraine. Even as little as 3 fluid ounces of coca-cola has enough caffeine to do it. Never was a heavy consumer of caffeinated beverages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee#Pharmacology
I don’t think that everyone has this kind of reaction.
My theory is it was the cafestol and/or kahweol oils since most other coffee brew methods filter the coffee out oils. The French press coffee is very silky compared to drip coffee it's as if you put glycerin in it.
Caffeine never bothered me which is odd since I used to be very sensitive to it. One sip of coffee just one tiny sip used to make my heart race. Now my usual time is (was) to have my coffee at about 7pm or 8pm. I got used to it and it never bothered my sleep.
If you suffer from anxiety, try quitting caffeine. It will suck for several days (in my wife's case a couple of weeks) but if you eliminate or reduce your anxiety, your life will improve more than realize.
My very first anxiety attack was also about an hour after coffee and was definitely a factor.
I try and just get hot chocolates nowadays. :)
Just get green, non smoke-dried version if you can.
have you tried quitting caffeine?
I believe it’s because caffeine has a vasoconstriction effect, it can reduce blood flow to the retina, the same happens on the brain (lots of small capillaries), that’s why people get headaches on coffee addiction too.
This article gives a good overview [1]
[1] https://theconversation.com/amp/fact-check-does-coffee-cause...