HN Explorer

Poll: Caffeine Usage

15 points by DanielBMarkham ↗ HN
Lately I've found myself back to drinking tea in the mornings after a long period of caffeine abstention. My question is: How much caffeine does the average HN'er consume daily? I'm going to try a two variable format, so bear with me -- hopefully it'll be more useful than the typical poll

33 comments

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cperciva
The first "Age 36-50, 7+ portions a day" should be "Age 21-35, 7+ portions a day".
jacquesm
I think the caffeine is not always the main reason for drinknig tea/coffee, for me tea is mainly a sugar delivery device and I go through a lot more of it than I probably should.

This has been going since my teens so far without any bad side effects but I can't imagine it is healthy.

caffeine content of various drinks:

http://www.wilstar.com/caffeine.htm

Tea is apparently roughly halfway up there compared with the strongest coffee. I figure I go through three or four pots of tea in a day.

DanielBMarkham
I figure I go through three or four pots of tea in a day

Holy smokes, jacquesm!

I find that I enjoy tea the most. Nothing like a good, strong cup of tea in the morning with cream and splenda (sugar substitute)

But tea is almost like a gateway drug, at least for me. Probably part of my addictive personality. Pretty soon I'm chugging Diet Mountain Dews and energy drinks.

I've always heard that tea, especially green tea, is really good for you. Glad to hear you're able to consume so much for so long without any adverse effects.

jacquesm
It's my one vice (and midnight coding streaks), I've tried to get away from it and drink herbal tea but it doesn't seem to do it for me. I've been told long ago that I wouldn't reach 40 without diabetes (if I would get that far at all...), so far so good I guess.

But it definitely is a source of worry.

And what worries me as well is that apparently I'm not able to control this to the extent that I probably should be.

gscott
I did so all through my 20's and now have hypertension (high blood pressure). It is better to be less productive now then tired all of the time later because of blood pressure medication.
greengirl512
Green tea is good for you! In addition to caffeine, it has theanine, which relaxes you and keeps you from getting all jittery. Also, lots of powerful antioxidants called catechins.

Or maybe it's just that I'm a caffeine junkie, trying to justify my addiction.

jacquesm
I drink 'the black stuff' (no, not that black stuff, black tea), pretty strong.

edit:

As if on queue I get this spam message headed "Need to Lose Weight & Boost Energy? Try Green Tea"

I'm going on the assumption here that nobody on HN is pulling a prank.

xiaoma
I drink about 2-3L of green and/or wulong tea a day. It has no sugar and about 100-120ml of caffeine per 600ml bottle. Every convenience store here in Taiwan sells at least half a dozen teas that fit this profile, they're as cheap as soda and I love them!

Soda (or worse, diet soda) just grosses me out, though. It's just too sweet and too acidic.

drhodes
Drinking sugary beverages all day is really bad for teeth. On the other hand the acid in soda doesn't harm teeth at all. Please remember your teeth, "if you ignore them, they go away" ;)
nate_meurer
My caffeine consumption completely depends on how much sleep I'm getting; I have no consistent beverage routine otherwise. On days where I've had enough sleep, I rarely have more than a couple cups of tea. Otherwise I may drink up to six.
DanielBMarkham
Do you find that as you increase caffeine consumption from a previous night's sleeplessness that it causes poor sleep the following night? That's been my experience.
nate_meurer
Yeah, maybe. I haven't paid enough attention to know for sure.
joshfinnie
I think this poll might be a little tough because a "portion" of caffeine is a vague. You should have defined portions to be like 100mg of caffiene or something. I have a large coffee in the morning and then a large americano in the afternoon, should this be 2 portions, should the large coffee be broken down into 8 ounce servings, should the americano be broken down into # of shots? Sorry, but I thought I should explain my difficulties with this poll.
dfranke
100mg would be a pretty big portion. Maybe a grande from Starbucks (with notoriously high caffeine content) is about that. Isn't a normal cup about 40mg?
joshfinnie
Well, it varies so much, I just picked 100mg as a nice round number. However, after a little more research I found this website [http://www.energyfiend.com/the-caffeine-database] and did an calculation on the average mg per serving and it came out to 109.97, so I think 100mg was a good estimation.
xiaoma
A 600ml bottle of any of the several brands of green tea I drink has about 100mg of caffeine. I think 15-20mg/100ml is the norm.
tel
Future two-variable surveys like this should definitely consider taking Dave's Hacker Survey data (http://davelyon.net/mldata.html) into perspective. The 21-35 range seems to cover something like 1.5 sd on either side — around 85% of us if we assume normality.

Investing more of these poll choices to age resolution within that range would have been interesting.

DanielBMarkham
Excellent resource. I missed this the first time around. Thanks
thetrumanshow
I myself drink 2 strong cups of coffee daily, 3 when I am really tired. Problem is, I can't really tell if it's the caffeine that is keeping me awake or simply the act of drinking something that does the trick. I'd guess it's a bit of both.

I've had success using sunflower seeds to keep alert on the days where caffeine is insufficient.

EvanK
Personally, I've been trying to cut down on my caffeine intake, and has gotten it down to usually one or two sodas a day (no coffee or tea).
jerf
Twice now, I have deliberately gone cold turkey on caffeine for a month. Both time, the results were the same; while I didn't completely lose my programming ability by any means, I totally lost my best programming times, and in general felt slower and fuzzier even during the rest of the day. From what I can see, after a month off of it I should be adjusted to its absence.

Since then my situation has been changing some, and once it stabilizes I plan on trying again (learning I have celiac disease, changing some other elements of my diet). So this may not be generally applicable. But I will say that if you are nervous about your caffeine consumption, try dropping it for a month and seeing how it goes; it's not that hard.

spydez
Twice now, I have deliberately gone cold turkey on caffeine for a few weeks. Both times, the results were the same: 3 days lost to caffeine withdrawal headaches, followed by no noticeable differences in anything.

Also, when I got back on caffeine, I noticed nothing. And I should've been my most caffeine sensitive then. If I did a seriously huge dosage, I'd have shaky hands, but otherwise nothing. I wasn't more alert or awake or hyper or anything.

Caffeine does supposedly have Ritalin-like effects on ADHD kids, so maybe I'm ADD and don't know it.

aharrison
After having gone the whole gamut of caffeine, from 5-6 cups of coffee per day to completely dropping it in the last three months, I have settled on the following: I drink one (1) cup of really good (expensive) coffee as soon as I wake up. It is my morning ritual, so to speak. I then avoid coffee like the plague for the rest of the day. It gives me a jump start in the morning without inhibiting my sleep the following night, and it gives me a little treat to look forward to every morning as I wake up.
ax0n
A bike ride to work followed by a cup of French Pressed coffee is my "wake up!" cocktail. A mid-morning coffee or Mountain Dew (sometimes both), another dose after lunch to fight off the ensuing food-coma, and then something to get me through the last part of the work day. Us 21-35ers seem to really like to get our 'feen on.
edw519
Age: 0+, 0 portions day, only need caffeine when responding to a two variable poll
DanielBMarkham
You're absolutely right.

You know, instead of just yes/no, if we had a Likert scale for each choice we could do three variable polls.

Wouldn't that would make for some awesome graphs?

I'm just sayin'

ghotli
I've nearly completely switched to Piracetam from Caffeine when I need to focus. It helps with short term memory, alertness, and motivation in my experience. It's cheap as dirt when you buy it in bulk too.

http://www.google.com/search?q=piracetam

billswift
I drink a lot of coffee because I like it and it's fairly low calorie, since I use saccharine and skim milk with it. But as far as I can tell, and I have gone cold turkey and used decaf and caffeine pills to manipulate caffeine levels, caffeine has no effect on me at all.
hdx
Age: 21-35 1-2 portions a day
truebosko
As much as I hate to rely on a drug to boost myself daily (even if it is natural), I simply work better with a bit of caffeine in me. Without it, I can do well but who cares? Entire cultures celebrate tea and coffee as a ritual at various parts of the day and it's been around forever. It didn't hurt anyone back in the 1800's and it definitely won't hurt me (in moderation!)

(I voted for 0-3 cups a day. Usually I do 1-2 coffees in the morning, and tea for lunch.)

jcw
I'm 20 and I drink totally way too much coffee.
timcederman
My previous schedule meant that I was able to go to bed ~ 1:00am, and get up ~ 9:00-9:15am. With that cycle, I never had caffeinated drinks for any reason other than taste.

Now that I'm on an 11:30pm-7:30am schedule, I find myself having a coffee in the morning and then a can of soft drink in the early afternoon specifically to get the effects of the caffeine. Very annoying.