5 ms·

Excessive use of anything tends to be bad. "Normal" intake of coffee [1] may have plenty of health benefits, so why quit? Because self control? I'll drink my 3

Excessive use of anything tends to be bad. "Normal" intake of coffee [1] may have plenty of health benefits, so why quit? Because self control? I'll drink my 3-4 cups of black filtered coffee a day with a good conscience. [1] Not including other high-caffeine drinks (energy drinks) or mixing your coffee with lots of sugar and milk, which would be bad mostly for other reasons than the caffeine itself.

ibmthrowaway218 11y ago
> I'll drink my 3-4 cups of black filtered coffee a day with a good conscience. Sounds similar to what I used to drink. I now drink similar amounts of decaf black coffee a day and sleep a whole lot better. This is partly why I quit and definitely why I won't go back to regularly drinking normal coffee (it's been 6 years or so). (Yes, I know decaf still contains ~10% of the caffeine of normal coffee, this just means I'm down to the equivalent of half a cup of coffee a day, which is below dependency levels as I get no withdrawal effects if I stop this for a few days.)
Nothorized 11y ago
> Excessive use of anything tends to be bad. Many of those 'alarming' articles are mainly studying the point from where the use of anything is dangerous for our health. It is easy to get the numbers and to publish, and the website gets a clickbait. It's widely knew that too much coffee is dangerous. But a normal dose has plenty of benefits, and a lot of research supports both points.
- DanBC 11y ago
  > It's widely knew that too much coffee is dangerous. But a normal dose has plenty of benefits I'd be interested in reliable cites for either of those. Here's what Cochrane Collaboration says. http://www.evidentlycochrane.net/caffeine-and-health-evidence-from-cochrane/ http://www.evidentlycochrane.net/caffeine-and-health-evidenc... It's a short list.
  - dap 11y ago
    Here's a round-up: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/upshot/more-consensus-on-coffees-benefits-than-you-might-think.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/upshot/more-consensus-on-c...
    - DanBC 11y ago
      Cool, thanks. Some of those studies seem to find protective benefits with decaf. Or there wasn't enough data to know if the same effects are present with decaf. > Most studies did not include data on decaffeinated coffee, either because too few people drank it or because data were not available. The few studies that did, though, had differing results. With respect to cardiovascular disease, decaffeinated coffee did not seem to have the same protective effects as regular coffee. With respect to the one stroke meta-analysis, it seemed to be just as protective as regular coffee. In two breast cancer analyses, decaffeinated had the same nonrelationship as regular coffee. Decaffeinated coffee was also protective against lung cancer, not as protective against Parkinson’s disease, and protective against diabetes and overall mortality, but perhaps to a lesser extent than regular coffee. > But for most studies, there just aren’t data available. The conclusion to take away: There’s less evidence overall for a potential benefit, but still, there’s no evidence of harmful associations.
creshal 11y ago
> For healthy adults, the FDA says 400 mg a day is OK. But consuming much more than that can have dangerous, negative effects. And the milligrams add up quickly. A medium-size coffeehouse coffee can contain more than 300 mg, and most 16-ounce energy drinks contain between 160 and 240 mg of caffeine… 3-4 cups might be on the high end of the safe spectrum, depending on what your idea of a "cup" is. (For the record, 3 half-litre beer steins of coffee a day turned out to be a spectacularly bad idea, even if hearing colours was briefly entertaining.)
- cbd1984 11y ago
  > (For the record, 3 half-litre beer steins of coffee a day turned out to be a spectacularly bad idea, even if hearing colours was briefly entertaining.) I've consumed caffeine to the point of serious gastric distress and very mild heart palpitations and I've never experienced synesthesia. I'm unwilling to push beyond that to higher doses, but two or three 12-cup pots a day of light roast filtered black coffee is about average for me, so what the Hell? Is there just that much individual variation here?
  - gus_massa 11y ago
    IIRC, the only well documented case of synesthesia is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapheme_%E2%86%92_color_synesthesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapheme_%E2%86%92_color_synes... . It's an interesting case because the color and letter recognizing parts of the brain are very close, so it's logic that some info may leak and get correlated. Perhaps someone can design an (safe) experiment to measure the effect of caffeine in synesthesia ...
  - randallsquared 11y ago
    There must be. At a previous job, I regularly drank 2L of coffee a day (in ~10oz increments), and never experienced anything other than unpleasant slight jitteriness occasionally.
- soft_dev_person 11y ago
  I think my cups are closer to 200 ml, which apparently is approaching 100 mg caffeine per cup, so I guess you're right. A "medium-size coffeehouse coffee" (at Starbucks) is 16 fl.oz. Here in Europe, that's not really a normal cup of coffee.

ibmthrowaway218 11y ago

> I'll drink my 3-4 cups of black filtered coffee a day with a good conscience. Sounds similar to what I used to drink. I now drink similar amounts of decaf black coffee a day and sleep a whole lot better. This is partly why I quit and definitely why I won't go back to regularly drinking normal coffee (it's been 6 years or so). (Yes, I know decaf still contains ~10% of the caffeine of normal coffee, this just means I'm down to the equivalent of half a cup of coffee a day, which is below dependency levels as I get no withdrawal effects if I stop this for a few days.)

Nothorized 11y ago

> Excessive use of anything tends to be bad. Many of those 'alarming' articles are mainly studying the point from where the use of anything is dangerous for our health. It is easy to get the numbers and to publish, and the website gets a clickbait. It's widely knew that too much coffee is dangerous. But a normal dose has plenty of benefits, and a lot of research supports both points.

DanBC 11y ago
> It's widely knew that too much coffee is dangerous. But a normal dose has plenty of benefits I'd be interested in reliable cites for either of those. Here's what Cochrane Collaboration says. http://www.evidentlycochrane.net/caffeine-and-health-evidence-from-cochrane/ http://www.evidentlycochrane.net/caffeine-and-health-evidenc... It's a short list.
- dap 11y ago
  Here's a round-up: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/upshot/more-consensus-on-coffees-benefits-than-you-might-think.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/upshot/more-consensus-on-c...
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Cool, thanks. Some of those studies seem to find protective benefits with decaf. Or there wasn't enough data to know if the same effects are present with decaf. > Most studies did not include data on decaffeinated coffee, either because too few people drank it or because data were not available. The few studies that did, though, had differing results. With respect to cardiovascular disease, decaffeinated coffee did not seem to have the same protective effects as regular coffee. With respect to the one stroke meta-analysis, it seemed to be just as protective as regular coffee. In two breast cancer analyses, decaffeinated had the same nonrelationship as regular coffee. Decaffeinated coffee was also protective against lung cancer, not as protective against Parkinson’s disease, and protective against diabetes and overall mortality, but perhaps to a lesser extent than regular coffee. > But for most studies, there just aren’t data available. The conclusion to take away: There’s less evidence overall for a potential benefit, but still, there’s no evidence of harmful associations.

creshal 11y ago

> For healthy adults, the FDA says 400 mg a day is OK. But consuming much more than that can have dangerous, negative effects. And the milligrams add up quickly. A medium-size coffeehouse coffee can contain more than 300 mg, and most 16-ounce energy drinks contain between 160 and 240 mg of caffeine… 3-4 cups might be on the high end of the safe spectrum, depending on what your idea of a "cup" is. (For the record, 3 half-litre beer steins of coffee a day turned out to be a spectacularly bad idea, even if hearing colours was briefly entertaining.)

cbd1984 11y ago
> (For the record, 3 half-litre beer steins of coffee a day turned out to be a spectacularly bad idea, even if hearing colours was briefly entertaining.) I've consumed caffeine to the point of serious gastric distress and very mild heart palpitations and I've never experienced synesthesia. I'm unwilling to push beyond that to higher doses, but two or three 12-cup pots a day of light roast filtered black coffee is about average for me, so what the Hell? Is there just that much individual variation here?
- gus_massa 11y ago
  IIRC, the only well documented case of synesthesia is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapheme_%E2%86%92_color_synesthesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapheme_%E2%86%92_color_synes... . It's an interesting case because the color and letter recognizing parts of the brain are very close, so it's logic that some info may leak and get correlated. Perhaps someone can design an (safe) experiment to measure the effect of caffeine in synesthesia ...
- randallsquared 11y ago
  There must be. At a previous job, I regularly drank 2L of coffee a day (in ~10oz increments), and never experienced anything other than unpleasant slight jitteriness occasionally.
soft_dev_person 11y ago
I think my cups are closer to 200 ml, which apparently is approaching 100 mg caffeine per cup, so I guess you're right. A "medium-size coffeehouse coffee" (at Starbucks) is 16 fl.oz. Here in Europe, that's not really a normal cup of coffee.