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I have a pet theory for why coffee has such great benefits: A lot of my friends who are more anxious have had to stop drinking coffee because it exacerbated the
by johnfn 6y ago
I have a pet theory for why coffee has such great benefits: A lot of my friends who are more anxious have had to stop drinking coffee because it exacerbated their anxiety to extreme degrees. On the other hand, people with less anxiety drink it and feel fine. So there’s selection bias at play, and correlative studies are just picking up the benefit of not being anxious.
- silverdrake11 6y agoEnough people are addicted to coffee so much so that even if they are anxious while drinking it they continue to do so.
- anaxag0ras 6y agoI happen to be on that camp. Despite having anxiety I haven't been able to outright quite coffee. I also have mild hypothyroid so coffee helps to overcome fatigue. However, I have reduced to about 1-2 cups/day from about 4 cups/day.
- ghostbrainalpha 6y agoI 100% agree. *Note to anyone quitting caffeine for anxiety reasons, it takes about a month to notice the benefit. Another pet theory I have is that a confounding variable in these studies is often the amount of work someone has to do, and the type of work. Someone drinking 4+ cups of coffee likely has a reason to be that productive. Which may result in more intellectual stimulation, a higher income, and other differences that makes the two groups very different. I'd like to see studies where the same individual both drank 4+ cups of coffee everyday for 6 months, and then quit caffeine entirely for 6 months and measure the changes in health, and output collectively but on an individual basis.
- dllthomas 6y ago> I'd like to see studies where the same individual both drank 4+ cups of coffee everyday for 6 months, and then quit caffeine entirely for 6 months Ow!
- westoque 6y agodrinking coffee for years made my anxiety levels increase significantly. i started to notice this whenever i get into scenarios where i'm most uncomfortable. it used to be more mild that when i'm nervous, my heart is just pounding but no sweating and i can still hide the fact. now, with my coffee addiction, i get more noticeably anxious, where i have involuntary muscle twitching on my face/hands, more sweating, and it makes it more obvious that i'm nervous. to combat this, i started researching and led me to matcha tea. i just drink a lot of matcha tea now and i found it helps with my anxiety and i'm generally more calm. it still has caffeine at lower doses so it still gives that caffeine feeling so what i'm feeling might be a placebo but definitely helps. i did not quit coffee 100% though, i still drink it from time to time but not as often. it used to be > 4 cups of coffee per day (sometimes espresso shots) and now to 1-2 cups every 5-7 days. i have to say my coffee journey was fun though, for the last 10 years i started from starbucks, to roasting my own beans, to aeropress and drip, to a full fledge espresso machine.
- varrock 6y agoDo you ever drink decaf? It sounds like coffee was a real hobby of yours. Although your health is more important, it is unfortunate to see a hobby dissipate like that.
- Solvitieg 6y agoCan someone provide more information on the 1-month recovery from caffeine induced anxiety? In my experience and from what I've read online, caffeine withdrawal typically lasts 1 or 2 weeks. I recently quit drinking coffee hoping I could stop grinding my teeth in the night. It hasn't helped yet, but I quit only about 3 weeks ago. An aside, grinding your teeth in the night is very problematic because it's not something you can directly resolve unless you get a mouth guard. Trying to pinpoint stressors in my life has been an arduous process.
- mleonhard 6y agoI hope you're using a mouth guard every night. Tooth material cannot be replaced.
- Solvitieg 6y agoI went to the dentist recently and they recommended I reduce stress in my life. So it's probably not that bad.
- mythrwy 6y agoSometimes teeth (molar) grinding is a sign of apnea. I don't know if that is this case but something to maybe look into.
- throw51319 6y agoThe increase in quality of sleep after abstaining for 2+ days is amazing. Sleep is easily the cornerstone of a quality day to day life. I love coffee, the taste, the ritual, etc. But I need to stop.
- sjg007 6y agoTry decaf for a bit... taper your way down via half caff etc..
- reinkaos 6y agoI haven't delved into any specific papers about caffeine but I would assume they would control for at least some of those factors you mentioned.
- tmoertel 6y agoI have a similar but more general theory: coffee is a mild stressor. People in poor health can't afford the extra stress and avoid coffee.
- pphysch 6y agoIt's also quite a bitter taste and coffee-drinkers may have more flexible palates and diverse (generally more healthy) diets as a confounding factor.
- ip26 6y agoRather than calling their palates more 'diverse' I would just observe that many foods we know to be healthy exhibit bitter, astringent, tart, sour, earthy, etc flavors.
- reinkaos 6y agoAlso this additional stress could elicit some kind of supercompensation by the body via hormesis.
- koboll 6y agoThere are some benefits of coffee that don't really fit with this hypothesis, though. Like how it decreases risk of kidney stone formation, despite containing chemicals that can increase urinary calcium excretion.
- lnanek2 6y agoNot really surprising there. It's a diuretic, that is it make you pee, and it's a fluid. Drinking lots of water and peeing a lot is known to help prevent kidney stones.
- kstenerud 6y agoI have another pet theory for coffee: habitual coffee drinkers are uncomfortable with the idea of it being a vice, and so they conduct study after study to highlight the benefits, thus rationalizing their consumption.
- ekianjo 6y agoYour theory would fail spectacularly if you replace coffee by alcohol.
- kstenerud 6y agoActually, alcohol is the second most common substance studied for its "beneficial" properties (used to be first, but it's harder to rationalize nowadays).
- hrktb 6y agoYou can't imagine the number of studies to highlight the benefits of alcohol. Especially in big wine producing countries.
- jcadam 6y agoI find it much easier to skip my evening glass of wine than to skip my morning cup of coffee.
- hrktb 6y agoYes, and it also depends on your relationship with work. For some it's more important to clearly cut from it at the end of the day than to get into it in the morning :) Then I see a lot of people doing both.
- ahmedalsudani 6y agoNot to mention, those are always drowsy dinner-time drinkers managing to do research into the beneficial properties of alcohol. An irritated coffee drinker who has been told coffee can be harmful is going to have a whole lot more energy to produce a “counter study”.
- adrianmonk 6y agoIt's an interesting theory, and researchers probably need to account for that. But although it probably could explain some of the effect, there's one that I don't think it can explain. One of the diseases that coffee helps with is gout. Gout is more or less a special form of arthritis. In most cases the root cause is genetic deficiency in how well your kidneys remove uric acid from your blood. This leads to a buildup of it, and having no place else to go, more and more of it accumulates in your joints. Then your immune system does its best to deal with a foreign substance, and sometimes this leads to runaway inflammation that causes excruciating pain. Anyway, I can't see a connection between the kidneys' ability to filter out one specific chemical and coffee drinking behavior. Particularly since gout is usually asymptomatic for years while deposits build up in your body, and then you have episodes (attacks) where inflammation gets out of control for a while before subsiding.
- Jarwain 6y agoThe only connection that I can think of is how caffeine is a diuretic. If you're using the restroom more often, and drinking more fluids, it might result in more opportunities to filter out more uric acid or something along those lines. I'm not a doctor though, so grain of salt
- adrianmonk 6y agoThat would make sense, but paradoxically, diuretics make gout worse. It may be because the fluids aren't always replaced, and if you have less fluids in you, then the concentration of uric acid goes up. (And the accumulation of uric acid in the joints happens because blood levels reach saturation and then some of it precipitates.) The crazy thing about coffee and gout is, since it's a diuretic, it should make gout worse, but instead it seems to make it better. Incidentally, I'm not a doctor either. Just an interested layman. So take everything I said with a grain of salt too. Anyway, gout is super complicated since it involves metabolism AND the renal system AND the immune system AND the joints, so really nobody understands it completely.
- sharkfinsoupmix 6y agoI had/have terrible anxiety and consumed massive quantities of caffeine anyhow in the past. These days, not so much. More CBD and decaf. I think it's a legitimized/legalized stimulant in place of other stimulants to increase productivity at the expense of numerous subtle risks.
- sjg007 6y agoCaffeine is a stimulant as well so it can help with adult ADD.