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I needed better sleeping and tried various things. In the end I stopped drinking coffee and tea. For me its now just hot or cold water, sometimes a herbal tea,
by FrankyHollywood 5y ago
I needed better sleeping and tried various things. In the end I stopped drinking coffee and tea. For me its now just hot or cold water, sometimes a herbal tea, and an occasional beer or orange juice.
First caffeine-free weekend I had terrible headaches, than came weeks of strong urges (I felt I was an addict). In these weeks I just fell asleep on the couch or even at my desk at work. I slept a lot these weeks, during the day, early in the evening, like my body had catching up to do.
Now I'm fine, I sleep like a baby. I feel really good and have strong concentration.
On moments I have a 'coffee urge' I take a little walk outside, for 10-20minutes. My colleagues know by now, I'm the guy who goes out once or twice a day for a little walk...
Try it for a few months!
- kemitche 5y agoI can +1 this. I'm on caffeine now, but once a year or so I will "detox" from it to reset for a few months. The first days/weeks are exactly like you said. The only difference is that after a month or so, I go back to coffee - just at a greatly reduced volume. That first cup is absolutely heavenly.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- slothtrop 5y agoReducing total caffeine intake has improved my sleep quality, but I find there are diminishing returns to making it nil consumption. My sweet spot is a single small cup of tea or coffee in the morning. Research suggests that some trace amounts of caffeine can remain in your system many hours.
- gedy 5y agoSame here, I ironically found I was more tense & jittery after no caffeine for a year. Found one coffee or tea a day made me feel much more relaxed at end of day.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y agoAnother anecdote: whenever I go off coffee I just feel a bit more dumb, and I don't like losing an easy mechanism to quickly boost my energy levels. The first few weeks without caffeine are rough, then I just turn into a more boring version of myself: I go to bed early, have consistent energy levels throughout the day, and I'm a little less intelligent. I don't really want my energy levels smoothed out throughout the day: getting out of the gate quickly in the morning and getting ahead of my goals for the day is far more important to me, and having a few hours each day where I'm really "on" is better than my brain being a little sluggish forever. I don't personally have issues sleeping through the night though. (But with caffeine I do shift my sleep a bit later). Cutting caffeine does seem to be a reasonable place to start for people who are having sleep issues, or anxiety, but for me I've decided the pros vastly outweigh the cons.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- p45please 5y agoAgreed, went caffeine-free almost 3 years ago and feel so much better. Had initial brain fog, and like you described some pretty debilitating headaches and migraines from the caffeine withdrawal, but it passed after a couple weeks. If you're interested, I found a not-quite-coffee alternative that seems to satisfy my craving. It's a dandelion root substitute, the brand I drink is Dandy Blend. More like instant coffee than a good ground bean coffee but it does the job.
- FrankyHollywood 5y agoa great to hear! I was searching for something with a bite. The hot water has a nice contrast with the cold water, but I still miss something :) Hope I can find this in Europe. Here we have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cichorium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cichorium. It is not very bad, but I don't like it much either, I miss some bitter tones. Now I think about it, I can try experiment with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angostura_bitters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angostura_bitters