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> 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 reall

by anyfoo 5y ago

> 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.

Jedd 5y ago
> Is that really true? 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-e041892698ec 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/ 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.

by anyfoo 5y ago

Jedd 5y ago

> Is that really true? 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-e041892698ec 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/ 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.