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Daily coffee habits may affect brain plasticity and learning
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>Researchers explore how chronic caffeine consumption potentially impacts brain plasticity Key words: "chronic caffeine consumption" and "potentially". Main takeaway: Avoid chronic caffeine consumption to retain proper brain functions. So basically common sense, that excessive use of a psychostimulant will be bad for you.
- malf 3y ago> common sense 75% of people surveyed drink coffee every day?
- scotty79 3y agoEverybody breathes 70% of nitrogen mixture. Nitrogen at elevated pressures has narcoleptic effect. It's common sense that even at atmospheric pressure nitrogen also has some narcoleptic effect. That is in fact true, as breathing helium mixture at atmospheric pressure improves reaction times. People don't necessarily do what common sense would say if they have to do something else for other reasons. Caffeine doesn't stimulate you, it just makes you unaware of how tired you are. You are still tired with many of the downsides of being tired like the negative impact on learning. People who drink coffee routinely have to do it to mask how tiring their lives are.
- mnky9800n 3y agoI dunno. I drink coffee because I like to get up in the morning, grind the beans with my hand grinder, boil the water in the kettle, and put everything together in the French press. It's a transition moment that I take for myself from bedtime to day time. I like to have it after lunch to transition from lunch time where I am typically reading a novel back to work where I'm sitting and writing codes. I like to have a coffee at the coffee shop on the weekend because I can go for a walk with my gf and talk about random shit or plan a holiday or something. I'm not convinced my life is especially tiring except for all the drama I seem to create for myself inside my own head. That's a bit tiring. And so far, coffee seems to offer no respite to that self imposed exhaustion.
- scotty79 3y agoInteresting interview with a award winning barista and coffee entrepreneur that says that caffeine ingestion is something that you should be mindful about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqNrJNhcf5g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqNrJNhcf5g
- tambourine_man 3y agoIt’s also delicious, aside from the psychoactive effects. Good coffee, that is.
- scotty79 3y agoDecaf is exactly the same.
- kbelder 3y agoI'm going to have to argue that point. The best decaf is just ok. Typical decaf is pretty noticeably bad. I go on decaf stints occasionally, and not opposed to it. I'm grateful it exists. But you do pay for it in taste.
- scotty79 3y agoI wonder how it fares in double blind comparisons. Maybe you can tell, maybe not? https://www.huffpost.com/entry/decaf-vs-regular-coffee-taste_n_3430681 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/decaf-vs-regular-coffee-taste...
- scotty79 3y agoYou can do all that with decaf beans. Besides turning something into quaint ritual doesn't alter purely biological impact in any way. You could describe in very close terms lighting a joint every day after coming back home. Or drinking a beer, but it doesn't make you any less high or drunk. Caffeine strongly dysregulates nervous system and sleep patterns. Surprising thing for many people is that after stopping caffeine a lot of nervous drama inside your head might simply fade away.
- jona-f 3y agoHey, i wasn't aware of nitrogen's narcotic effects. That led me down to this hilarious madness: "Hydreliox is an exotic breathing gas mixture of hydrogen, helium, and oxygen" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydreliox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydreliox Still, comparing breathing air with drinking coffee is one hell of a bad analogy. Ironically you did succeed in showing the ambiguity of common sense by your own lack thereof.
- fbhabbed 3y agoBasically everyone who consumes caffeine is a chronic user. Everyone I know of drinks it daily, and skipping one day is very unpleasant until your brain gets used to lack of it again (a couple miserable days).
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>Basically everyone who consumes caffeine is a chronic user. Everyone I know of drinks it daily There goes HN with the health quackery again. Citation needed other than your opinion on you circle of acquaintances. Drinking 300mg vs 50mg of caffeine a day are not the same, and lumping everyone under chronic just because you have a strong opinion on the topic is silly. In this case they define chronic as someone who consumes over 200mg per day but the article and paper itself is very weak as they did not accurately measure subject's caffeine intake, they just went on subject's self reported data("I drank a coffee and a red bull") and built estimations on that which is weak science as there's not a fixed amount of cafeine in a cup of coffee but can vary wildly.
- morsch 3y ago"Among those drinking coffee daily, almost 80 percent drank two or more cups while at home on a weekday." https://www.statista.com/chart/19524/cups-of-coffee-drunk-by-americans-per-day/ https://www.statista.com/chart/19524/cups-of-coffee-drunk-by... "The average American coffee drinker drinks just over 3 cups per day." https://www.ncausa.org/newsroom/nca-releases-atlas-of-american-coffee https://www.ncausa.org/newsroom/nca-releases-atlas-of-americ... 200 mg is about two cups of coffee. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/how-much-caffeine-in-coffee https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/how-much-caffeine-in-co...
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoThat doesn't prove everyone who drinks coffee is a chronic consumer. Caffeine doses are not binary, as in either you don't drink any coffee at all or are a chronic consumer otherwise. What about those who consume it in small moderation? Just because other people abuse it doesn't mean those who do not suffer the exact same negative effects in the same manner. Of course studies will mostly focus on the cronic consumers as those will generally show the biggest symptoms and will be easier to study and draw conclusions versus the non coffee consumers, but that doesn't mean everyone is chronic consumer.
- Mistletoe 3y agoWell sometimes studies show coffee is good for your brain so I’m relieved to find this outcome because I don’t drink coffee and try to avoid caffeine daily.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>Well sometimes studies show coffee is good for your brain Why can't it be both good and bad for you? Water is also good for you but you can also die from drinking too much. Same with oxygen. Anything that's good for you in moderation, can kill you when consumed in excess. The article doesn't say that any amount of coffee is bad for you, it says "chronic caffeine consumption is bad for you" which again, should be common sense. Chronic consumption of anything is generally bad for you. It may very well be that light to moderate consumption could be beneficial at the same time as chronic being bad.
- mnky9800n 3y agoWater is good for you but you shouldn't breathe it. Air is good for you but you shouldn't eat it.
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoYou can also die of drinking too much water, not just drowning in it. Water intoxication is a thing. So is breathing in concentrated oxygen.
- mnky9800n 3y agoI was agreeing with you
- Shaanie 3y agoChronic just means consistently for a long time, not the amount. There's lots of things for which chronic consumption is not bad (like pretty much everything considered healthy).
- hagbarth 3y agoReading the actual article this was based on, the main takeaway is that they now have a hypothesis they want to test.
- Quinzel 3y agoKeyword: “potentially” - so basically common sense that the researchers have not yet confirmed anything as fact??… It seems like you’re jumping to conclusions.
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoWhich conclusion did I jump to?
- JamesMcMinn 3y agoNot a single mention of sleep, which one would think would have a strong relationship with both coffee habits and learning and memory.
- Shaanie 3y agoThe study isn't (directly) studying sleep so that's hardly a surprise. It's perfectly possible that it's actually the disturbed sleep causing the response, and not the caffeine itself (at least from my brief skim of the paper). Personally I place little to zero value on these "we asked people to estimate something and then found a correlation" studies, there are too many potentially confounding variables to account for. Perhaps the non-caffeine drinkers have different types of occupations, social class, health consciousness etc.
- 2devnull 3y agoYes, it’s very likely people with sleep trouble (caused by apnea usually) are more likely to consume greater quantities of caffeine to help fight daytime sleepiness caused by the apnea.
- webmobdev 3y agoAnd how late afternoon / evening coffees maybe preventing them from getting a good sleep - https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/05/30/coffee-caffeine-sleep-deprivation/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/05/30/coffee-ca...
- _ink_ 3y agoWill the plasticity return when one stops consuming coffein or is it gone for good?
- scotty79 3y agoI suppose it returns when you stop coffeine, notice how tired you were and sleep properly for a week or so. Then you should be back to normal.
- mandmandam 3y agoSince I had to click through to see what's meant by "chronic" (ugh), they mean 200mg per day. That works out to a little over three espressos / instant coffees, or nearly seven sodas.
- redkabbage 3y agoOne 8oz cup of Starbucks coffee (the smallest size) or two shots of espresso has roughly 150mg of caffeine, according to their posted metrics. Most customers likely consume multiple times that.
- mandmandam 3y ago> Most customers likely consume multiple times that. Not according to the authors, who make this clear in the paper: > we estimated an average daily consumption of 137 mg/day, with a range of 30-270 mg/day by using averages reported in previous trials Starbucks is bad coffee anyway. Boycotting them is easy.
- ghusto 3y ago> Starbucks is bad coffee anyway. It's better coffee than those places that want to make coffee the "proper way", but can't. I understand the "corporations-bad" source of the hate for Starbucks, but their coffee is okay precisely because they're driven by corporate goals: Press button, coffee comes out, calibrated the same as every other Starbucks in the world; to be passable.
- mandmandam 3y ago> I understand the "corporations-bad" source of the hate for Starbucks No, you don't. If you did, you wouldn't talk about it like that. And their coffee is bad, not [just] in a "this company illegally attacks unions, treats their workers heinously, undercuts small businesses to gain a monopoly, and are currently actively supporting a genocide" kind of way, but in a "these beans are literally burnt" kind of way. Some people might like burnt beans, in the same way some people like burnt steak, or prefer McDonalds over a real burger. Fine. You're allowed to like bad coffee.
- hagbarth 3y agoI have a hard time with news outlets taking articles, in which the authors highlight the need for further research, and suggest the findings as fact. I know it says “may”, but that’s not how people read it.
- archo 3y agoScientist: Scientific findings are meaningless when taken out of context… Media: Scientist claims scientific findings are meaningless!
- egberts1 3y agoSo a paper put out by a lower-class (bachelor in "pseudoscience") at an obscure college on a dubious psychology website: NEXT!
- totallywrong 3y agoI've by now eliminated all questionable habits in my life. My morning coffee is the one I'm willing to accept potentital downsides to maintain.
- rf15 3y agoAs someone who doesn't take any form of caffeine: Considering how widespread it is, it's probably just another of those trade-off scenarios for your body.
- washadjeffmad 3y agoI switched from bancha all day to a single 6oz cup of coffee in the morning. When we want more, we drink decaf.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- seltzered_ 3y agoOriginal research paper: Chronic caffeine consumption curbs rTMS-induced plasticity https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1137681/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1137...
- mahogany 3y agoThis thread is going to be similar to threads discussing a paper that points out something negative about alcohol consumption. It’s easy to get defensive (sometimes irrationally so) about our drug habits which may have negative long-term effects. If I’m being objective (as a “chronic” caffeine consumer) it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if daily consumption of more than 100mg of caffeine had long-term negative effects for many people. Even ignoring possible brain changes proposed in this article, the effects on mood, stress, sleep, etc. are apparent in my personal observations. Now if only I could figure out how to consume coffee in moderation…
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- theGnuMe 3y agoSwitch to half decaf half caff and go from there. Add in green tea as a replacement for one or more. Good luck!
- munksbeer 3y agoGreen tea tastes awful.
- HumanOstrich 3y agoGreat unsolicited advice!
- syspec 3y agoWelcome to the internet.
- balfirevic 3y ago> This thread is going to be similar to threads discussing a paper that points out something negative about alcohol consumption Heh, when you prefaced with this I thought you were going to say that it will be full of people talking about how it was always obvious that it's bad, how they can't fathom why we as a society accept it, how they would never mess with their brain by using such substances... :-)
- MrDresden 3y ago"However, it’s crucial to approach these findings with caution. The research in this field is still in its early stages, and the studies have limitations, including small sample sizes and the complexity of accurately measuring and controlling caffeine consumption." My addiction will continue, at least for now.
- ghusto 3y agoHere you go, 15 paragraphs in is the information you're looking for: > found that MEP facilitation, an indicator of increased brain plasticity, is more pronounced in non-caffeine users compared to their caffeine-consuming counterparts
- tpoacher 3y agoAlternatively: changes in brain plasticity and learning may affect daily coffee habits. Yeah not so exciting this way round is it.