10 ms·

How Much Caffeine Is Too Much?

124 points by 2510c39011c5 12y ago

hessenwolf 12y ago
Apparently, caffeine makes it harder to intake iron. http://fscn.cfans.umn.edu/prod/groups/cfans/@pub/@cfans/@fscn/@admin/documents/asset/cfans_asset_122645.pdf http://fscn.cfans.umn.edu/prod/groups/cfans/@pub/@cfans/@fsc... And anaemia, stemming from lack of iron, leads to fatigue and irritability, which both suck balls for coding. edit: What did we learn in the article? 1. 140 cups will kill me. 2. Up to six cups a day will result in higher or lower mortality, depending on the study. 3. A study has shown that caffeine may lead to higher bad cholesterol.
- huehue 12y ago
  This is a direct benefit of coffee (along with donating blood) in my book. The chances of you developing anaemia because of coffee are dim.
- tmmm 12y ago
  > And anaemia, stemming from lack of iron, leads to fatigue and irritability, which both suck balls for coding. What if you take vitamins & minerals?
  - DanBC 12y ago
    My bias tells me that it's probably better to eat a healthy varied diet; get exercise; expose yourself to a bit of direct sunlight (10 minutes per day) but not too much; have good sleep hygiene; have good work habits; and so on. These steps build resiliance against mild mental health problems and increase physical health. I don't have any evidence and I especially don't want to be judgemental about it.
- thisjepisje 12y ago
  I'll drink six cups a day and find out which study is right.
- travisp 12y ago
  Lack of iron is a serious problem, but many people (particularly men) may have too much (even if they don't have hemochromatosis). Iron depletion has been hypothesized as the reason that blood donation may be good for your heart, although the evidence is still inconclusive. At the very least, it's not something everyone needs to be concerned about. Random biased selection of sources: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12430669 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12430669 - A historical cohort study of the effect of lowering body iron through blood donation on incident cardiac events. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18619522 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18619522 - Iron in arterial plaque: modifiable risk factor for atherosclerosis.
- hypersoar 12y ago
  This article doesn't make it clear, but caffeine isn't the thing in coffee that raises cholesterol. That's cafestol, and it's captured by paper filters. So coffee made with a standard auto-dripper, or by pourover, don't have that.
  - chestervonwinch 12y ago
    As an avid french press user, I have to shove my head the sand every time I see this.
    - meepmorp 12y ago
      What's the use of a longer life if you can't have coffee the way you enjoy it?
    - michael_h 12y ago
      Get thee an Aeropress. Cheap, paper filters, 5 second cleanup, silly delicious output. The phrase "I can't go back to drip, french press is so smooth" will seem laughable. :)
      - userbmf 12y ago
        Agreed, never going back to french press.
      - cheald 12y ago
        I just wish that I could make more coffee at a time with it, but I understand why I can't. It's astounding how smooth aeropress coffee is, though.
        hypersoar 12y ago
        Compared to french press, any filtered coffee is going to be smooth. I recommend you look into manual pourover brewers. The Chemex (my daily brewer) comes in sizes up 50oz.
- guiomie 12y ago
  I don't have anemia, but simply low iron (around 20 in ferritin level, recently it been up to 50), and I did read that coffee had an impact on low iron, and I do start believe this might be my problem.
  - squeaky-clean 12y ago
    I don't know the exact levels, but I was diagnosed with low iron in my teen years. The same span of time where I was obsessing over MMOs and mountain dew / red bull. I consume maybe one energy drink per month now, and have stable iron levels, so I also wonder if those are related.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      Has your diet shifted? I drink a lot of coffee and when I donated blood last, the person testing my iron levels remarked that it was a good thing I was giving blood, as the level was nice and high (they weren't remarking on my health, just on the high iron level). I don't take any supplements or eat a ridiculous amount of red meats and such, but I have a diet that includes some amount of meat, vegetables that are good sources of iron and breakfast cereal that is fortified with iron.
- calm_down_pls 12y ago
  >> A study has shown that caffeine may lead to higher bad cholesterol. I don't believe that is true. The study in question shows that unfiltered coffee may lead to higher bad cholesterol. It has nothing to do with caffeine. Decaffeinated coffee has the same issue.
- sitkack 12y ago
  Holy shit. No wonder I feel so much better after a steak.
Jhsto 12y ago
Though the article does not take into an account the possibility that some may consume caffeine in powder form. You can find 100 grams, or over 7 times the lethal dose, for 13 bucks in Amazon [1]. As for who would use caffeine in such form are weightlifters and people interested in nootropics in general. I follow both communities online and from time to time I find some people overdosing caffeine by mistaking it to some other similar looking substance, like creatine or taurine. Though typical overdose has been about 3 grams, it has been enough to make the consumers force themselves to puke it out or get into ER. I havent personally bought caffeine in pure form, but the idea has crossed my mind few times as these articles have started to pop out. I would not be surprised if caffeine would sooner or later be banned from being sold online. [1] http://www.amazon.com/BulkSupplements-Pure-Alanine-Powder-grams/dp/B00EIO4I5W/ref=sr_1_5?s=hpc&ie=UTF8&qid=1414487723&sr=1-5&keywords=caffeine+powder http://www.amazon.com/BulkSupplements-Pure-Alanine-Powder-gr... EDIT: tried to simplify few sentences
- dijit 12y ago
  I worked for an e-commerce retailer focusing on gifts for a time, during my stint we came upon a style of breathmint that contained caffiene. they were pretty potent and they worked, but they had a warning on the side which said "do not exceed 2 mints in 6 hours" Some guy had 12 mints at 80mg of caffiene each, promptly had a heart attack- we never sold the mints. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2453928/John-Jackson-dies-caffeine-overdose-energy-mints.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2453928/John-Jackson...
  - Jhsto 12y ago
    I recall seeing same kind of products in my local grocery store, just a few years ago. Though after most chains prohibited energy drinks from under 16 year olds, I haven't seen them since.
    - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
      Yeah, with that (kids) in mind, high-dosage caffeine products shouldn't be sold over-the-counter like that; caffeine is seen as a harmless recreational product, but not in those doses.
DanBC 12y ago
The article doesn't talk about aggression. I'd be interested in seeing some good quality research comparing people's responses to stuff when they're had caffene vs not. It's frustrating that the evidence around mental health is so poor. I think that small amounts of caffeine destroy my sleep hygiene so I avoid it after midday. But it'd be great to know if a couple of cups of coffee in the morning was probably good or probably not good.
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  The only one that can really gague that is yourself - have some coffee in the morning, check how you feel and how you sleep at night.
  - gdubs 12y ago
    Better would be to separate decaf and fully caffeinated grinds into numbered packages, keep a sleep journal, and then after three weeks see if there were any meaningful difference. Otherwise the results are going to be heavily influenced.
- webnrrd2k 12y ago
  Just to add another data point - I seem to be very sensitive to caffeine, too. Any more than a small cup of coffee in the morning will lower my sleep quality. Sometime I find myself getting strangely aggressive about things if I have, say, two small cups of coffee. It helps a lot to get me going in the morning, but I have to be very careful, and take frequent vacations. I used to be able to drink a lot of coffee, too much, but I've gotten much more sensitive as I've gotten older.
ludicast 12y ago
In February, I had an aortic dissection. That's a big deal medical emergency with the kill ratio of a special forces operator. Symptoms were similar to a heart attack, so it took a while to diagnose (John Ritter died of it, because they were treating him for a heart attack). In the ER they kept asking me if I was on coke, viagra, etc. Then someone brought up coffee. I remember admitting that I had 6 cups that day, and thinking they'd stop taking me seriously. When they* finally figured out my medical situation and told me I needed to have IMMMEDIATE open heart surgery, the first thing I said was "thank god I'm not a hypochondriac". Then I worried about my family and work and shit like that. But thanks to coffee my first worry was they'd think I "a bubblegummer". * - "they" btw, was an awesome nurse and NOT the 3 doctors who saw me there.
- akrasia 12y ago
  I really doubt a nurse made the diagnosis, the legal issues would be a huge problem let alone the education and complexity required to make such a diagnosis. I would know, in 2 years I'll be the single guy on around 1 out of every 10 nights who would have to make that diagnosis and I work in one of the top 10 busiest ED's in the country.
  - ludicast 12y ago
    What's up doc. She absolutely did make the diagnosis. She suspected it based on my pedal pulses, and other things, confirmed it via a CT scan, and got the surgery scheduled. It was like when the Wolf showed up in Pulp Fiction. Now the truth is she wasn't a random nurse. She is an NP named Nathania Francis and she has some feeding monitoring patent and her own startup in the medical space (this is her bio on her company's staff page: http://www.gnftechnologies.com/gnf-management.php http://www.gnftechnologies.com/gnf-management.php). No way I wasn't googling the person who saved my life. The surgeon that night, Gustave Pogo, was great too. Turns out everyone in the NY/LI area knows of him. But the three doctors who walked in, looked at me, and walked out, they didn't save my life. And this includes at least one specialist from the cardio-thoracic unit. I am/was a fireman with the FDNY (past tense due to this surgery...), so have encountered a lot of emergency medicine in real life. My own medical training is limited (I always joke that "I know enough to watch someone die"), but I can definitely recognize when someone is going through the steps of diagnosing a problem.
somberi 12y ago
Quoting from Pubmed (via nih.gov): "The present study compared the effects of caffeine on subjective arousal among introverts and extraverts.... caffeine improved the task performance of extraverts but overaroused introverts and thus impaired their performance." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10472512 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10472512
- jebus989 12y ago
  The second part of your quote (which comes first) was previous research they were setting out to repeat, instead they conclude with "Results do not support the hypothesis that caffeine differentially affects extraverts and introverts".
benzimmer 12y ago
If you're not a coffee person: http://www.caffeineinformer.com/death-by-caffeine http://www.caffeineinformer.com/death-by-caffeine
jonpaul 12y ago
I went to the ER (https://twitter.com/jprichardson/status/522084579906052096 https://twitter.com/jprichardson/status/522084579906052096) about 2.5 weeks ago because I didn't get enough sleep and drank way too much caffeine. My body just collapsed. From October 5th through October 11th, I actively rejected sleep (2 - 4 hours of sleep) and took in quantities of caffeine ranging from 1.5 g to 2 g. (A cup of coffee has approx 100 mg and a strong energy drink has about 250 mg). I was preparing for launch of my product and subsequent YC application. On Saturday morning, October 11th, I had massive chest pains and I collapsed. Fortunately, everything is alright with my heart. Overall though, I felt incredibly stupid about my actions. As hackers and entrepreneurs, it's really easy to fall into the trap of your launch being the most important thing in the world. It's not. You need to be healthy, as business is a marathon and you'll be running for awhile.
- frozenport 12y ago
  When you collapsed, we're you also sleeping?
  - jonpaul 12y ago
    No, I was standing up. Edit: I'm not sure. Doctors didn't comment much on it, so unfortunately, I don't have a conclusive answer. But it does seem plausible that my body decided to override my willpower and decided to "shutdown".
    - meepmorp 12y ago
      I think OP was asking if you perhaps collapsed because you fell asleep on your feet. Or not.
      - jonpaul 12y ago
        I think you're right, that makes much more sense. Haha. Revised answer.
- csbrooks 12y ago
karzeem 12y ago
This may be too Talebian a reaction, but isn't the track record of "take this-doesn't-occur-in-significant-quanities-in-food chemical and your health will improve" quite poor? Non-food chemicals are often very useful for acute interventions (e.g. antibiotics, chemotherapy), but at least in modern times, they almost always do more harm than good when taken long-term. (To avoid getting sidetracked by chronic medicines that some people swear by, I'm directing this point more at non-food drugs that are designed to take people from normal health to great health rather than from a disease state back to normal.)
- RankingMember 12y ago
  Googled "Talebian" and came up dry, but yeah. One thing that comes to mind that's used widely to thicken things like non-dairy milks (Soy/Rice/Almond) or anything that needs to be thickened/gelled is carrageenan, a seaweed extract that's been tied in multiple peer-reviewed animal studies to cancer.
  - Blahah 12y ago
    Probably referring to Nassim Nicholas Taleb [0], who puts emphasis on the importance of random, rare events. 0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb
  - cholmon 12y ago
    Google instead "Nassim Taleb", in particular his ideas surrounding iatrogenics (harm done by the healer), and "via negativa" as a heuristic for fixing systemic problems, i.e., removing things (chemicals/drugs) from a system (human body) to reduce the complexity of interactions and side effects. See also, http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/af-glossary.pdf http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/af-glossary.pdf
- otakucode 12y ago
  Where do you get "your health will improve"? The point of caffeine is not to improve your health. It's to improve your mental functioning. Mental functioning is not something our brains evolved for. In fact our brains are quite profoundly flawed for that task.
waylandsmithers 12y ago
tl;dr: "While clinicians may observe benefits and risks of caffeine intake, the effects are still being debated in academic circles."
coldcode 12y ago
Your bodies reaction to coffee is interesting, the receptors for caffeine apparently expand up to a certain point, once you reach that level additional caffeine does not good for wakefulness but the side affects continue. It's a ceiling you cannot go beyond but people often don't recognize it.
snarfy 12y ago
I remember a couple times I went to DefCon there was a guy with a booth selling pure caffeine powder in little baggies. I didn't start drinking coffee until my mid thirties. I can resoundingly say I slept better and woke up easier without it.
- RankingMember 12y ago
  That stuff is more powerful (stimulant effect-wise) by weight than cocaine and thus much easier to O.D. on. I can't imagine being that caffeine-addicted.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  Sleep patterns do tend to change with age. I find that caffeine after ~2 P.M. is a lot more disruptive than before. I drink ~40 fluid ounces of strong drip coffee and don't have any trouble waking up (or any sort of headache, at least not anything immediate, I definitely service the habit). If I stick closer to 30 floz, I don't think I get a headache at all.
iamthepieman 12y ago
My first year in college I had a french press (a kind of coffee maker) and a tin of breath mints that had caffeine in them. One night, trying to finish a project, I drank an entire quart of strongly brewed coffee (~500mg)and ate the caffeinated breath mints like popcorn (30mg each)[0]. I recall walking down the dormitory hallways with extremely heightened senses. I was hearing whispers on the other side of closed doors and watching a fly buzz past me in what seemed like slow motion. I could feel the carpet texture through the soles of my shoes and time seemed to slow down. At the time I thought it was one of the most incredible experiences of my life and vowed to repeat it sometime. Thinking back I realize I was probably experiencing mild hallucinations and could have been on the verge of collapse. edit: Added caffeine estimates. [0]Can't believe I found this. http://www.wegotcoffee.com/mints/zingo.php http://www.wegotcoffee.com/mints/zingo.php
- hobs 12y ago
  I know this feeling exactly. I one time consumed 2.5g of caffeine on a very VERY stupid dare. Me and another kid were trying to bluster each other and each were one-upping the other, though we had a hard limit of 3g. He had 2g and started crying, shaking, and rolled up in the fetal position. In retrospect we should have taken him to the hospital, but he was fine. The experience reminds me a lot of the movie Donnie Darko mixed with the futurama episode of Fry drinking 200 cups of coffee; it felt like you could see the animus of someone being projected into the future, and everything was practically at a standstill (like the time I was in a car accident). We had a few pick up games of various games at this LAN we were at while doing this, and I won every one of them having to do with twitch speed even if the person had 5 yrs experience on me in a game and I had never played it before. Not something I would repeat voluntarily, but it was an interesting experience.
  - iamthepieman 12y ago
    It's still one of the most memorable experiences of my life. It was very similar to the reaction you get when in physical danger. I skidded half way down an icy ravine while skiing. I'm sure it took all of 10 seconds but It felt like 10 minutes.
- 12y ago
gimboland 12y ago
This guy knows: http://www.tmcm.com/tmcm/ http://www.tmcm.com/tmcm/
ChaoticGood 12y ago
400 mg = too much 200 mg = too little
mhartl 12y ago
It's strange that the article hints at genetic differences in caffeine metabolism and sensitivity ("Some people will get edgy from a weak cup of tea. For others, a double espresso is required to get them into the shower in the morning.") but doesn't follow through on the implications. For example, my 23andMe results indicate that I'm a "fast caffeine metabolizer", which is associated with a neutral to slightly lower risk of heart attack due to caffeine consumption, whereas slow caffeine metabolizers have a higher risk. In other words, it's clear that the answer to the question "How Much Caffeine Is Too Much?" is "It depends on your genes."
- thisisdallas 12y ago
  I can see this in myself. I usually have about 48oz of coffee each day. Obviously less on some days and maybe more on others. On days that I don't drink coffee, I can't tell a difference in my alertness or energy. Honestly, I just really really love the taste, and knocking back a cup is a actually a great stress reliever for me. Edit: Now that I think about it, my dad is the same way. I've watched him multiple times drink a cup or two before bed and have no problems sleeping. On the other hand, my mom can drink a 12oz cup and get a nice boost of energy.
ryno2019 12y ago
Exercise is an amazing alternative. I'll never cease to be amazed by how much more alert, focused and productive I feel when I take time away to get to the gym instead of grabbing another cup of coffee and keeping at it.
utnick 12y ago
in the reddit nootropics forum the other day there was a post from someone who almost accidently OD'd on caffeine. Alot of the users there use caffeine powder, and he had his bags of powder mixed up with his vitamin c powder and almost drank a drink with multiple grams of caffeine in it. He realized it at the last second and stopped. moral of the story: caffeine has a fairly low lethal dose and can be dangerous when using the powdered form
- hobbes78 12y ago
  Even if it's "multiple grams of caffeine", it's still very far from the 14 kg mentioned in the article... Actually the only way I imagine someone being able to have such an intake would be to use many, many caffeine pills... Way more that the number of sleep pills suicidal people use...

124 points by 2510c39011c5 12y ago

Apparently, caffeine makes it harder to intake iron. http://fscn.cfans.umn.edu/prod/groups/cfans/@pub/@cfans/@fscn/@admin/documents/asset/cfans_asset_122645.pdf http://fscn.cfans.umn.edu/prod/groups/cfans/@pub/@cfans/@fsc... And anaemia, stemming from lack of iron, leads to fatigue and irritability, which both suck balls for coding. edit: What did we learn in the article? 1. 140 cups will kill me. 2. Up to six cups a day will result in higher or lower mortality, depending on the study. 3. A study has shown that caffeine may lead to higher bad cholesterol.

huehue 12y ago
This is a direct benefit of coffee (along with donating blood) in my book. The chances of you developing anaemia because of coffee are dim.
tmmm 12y ago
> And anaemia, stemming from lack of iron, leads to fatigue and irritability, which both suck balls for coding. What if you take vitamins & minerals?
- DanBC 12y ago
  My bias tells me that it's probably better to eat a healthy varied diet; get exercise; expose yourself to a bit of direct sunlight (10 minutes per day) but not too much; have good sleep hygiene; have good work habits; and so on. These steps build resiliance against mild mental health problems and increase physical health. I don't have any evidence and I especially don't want to be judgemental about it.
thisjepisje 12y ago
I'll drink six cups a day and find out which study is right.
travisp 12y ago
Lack of iron is a serious problem, but many people (particularly men) may have too much (even if they don't have hemochromatosis). Iron depletion has been hypothesized as the reason that blood donation may be good for your heart, although the evidence is still inconclusive. At the very least, it's not something everyone needs to be concerned about. Random biased selection of sources: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12430669 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12430669 - A historical cohort study of the effect of lowering body iron through blood donation on incident cardiac events. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18619522 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18619522 - Iron in arterial plaque: modifiable risk factor for atherosclerosis.
hypersoar 12y ago
This article doesn't make it clear, but caffeine isn't the thing in coffee that raises cholesterol. That's cafestol, and it's captured by paper filters. So coffee made with a standard auto-dripper, or by pourover, don't have that.
- chestervonwinch 12y ago
  As an avid french press user, I have to shove my head the sand every time I see this.
  - meepmorp 12y ago
    What's the use of a longer life if you can't have coffee the way you enjoy it?
  - michael_h 12y ago
    Get thee an Aeropress. Cheap, paper filters, 5 second cleanup, silly delicious output. The phrase "I can't go back to drip, french press is so smooth" will seem laughable. :)
    - userbmf 12y ago
      Agreed, never going back to french press.
    - cheald 12y ago
      I just wish that I could make more coffee at a time with it, but I understand why I can't. It's astounding how smooth aeropress coffee is, though.
      - hypersoar 12y ago
        Compared to french press, any filtered coffee is going to be smooth. I recommend you look into manual pourover brewers. The Chemex (my daily brewer) comes in sizes up 50oz.
guiomie 12y ago
I don't have anemia, but simply low iron (around 20 in ferritin level, recently it been up to 50), and I did read that coffee had an impact on low iron, and I do start believe this might be my problem.
- squeaky-clean 12y ago
  I don't know the exact levels, but I was diagnosed with low iron in my teen years. The same span of time where I was obsessing over MMOs and mountain dew / red bull. I consume maybe one energy drink per month now, and have stable iron levels, so I also wonder if those are related.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    Has your diet shifted? I drink a lot of coffee and when I donated blood last, the person testing my iron levels remarked that it was a good thing I was giving blood, as the level was nice and high (they weren't remarking on my health, just on the high iron level). I don't take any supplements or eat a ridiculous amount of red meats and such, but I have a diet that includes some amount of meat, vegetables that are good sources of iron and breakfast cereal that is fortified with iron.
calm_down_pls 12y ago
>> A study has shown that caffeine may lead to higher bad cholesterol. I don't believe that is true. The study in question shows that unfiltered coffee may lead to higher bad cholesterol. It has nothing to do with caffeine. Decaffeinated coffee has the same issue.
sitkack 12y ago
Holy shit. No wonder I feel so much better after a steak.

Jhsto 12y ago

Though the article does not take into an account the possibility that some may consume caffeine in powder form. You can find 100 grams, or over 7 times the lethal dose, for 13 bucks in Amazon [1]. As for who would use caffeine in such form are weightlifters and people interested in nootropics in general. I follow both communities online and from time to time I find some people overdosing caffeine by mistaking it to some other similar looking substance, like creatine or taurine. Though typical overdose has been about 3 grams, it has been enough to make the consumers force themselves to puke it out or get into ER. I havent personally bought caffeine in pure form, but the idea has crossed my mind few times as these articles have started to pop out. I would not be surprised if caffeine would sooner or later be banned from being sold online. [1] http://www.amazon.com/BulkSupplements-Pure-Alanine-Powder-grams/dp/B00EIO4I5W/ref=sr_1_5?s=hpc&ie=UTF8&qid=1414487723&sr=1-5&keywords=caffeine+powder http://www.amazon.com/BulkSupplements-Pure-Alanine-Powder-gr... EDIT: tried to simplify few sentences

dijit 12y ago
I worked for an e-commerce retailer focusing on gifts for a time, during my stint we came upon a style of breathmint that contained caffiene. they were pretty potent and they worked, but they had a warning on the side which said "do not exceed 2 mints in 6 hours" Some guy had 12 mints at 80mg of caffiene each, promptly had a heart attack- we never sold the mints. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2453928/John-Jackson-dies-caffeine-overdose-energy-mints.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2453928/John-Jackson...
- Jhsto 12y ago
  I recall seeing same kind of products in my local grocery store, just a few years ago. Though after most chains prohibited energy drinks from under 16 year olds, I haven't seen them since.
  - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
    Yeah, with that (kids) in mind, high-dosage caffeine products shouldn't be sold over-the-counter like that; caffeine is seen as a harmless recreational product, but not in those doses.

DanBC 12y ago

The article doesn't talk about aggression. I'd be interested in seeing some good quality research comparing people's responses to stuff when they're had caffene vs not. It's frustrating that the evidence around mental health is so poor. I think that small amounts of caffeine destroy my sleep hygiene so I avoid it after midday. But it'd be great to know if a couple of cups of coffee in the morning was probably good or probably not good.

Cthulhu_ 12y ago
The only one that can really gague that is yourself - have some coffee in the morning, check how you feel and how you sleep at night.
- gdubs 12y ago
  Better would be to separate decaf and fully caffeinated grinds into numbered packages, keep a sleep journal, and then after three weeks see if there were any meaningful difference. Otherwise the results are going to be heavily influenced.
webnrrd2k 12y ago
Just to add another data point - I seem to be very sensitive to caffeine, too. Any more than a small cup of coffee in the morning will lower my sleep quality. Sometime I find myself getting strangely aggressive about things if I have, say, two small cups of coffee. It helps a lot to get me going in the morning, but I have to be very careful, and take frequent vacations. I used to be able to drink a lot of coffee, too much, but I've gotten much more sensitive as I've gotten older.

ludicast 12y ago

In February, I had an aortic dissection. That's a big deal medical emergency with the kill ratio of a special forces operator. Symptoms were similar to a heart attack, so it took a while to diagnose (John Ritter died of it, because they were treating him for a heart attack). In the ER they kept asking me if I was on coke, viagra, etc. Then someone brought up coffee. I remember admitting that I had 6 cups that day, and thinking they'd stop taking me seriously. When they* finally figured out my medical situation and told me I needed to have IMMMEDIATE open heart surgery, the first thing I said was "thank god I'm not a hypochondriac". Then I worried about my family and work and shit like that. But thanks to coffee my first worry was they'd think I "a bubblegummer". * - "they" btw, was an awesome nurse and NOT the 3 doctors who saw me there.

akrasia 12y ago
I really doubt a nurse made the diagnosis, the legal issues would be a huge problem let alone the education and complexity required to make such a diagnosis. I would know, in 2 years I'll be the single guy on around 1 out of every 10 nights who would have to make that diagnosis and I work in one of the top 10 busiest ED's in the country.
- ludicast 12y ago
  What's up doc. She absolutely did make the diagnosis. She suspected it based on my pedal pulses, and other things, confirmed it via a CT scan, and got the surgery scheduled. It was like when the Wolf showed up in Pulp Fiction. Now the truth is she wasn't a random nurse. She is an NP named Nathania Francis and she has some feeding monitoring patent and her own startup in the medical space (this is her bio on her company's staff page: http://www.gnftechnologies.com/gnf-management.php http://www.gnftechnologies.com/gnf-management.php). No way I wasn't googling the person who saved my life. The surgeon that night, Gustave Pogo, was great too. Turns out everyone in the NY/LI area knows of him. But the three doctors who walked in, looked at me, and walked out, they didn't save my life. And this includes at least one specialist from the cardio-thoracic unit. I am/was a fireman with the FDNY (past tense due to this surgery...), so have encountered a lot of emergency medicine in real life. My own medical training is limited (I always joke that "I know enough to watch someone die"), but I can definitely recognize when someone is going through the steps of diagnosing a problem.

somberi 12y ago

Quoting from Pubmed (via nih.gov): "The present study compared the effects of caffeine on subjective arousal among introverts and extraverts.... caffeine improved the task performance of extraverts but overaroused introverts and thus impaired their performance." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10472512 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10472512

jebus989 12y ago
The second part of your quote (which comes first) was previous research they were setting out to repeat, instead they conclude with "Results do not support the hypothesis that caffeine differentially affects extraverts and introverts".

benzimmer 12y ago

If you're not a coffee person: http://www.caffeineinformer.com/death-by-caffeine http://www.caffeineinformer.com/death-by-caffeine

jonpaul 12y ago

I went to the ER (https://twitter.com/jprichardson/status/522084579906052096 https://twitter.com/jprichardson/status/522084579906052096) about 2.5 weeks ago because I didn't get enough sleep and drank way too much caffeine. My body just collapsed. From October 5th through October 11th, I actively rejected sleep (2 - 4 hours of sleep) and took in quantities of caffeine ranging from 1.5 g to 2 g. (A cup of coffee has approx 100 mg and a strong energy drink has about 250 mg). I was preparing for launch of my product and subsequent YC application. On Saturday morning, October 11th, I had massive chest pains and I collapsed. Fortunately, everything is alright with my heart. Overall though, I felt incredibly stupid about my actions. As hackers and entrepreneurs, it's really easy to fall into the trap of your launch being the most important thing in the world. It's not. You need to be healthy, as business is a marathon and you'll be running for awhile.

frozenport 12y ago
When you collapsed, we're you also sleeping?
- jonpaul 12y ago
  No, I was standing up. Edit: I'm not sure. Doctors didn't comment much on it, so unfortunately, I don't have a conclusive answer. But it does seem plausible that my body decided to override my willpower and decided to "shutdown".
  - meepmorp 12y ago
    I think OP was asking if you perhaps collapsed because you fell asleep on your feet. Or not.
    - jonpaul 12y ago
      I think you're right, that makes much more sense. Haha. Revised answer.
csbrooks 12y ago

karzeem 12y ago

This may be too Talebian a reaction, but isn't the track record of "take this-doesn't-occur-in-significant-quanities-in-food chemical and your health will improve" quite poor? Non-food chemicals are often very useful for acute interventions (e.g. antibiotics, chemotherapy), but at least in modern times, they almost always do more harm than good when taken long-term. (To avoid getting sidetracked by chronic medicines that some people swear by, I'm directing this point more at non-food drugs that are designed to take people from normal health to great health rather than from a disease state back to normal.)

RankingMember 12y ago
Googled "Talebian" and came up dry, but yeah. One thing that comes to mind that's used widely to thicken things like non-dairy milks (Soy/Rice/Almond) or anything that needs to be thickened/gelled is carrageenan, a seaweed extract that's been tied in multiple peer-reviewed animal studies to cancer.
- Blahah 12y ago
  Probably referring to Nassim Nicholas Taleb [0], who puts emphasis on the importance of random, rare events. 0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb
- cholmon 12y ago
  Google instead "Nassim Taleb", in particular his ideas surrounding iatrogenics (harm done by the healer), and "via negativa" as a heuristic for fixing systemic problems, i.e., removing things (chemicals/drugs) from a system (human body) to reduce the complexity of interactions and side effects. See also, http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/af-glossary.pdf http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/af-glossary.pdf
otakucode 12y ago
Where do you get "your health will improve"? The point of caffeine is not to improve your health. It's to improve your mental functioning. Mental functioning is not something our brains evolved for. In fact our brains are quite profoundly flawed for that task.

waylandsmithers 12y ago

tl;dr: "While clinicians may observe benefits and risks of caffeine intake, the effects are still being debated in academic circles."

coldcode 12y ago

Your bodies reaction to coffee is interesting, the receptors for caffeine apparently expand up to a certain point, once you reach that level additional caffeine does not good for wakefulness but the side affects continue. It's a ceiling you cannot go beyond but people often don't recognize it.

snarfy 12y ago

I remember a couple times I went to DefCon there was a guy with a booth selling pure caffeine powder in little baggies. I didn't start drinking coffee until my mid thirties. I can resoundingly say I slept better and woke up easier without it.

RankingMember 12y ago
That stuff is more powerful (stimulant effect-wise) by weight than cocaine and thus much easier to O.D. on. I can't imagine being that caffeine-addicted.
maxerickson 12y ago
Sleep patterns do tend to change with age. I find that caffeine after ~2 P.M. is a lot more disruptive than before. I drink ~40 fluid ounces of strong drip coffee and don't have any trouble waking up (or any sort of headache, at least not anything immediate, I definitely service the habit). If I stick closer to 30 floz, I don't think I get a headache at all.

iamthepieman 12y ago

My first year in college I had a french press (a kind of coffee maker) and a tin of breath mints that had caffeine in them. One night, trying to finish a project, I drank an entire quart of strongly brewed coffee (~500mg)and ate the caffeinated breath mints like popcorn (30mg each)[0]. I recall walking down the dormitory hallways with extremely heightened senses. I was hearing whispers on the other side of closed doors and watching a fly buzz past me in what seemed like slow motion. I could feel the carpet texture through the soles of my shoes and time seemed to slow down. At the time I thought it was one of the most incredible experiences of my life and vowed to repeat it sometime. Thinking back I realize I was probably experiencing mild hallucinations and could have been on the verge of collapse. edit: Added caffeine estimates. [0]Can't believe I found this. http://www.wegotcoffee.com/mints/zingo.php http://www.wegotcoffee.com/mints/zingo.php

hobs 12y ago
I know this feeling exactly. I one time consumed 2.5g of caffeine on a very VERY stupid dare. Me and another kid were trying to bluster each other and each were one-upping the other, though we had a hard limit of 3g. He had 2g and started crying, shaking, and rolled up in the fetal position. In retrospect we should have taken him to the hospital, but he was fine. The experience reminds me a lot of the movie Donnie Darko mixed with the futurama episode of Fry drinking 200 cups of coffee; it felt like you could see the animus of someone being projected into the future, and everything was practically at a standstill (like the time I was in a car accident). We had a few pick up games of various games at this LAN we were at while doing this, and I won every one of them having to do with twitch speed even if the person had 5 yrs experience on me in a game and I had never played it before. Not something I would repeat voluntarily, but it was an interesting experience.
- iamthepieman 12y ago
  It's still one of the most memorable experiences of my life. It was very similar to the reaction you get when in physical danger. I skidded half way down an icy ravine while skiing. I'm sure it took all of 10 seconds but It felt like 10 minutes.
12y ago

gimboland 12y ago

This guy knows: http://www.tmcm.com/tmcm/ http://www.tmcm.com/tmcm/

ChaoticGood 12y ago

400 mg = too much 200 mg = too little

mhartl 12y ago

It's strange that the article hints at genetic differences in caffeine metabolism and sensitivity ("Some people will get edgy from a weak cup of tea. For others, a double espresso is required to get them into the shower in the morning.") but doesn't follow through on the implications. For example, my 23andMe results indicate that I'm a "fast caffeine metabolizer", which is associated with a neutral to slightly lower risk of heart attack due to caffeine consumption, whereas slow caffeine metabolizers have a higher risk. In other words, it's clear that the answer to the question "How Much Caffeine Is Too Much?" is "It depends on your genes."

thisisdallas 12y ago
I can see this in myself. I usually have about 48oz of coffee each day. Obviously less on some days and maybe more on others. On days that I don't drink coffee, I can't tell a difference in my alertness or energy. Honestly, I just really really love the taste, and knocking back a cup is a actually a great stress reliever for me. Edit: Now that I think about it, my dad is the same way. I've watched him multiple times drink a cup or two before bed and have no problems sleeping. On the other hand, my mom can drink a 12oz cup and get a nice boost of energy.

ryno2019 12y ago

Exercise is an amazing alternative. I'll never cease to be amazed by how much more alert, focused and productive I feel when I take time away to get to the gym instead of grabbing another cup of coffee and keeping at it.

utnick 12y ago

in the reddit nootropics forum the other day there was a post from someone who almost accidently OD'd on caffeine. Alot of the users there use caffeine powder, and he had his bags of powder mixed up with his vitamin c powder and almost drank a drink with multiple grams of caffeine in it. He realized it at the last second and stopped. moral of the story: caffeine has a fairly low lethal dose and can be dangerous when using the powdered form

hobbes78 12y ago
Even if it's "multiple grams of caffeine", it's still very far from the 14 kg mentioned in the article... Actually the only way I imagine someone being able to have such an intake would be to use many, many caffeine pills... Way more that the number of sleep pills suicidal people use...