Caffeine Vault

Brazilian Geek writes: "This is interesting ... Here's a link to the Caffeine Vault. Everything you wanted to know about every geek's favorite drug. BTW, did you know that caffeine can kill? Here's a handy table with the caffeine content of some popular soft drinks and different brews of coffee."

Comments

Re:Caffeine morphine Jolt Cola--what's the diff? :

[GrenDel Fuego]

In most cases it lasts only 2 days.

Re:Caffeine has it'sown MSDS too

[aed]

The correct link is: http://erowid.org/ch emicals/caffeine/caffeine_data_sheet.shtml

if 13 mg/kg is toxic, then for a 200lb (100kg) person the toxicity level = 13mg/kg * 100kg =1300mg

Re:Napster and Google sued

[pturing]

actually commercial mp3s would still have that hiss in the upper register

I only recently gained the listening acuity for it to bother me....

I doubt many people notice it

*sips can of surge again*

lethal dose?

[esacevets]

That's incredible that ~30 cups of coffee, according to this article, can kill.

Now I wonder how many coffee beans go into an average cup of coffee. I wonder this because I used to eat chocolate covered coffee beans by the handful. I would think that the amount of coffee beans, combined with the chocolate, could easily kill. I have to question these statistics.

JL

Do it yourself decafination for teas

[khym]

If you like tea, but can't drink caffine for medical reasons, try this: steep the tea leaves in boiling water for 30 seconds, throw out the water, and then steep the leaves in new water. Caffeine is highly water soluble, and 80% of the caffine is disolved in the first 30 seconds.

I've found this technique to be very useful, since the selection of pre-decafinated teas at the local stores is piss-poor. Now I can drink whatever flavor I like.

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

Re:Do it yourself decafination for teas

[glandauer]

The solvent most often used for decaffeination is dichloromethane (also commonly known as methylene chloride). Chlorinated hydrocarbons are basically all known or suspect carcinogens, but apparently this process is still considered acceptable because the decaffeination is performed before roasting and any of the volatile dichloromethane is driven off in the roasting process. Starbucks' literature, at least, claims that dichloromethane is below detectable levels (which are quite low) in decaf coffee beans.

Also FWIW the CO2 used for extraction now is actually supercritical, not liquid. The difference is not terribly important or obvious to the layman, but it does apparently have a pretty dramatic impact on its solvent properties.

Re:Do it yourself decafination for teas

[rve]

Yeah, you're right.. technically, there is no such thing as liquid CO2

There are two kinds of people in the world: chemists and normal ones ;-)

Re:Do it yourself decafination for teas

[rve]

Sorry, but the soluability of caffeine in water is very poor, especially compared to the other substances that provide scent and flavour. Decaf is made by extracting the caffeine with a non polar (mixes with oil, not water) solvent. I think they used to use petrol for that, but switched to liquified CO2

Medical mathematics

[eyeball]

INADBIWICWMOP (I'm not a doctor but I wish I could write my own perscriptions )

I've been trying to figure out something for a few years. Is it possible to maintain a constant blood-caffeine level? I imagine this would have to be accomplished by tracking your caffeine intake, and supplying yourself with a sustained, regular dose. What I'm having a hard time understanding is the concept of half-lifes of medical dosages, absorption rates, etc.. Does anyone have any simple, layman's way of explaining any of this so that I could experiment on myself a little?

Re:Medical mathematics

[Masem]

Caffine goes through the body rather quickly, so it's hard to maintain the caffine level save by intravenious feeding. I've heard that in order to exceed the LD50 level of caffeine you need to drink 60 cups of coffee within 60 minutes, even though only 10 cups will have enough to kill you.

Re:Medical mathematics

[YoJ]

Concentration of drugs in the body over time is calculated using the Michaelis-Menten differential equation. Let y(t) be the amount of drug in the body (grams) at time t (seconds). Then:

y'(t)=-k y(t)/(A+y(t))

where A and k are constants that depend on the drug.

Drugs like cocaine have y(t) very small relative to A, so the concentration can be approximated with an exponential decay. This is where the concept of half-life of drugs comes in. The concentration decreases by a half for every half-life of time that goes by. So if the half-life is 1 hr, after 3 hours there is 1/8 the initial amount of drug in the body.

For drugs like alcohol, y(t) is large relative to A, which makes the decay more linear and less exponential. One serving of alcohol takes about an hour to pass out of the body. So after half an hour, half the initial alcohol is in the blood.

To model the level of caffeine in your body without complicated medical tests, you would have to find the right constants for caffeine from medical literature. Then carefully record every source of caffeine you intake to the model. Since caffeine passes through the body relatively quickly, it would be pretty much impossible to keep a constant concentration in the blood. It would be possible to keep the concentration between an upper and lower limit.

Surge vs. others...

[antdude]

Weird. I have drank Surge (soda cans) and I couldn't handle after 10 sips (heart beat faster and starting to shake hehe). I can handle Dew easily. According to the chart, Dew has more caffeine. That doesn't make sense to me. Is there something in Surge that made me all hyped? My coworker could drink three cans easily.

caffeine puts me to sleep

[anonymous cowerd]

No kidding! When I was younger, up to about ten years ago, I got the same effect off caffeine as everyone else - it helped me stay awake and made me a bit jittery. But for the last three or four years I've had an odd reaction, which I am curious to know if anyone else shares.

First thing in the morning I always drink one cup of coffee, and it clears away the cobwebs. (For all I know that could be the effect of the sugar - I sweeten my coffee with honey at home.) But then any time in the day after that, whenever I drink a cup of coffee, rather than getting me all tensed up, it has the paradoxical effect of making me want to put my head down on my desk and take a nap. So where I used to dose myself with coffee to stay alert at work, now that technique doesn't work at all anymore.

And where some people, after having drunk a cup of coffee late at night, find it difficult to go to sleep soon afterwards, for me, if it's late, a cup of coffee sends me right off to dreamland. For me, caffeine is a more effective sleep-inducer than an alcoholic drink. A while back I had to drive home from one of my company's branch offices at 3:00 AM and I made the mistake of drinking a cup of coffee from a vending machine at a rest stop en route. I was tired but OK until then, but immediately after drinking the coffee I started drifting off while driving and being awakened by the vibration from running over the reflectors on the lane stripe - if I hadn't given up and pulled over to the side of the road for a quick nap in the driver's seat, I think I'd have wrecked my car.

Am I the only one who experiences this effect?

Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

Re:caffeine puts me to sleep

[Windigo The Feral (N]

WKiernan dun said:

First thing in the morning I always drink one cup of coffee, and it clears away the cobwebs. (For all I know that could be the effect of the sugar - I sweeten my coffee with honey at home.) But then any time in the day after that, whenever I drink a cup of coffee, rather than getting me all tensed up, it has the paradoxical effect of making me want to put my head down on my desk and take a nap. So where I used to dose myself with coffee to stay alert at work, now that technique doesn't work at all anymore. And where some people, after having drunk a cup of coffee late at night, find it difficult to go to sleep soon afterwards, for me, if it's late, a cup of coffee sends me right off to dreamland. For me, caffeine is a more effective sleep-inducer than an alcoholic drink. A while back I had to drive home from one of my company's branch offices at 3:00 AM and I made the mistake of drinking a cup of coffee from a vending machine at a rest stop en route. I was tired but OK until then, but immediately after drinking the coffee I started drifting off while driving and being awakened by the vibration from running over the reflectors on the lane stripe - if I hadn't given up and pulled over to the side of the road for a quick nap in the driver's seat, I think I'd have wrecked my car. Am I the only one who experiences this effect?

Actually, no, you aren't.

Myself...well, I'm of the type that was referred to in less politically correct days as "being hyper" and known more in these days as ADHD, aka "Ritalin Prescription On A Stick". (I grew up largely before the days of dosing kids with Ritalin. I just got antihistamines that had the interesting side effect of being tranquilisers. :)

With a lot of people who run towards being "hyper", stimulants (including speed, Ritalin (which just metabolises to speed) and caffeine) actually tend to mellow one out. You're running on overdrive as it is--it's now thought that stimulants overload the brain just enough to mellow one out.

Myself, I'm not crazy about Ritalin. And yet I drink coffee--actually preferring the strong stuff (espresso, "trucker coffee" (regular coffee brewed approximately double strength--most folks see it as drinkable as battery acid, and my husband has to remind me to make coffee "half your usual strength" if he's to drink it :), etc.). I will probably have no stomach lining by the time I'm thirty, thanks to having literally grown up on trucker's-coffee. :)

I also tend to drink coffee not just to wake up, but often to unwind after a stressful day--the stuff actually calms me down, especially if I put a bit of flavouring into it or make cappuccino...I'll be awake, yes, but relaxed. Prolly has to do with the funky wiring that's in hyper folks in general...

For that matter, the same goes with chocolate...the more bitter, the better. I honestly wish I could find a good recipe to make it like the old Aztecs did (no sugar, black as night, bitter enough to put hair on your chest, and even with the occasional chili pepper added for flavour!). ;) Not much on milk chocolate...not strong enough. Gimme the bittersweet stuff :)

(Hmmm...this prolly counts as a form of self-medication, I expect. Ah well. Somewhat cheaper than Ritalin and a hell of a lot more enjoyable.)

Now, admittedly, OD'ing on caffeine is a Bad Thing. Trucker's-coffee is prolly the maximum you want to take the liquid stuff...and I honestly do think trucker's-coffee is prolly stronger than espresso, to be honest :) I can testify that taking several Vivarin on top of a pot of coffee is a Bad Thing (my sister made the mistake of doing this during cramming for spring exams in college, and literally could not sleep for four days straight--luckily, she had enough body mass to keep from the nastier effects like arrythmias and puking blood and the like, but to this day she avoids Vivarin like the plague)...then again, one can't make cappuccino with Vivarin, or add amaretto flavouring to Vivarin, or experiment in making one's own amaretto or hazelnut Vivarin (well, I guess you could, but it ain't like grinding coffee beans). :)

High Doses

[DragonHawk]

Yep; in sufficiently high doses, anything can kill you. Even ... water ...

Yah, drop a ton of ice on someone, and they'll be dead!

;-)

Nicotine

[lemox]

If anyone remembers their old Anarchist Cookbook, it is also simple enough to create a lethat poison by cooking garden variety dip for awhile, concentrating the nicotine. Igestion will cause almost immediate cardiac arrest. Plus, if the intended victim smokes, it's relatively untraceable! Fun knowledge for everyday life.

Re:Caffeine morphine Jolt Cola--what's the diff? :

[Synocco]

Water is very addictive. Just think of the withdrawal symptoms.

Health Effects of caffeine

[toska]

Overall, in moderate doses, for most people, caffeine appears to be fine. Some circumstances which require caution: People with GERD (gastro-esophageal reflux disease) should not use caffeine. This is heartburn in its various instantiations, and caffeine relaxes the sphincter that keeps the stomach from gurgling into the esophagus, which is the point behind reflux. The problem is that chronic reflux can lead to Barrett's esophagus (about 10% of cases of chronic reflux), and Barrett's esophagus is a pre-cancerous condition (about 10% eventually progress to esophageal cancer). The other problem is the overdose. There are reported cases of nodoze used excessively (eg by grad students and IT-ish people) to maintain horrific schedules leading to "Permanent Dozing", ie death. In high doses, caffeine (and its relatives theophylline and methylybromine, the "caffeine" in chocolate) disrupt the function of the heart, causing ventricular arrhythmias and ultimately death. That's fairly rare, but taking several grams of caffeine is fairly risky.

Oh, and the other thing: ever wonder why Excedrin and some of the other headache medicines have caffeine in them? In part, it's because caffeine withdrawal in addicted patients (half of America it seems) can give you headaches. So that's the other thing.

Re:Why Surge Makes You Shake

[antdude]

Taste wasn't that bad :). It is not great either like Mountain Dew.

let's be medically realistic

[toska]

I'd be a little cautious in comparing water overload to caffeine overload. While it is possible for polydipsia (pathologically increased water intake) to cause death, it's actually pretty rare. There are these organs called kidneys that in healthy young people do a great job of keeping up. Eventually, you can overcome the capacity of the kidneys to expel pure water, and if you're not taking in salts, then you can have an electrolyte abnormality, seixure, cardiac arrhythmias, and death. A really old diabetic who developed polydipsia (usually a psychiatric condition, btw, with some people actually drinking straight from their showerheads), would be at pretty high risk since the body is already pretty compromised.

The achlorhydria is also pretty rare, and you can digest much of your food. I've never heard of a reported case of achlorhydria from chronic low-level polydipsia leading to clinically significant malnutrition.

I wouldn't leave people with the impression that caffeine is just as toxic as water. It's not. It's more toxic, and it can kill you if you overdose on it. If you don't do the stupid "deadline in 2 days. No more sleep and a couple boxes of nodoze should solve it", you'll never run into trouble. If one of your coworkers on a project or something starts getting really confused and lethargic after taking a lot of caffeine (slumping down, not making sense, staring off), you should take them to the ER and get charcoal down their throats fast. It'd be hard to get there by drinking coffee (who can get 50 cups down that fast), but those 100mg tablets can add up fast.

Re:let's be medically realistic

[Xerithane]

I can attest to a caffeine over does.
Deadline at work, went about 3 weeks, hardly any sleep drinking about 6 quad-shot mocha's a day at minimum. At the end of the time I woke up one morning (after just falling asleep 2 hours prior) with an agonozing pain in my chest. I thought I was having a heart attack. Nope, too much caffeine cause my heart to freak out on me. It hurt. Really bad. I quit very soon after that.


nerdfarm.org

Deja Vu

[fonebone]

Theres a very recent discussion about caffeine here, in the most recent poll.

Them geeks sure like their caffeine.

Wrong direction (OFFTOPIC)

[SvnLyrBrto]

>I've climbed a 14000+ft. mountainwith no ill
>effects. Are you maybe thinking of 300psi?

Nope. He means 300 ft. You've just got your directions mixed up. Remember he was just talking 'bout SCUBA diving? He means 300ft UNDERWATER.

At those depths, a 21% O2 mix (such as air) will cause you to die of oxygen toxicity within minutes. Oh, and that 78% N2? At those pressures N2 becomes intoxicating, and you suffer from nitrogen narcosis... to say nothing of the bends when you come back up.

For deep diving, a very low O2 mixture is used, generally 5% O2 or less. And to prevent nitrogen narcosis and the bends, an inert gas, usually helium, is mixed with the oxygen.

john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!

Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if

Hmm...too much I think...

[NoWhere Man]

Just looking at the chart for consuming caffine, it seems I consume roughly the amount in the "Heavy" range at certain times of the day.
Coca Cola is practically running through my blood stream.
Anyone here consume leathal amounts of Jolt?

NO such thing as too much coffee.

[www.sorehands.com]

Hold it, I have to brew another pot....Ok, I'm back.

You know, you drink to much coffee when...

Re:Caffeine has it'sown MSDS too

[Rhys Dyfrgi]

Well, even though 192 mg/kg is technically the lethal dosage, a lot less than that can kill you. A friend of mine, who weighs around 200 pounds or 94 kilograms, once drank 22 shots of espresso in one sitting. That's around 2200 mg of caffeine, which is only 23.4 mg/kg. And yet, the next day his limbs started losing feeling and turning blue (I don't know why it was the next day.. well, he drank it late at night, maybe it happened early in the day), and we had to take him to the hospital. Caffeine poisoning isn't all that hard to clean up, they just gave him some saline and flushed him out, but the doctor in the emergency room told us that he came close to dying of it, and definitely would have if he hadn't run out of aderol the day before.

So even something not that far over the toxicity level can kill you.
---

Re:Caffeine has it'sown MSDS too

[laborit]

I don't think I've EVERY heard of someone reaching Lethal dosage...

Oh, it's not just theoretical rat-torture. Although the guy in question did have to take ~90 pills = 18g = ~180 cups of strong coffee = 600 Penguin Mints...

Of course, I must warn against someone eating half a pound of chocolate covered espresso beans, unless they want to stay up for two days.

Yeah, the half-life can be a problem. You're much better off with ephedrine (clean, no jitters), Nicorette(TM) (shorter-acting), or cocaine (the side effect where you turn into God is pretty nice).

- Michael Cohn

Caffeine morphine Jolt Cola--what's the diff? :-)

[Sir_Winston]

> BTW, did you know that caffeine can kill?

Yep; in sufficiently high doses, anything can kill you. Even abnormally high water intake for a sustained period can kill you in several ways, including malnutirion: if you drink insane quantities of water, your digestive acids may actually become too diluted to effectively digest many foods. Even non-diabetics can overdose on sugar...which makes me wonder why I'm not dead yet considering the deranged quantities of Jolt and sweet sweet heavenly hash I've imbibed...
makes me feel like Elvis when I binge, except that I'd never under any circumstances put peanut butter on my hamburgers.

But back to the caffeine, there was at least one case I recall reading about, in which a mother overdosed her young daughter on caffeine pills by repeatedly feeding them to her over several days. The mother didn't realize that the autopsy would turn up plenty of undigested pills, some with the brand still visible on the capsules...

Re:Caffeine is not

[laborit]

Actually, marijuana can be very harmful to ones health. Long-term usage can cause considerable brain damage.

Substantiate please.

- Michael Cohn

Caffeine has it'sown MSDS too

[krystal_blade]

Shock you're co-workers, satisfy your safety oriented boss. Download the CAFFEINE MSDS, and place it next to the office coffee pot!!

http://erowid.org/chemicals/caffeine/caffeine_data _sheets.shtml

Caffeine Toxicity: Anhydrous: 192 mg/kg lethal dosage for human. Toxic dosage is 13 mg/kg oral man.

That equates to around 130 mg for a toxicity level in a 200 lb person. Females and males are so closely linked on lethality, and toxicicity level, posting both here would be a waste.

I don't think I've EVERY heard of someone reaching Lethal dosage...

Of course, I must warn against someone eating half a pound of chocolate covered espresso beans, unless they want to stay up for two days.

mummmummm-mmmuuuusssssssssssssssssssssssssssstttt gggegegetttttt mmmomo more kh kh kh off offf eeee!!!

krystal_blade

Some guy...

[RPoet]

Read this guy. He's apparantly a regular user of pot and LSD, and that's like the most natural thing in the world, but he's trying to cut down on the caffeine... That should be a warning to all you kids out there -- cut the caffeine (not) ;)
--

What happened to the other 50%?

[deadl0ck]

After getting what should be a lethal dose, the other 50% did *not* die.

I can picture one busy habitrail for a few days. :-)
--

Now I know!!!!

[cansecofan22]

Well now I know to just skip the Coke and Jolt and just stick with good old coffee. I can keep my hands warm in the winter and keep awake plus I only have to drink 1/2 the ammount of coffee to get double the caffine of soda! Its little tidbits of information on the web that make paying 150 DM per month for IDSL access in Germany worth while!

Re:Caffeine morphine Jolt Cola--what's the diff? :

[rve]

The LD50 should not be regarded as a border, below which you live and suffer no ill effects and above which you die.

The LD50 is based on the dose that kills 50% of a group of test animals, usually rats, rabbits or mice through it's direct effects. This dose is multiplied by a certain factor (depending on the weight, and probably species of the test animal), to give a _probable_ LD50 for humans.

At a far lower dose, only 1% may die, or at an even lower dose no test animal may die, but some develop permanent damage to their organs. At a far higher dose, 99.999% may die, but some could survive.

Re:Caffeine is not

[laborit]

Neither LSD nor marijuana is addictive (or, if marijuana is "psychologically addictive" because people get used to its pleasant effects, then caffeine is too). Neither one is dangerous or harmful to health. So while your point is taken, I don't think it indicates any hypocracy on the author's part.

Also note that Caffeine isn't as physically habituating as some drugs, but overall it may be harder to quit -- people who are trying to get off speed get some social support and substantial approval for it, whereas society practically encourages caffeine overuse.

- Michael Cohn

Re:Sheesh - oxygen will kill you. So will air.

[Floody]

I'm a PADI certified scuba diver. The claim that beathing "plain old air at 300 feet, and you will die" is so much bullshit. Plain and simple, no other name for such rank misinformation.

Of course, if you want to go down to 300 feet "breathing plain old air" you're going to have to have enough air in your tank to do the necessary decompression along the way to the surface.

I would not use air though for 300 feet, I'd go with a Nitrox mix in my tank.

I strongly suggest you take a refresher course. You are a danger to fellow divers. It's also painfully obvious that you don't know the first thing about Nitrox. One of the main tenents of technical diving is that O2 is TOXIC under elevated partial pressures. Diving on EAN32 (32% oxygen Nitrox, a common mix) would most definitely be lethal at 300 ft.

Here's the math, we'll consider a PPO2 of 2.0 (200%) to be toxic, which is rather liberal considering that divers typically regard 1.4/1.5 to be the limit.

300 ft is 10 atmospheres (300 / 33 + 1)
32% O2 at sea level is 0.32 PPO2, at 10 atmospheres, that's 3.2 PPO2 (320%!).

Even air (21% O2) is potentially lethal at 300 ft.
21% O2 = 0.21 PPO2 * 10 AtA = 2.1 PPO2 (210%!)

Instant Seizure in a bottle...

Caffeine Use = Reduced Suicide Risk?

[flufffy]

There's disputed research by Kawachi et al. that caffeine users might commit suicide less. I mean, they can only commit suicide once, but they are less likely to try. Junkscience.com has a cite for, and a short summary and discussion of, the original paper.

Drugs

[Kabloona]

This is slightly off-topic, but I hope that this post and story underscore the importance of responsible drug use. That means doing your research. Would you try to use a new program without reading the manual/man page?

Everyone should check out the resources available at places such as:
Erowid
The Lycaeum
Ecstasy.org
Dancesafe

To those that think drugs are evil, remember Prozac, Ritalin, the heart medicine you take, the pills your grandmother takes every day, and then think about just how much you actually know about the things you put in your body daily.

Do your research -- Enjoy drugs w/peace of mind.

-Kabloona
"We can't stop here, this is bat country!"

Re:Some Benefits .. or Everything kills you, again

[waterhouse]

Another good reason to find out what you're taking before you do take it, especially on unregulated supplements. From what I saw on a Dateline special and in my own research (mainly on erowid and similar sites) ephedrine can have extremely serious side effects when used as a supplement. Stories of marine hopefuls dying on training courses while on ephedrine based products are absolutely chilling.

The thing is that when ephedrine is mixed with caffiene its believed that there can be extremely serious cardiac damage done, ie arrest under medium fatigue.

Hell, even "Seventh Heaven" had an episode about it, and therefore it as to be bad!

Don't forget your Bawls!

[geoffeg]

The chart in the story shows Jolt as the highest caffeine, 72mg in 12oz. Well, don't forget about Bawls!, it has 80mgs in a 10oz bottle! I drink this stuff when its "one of those mornings" or I want to go to a show or club and I just don't think I will have the energy. You'll know when it kicks in (and you'll definetly know when it starts to wear off)!

To purchase some of your own Bawls, check out ThinkGeek but I highly recommend against buying from BeveragesDirect, they don't answer the phone and forget to ship stuff...

Geoffeg