Slashdot Mirror
Will Caffeine Cause Health Problems?
numbski asks: "We're all geeks here, and I think there is no question how much we love our caffeine. What concerns me is that my fiancee has noticed how much I take in during the morning, and that I even use Diet Pepsi in addition to pain killers as a medication for headaches. So I did my googling about caffeine and addiction. In the minority, you have one report making a scientific claim that there is no such thing as an addiction to caffeine, however many other articles (not to mention marketing propaganda) suggest otherwise. Perhaps not just the sake of having an addiction is what concerns me, but whatever other side effects. I generally take good care of myself, go to the gym, exercise, play hockey, eat right. I hate to have a stroke or heart attack later on in life because of the stuff. I'd be curious to know the thoughts of others who take in large amounts of caffeine, and perhaps what their doctors have said about it. I plan on talking to my own soon, but it seems like this warrants discussion amongst those who consume the most. Would/does this prevent you from grabbing your Bawls and running like hell?"
As a matter of fact, when I don't drink it, I have these POUNDING HEADACHES LIKE A NAIL IN MY BRAIN.
Therefore, it must be good for me, right?
Best Windows Freeware
BAWLS Guarana, www.bawls.com, is a high caffeine soft drink made from the guarana berry from the Amazonian Rainforest. The caffeine derived from guarana is twice as powerful as the caffeine derived from coffee.
I thought caffeine was caffeine was caffeine was a single molecule. How can a molecule from one source be "twice as powerful" as the same molecule from another source?
Or maybe I've just had too much coffee, and now I'm all paranoid.
Short answer NO. Long answer anything in excess can cause health problems, including water.
People seem to have a moral problem with a drug that has no side effects, but let's face it, from the scientific literature it seems caffeine is it.
It is midly addictive, in the sense that you crave it, but getting rid of the addiction is generally very easy if you use the fade out method (gradually reduce your consumption of caffeine over a period of several weeks).
Just use some cocaine as a pick-me-up and then you can wean yourself away from caffiene :P
... and it seems like caffeine might actually prevent Alzheimers.
People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this.
She said one study " reported dependence over a wide dose range", from as little as one or two cups per day to as much as 25 cups.
25 cups???? 8 hour workday. 25/8=~3/hour
Every 20 minutes you're downing approximately 8oz of caffeine and water.
Man, come up for air!
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
...and like any other stimulant, it can cause problems if your nervous system is sensitive to that sort of thing. Especially if you have a low-level (i.e. symptomless) case of Parkinson's or epilepsy.
I don't think it's been linked to any other problems, though.
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
Incidentally, the "not addictive" study you linked is speaking from an extremely specific neurophysiological perspective, and only applies to light consumers (1-3 cups of coffee / day).
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Here is a snippet about sleep and addiction
The most important long-term problem is the effect that caffeine has on sleep.The half-life of caffeine in your body is about 6 hours. That means that if you consume a big cup of coffee with 200 mg of caffeine in it at 3:00 PM, by 9:00 PM about 100 mg of that caffeine is still in your system. You may be able to fall asleep, but your body probably will miss out on the benefits of deep sleep. That deficit adds up fast. The next day you feel worse, so you need caffeine as soon as you get out of bed. The cycle continues day after day. This is why 90% of Americans consume caffeine every day. Once you get in the cycle, you have to keep taking the drug. Even worse, if you try to stop taking caffeine, you get very tired and depressed and you get a terrible, splitting headache as blood vessels in the brain dilate. These negative effects force you to run back to caffeine even if you want to stop.
I read this book over a year ago, and it caused me to go caffeine free for the better part of a year. Since then, I've taken the road of moderation, as I do love a good cup of coffee once in a while, as well as a good iced-tea. However, I've ditched carbonated beverages for good.
The book includes over 700 references, and while I'm not medical-minded enough to call him on his conclusions, they make sense to me and follow-up internet research of my own suggests that he's in the ballpark.
In my view, there's not much of anything the body can't handle in modest amounts once in a while: caffeine, alcohol, and even some recreational drugs. But chronic usage of any substance in large amounts can't be that good for you -- that just seems like common sense (if not outright supported by the sciences). If we all consumed alcohol as much as we did caffeine, our livers would turn to mush.
If nothing else, this book has some great coffee alternatives listed at the end.
Method of processing duck feet
To make a long story short, there are some wonderful meds out there that will do a much better job than caffeine for this problem. Caffeine is really a pretty nasty drug: if you're "hooked" (i.e. find you can't function without it) I suggest you see a doctor.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
If by health problems you mean my 20 page term paper, and by cause you mean solve then YES, emphatically.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
IANAD but Cafeinne increases your blood pressure. If your blood pressure is over 115 (used to be 120 but that has been revised recently) one of the first things you can do is cut out the cafeinne. It sure beats taking blood pressure medication which can cause sexual disfunctions! When you cut out cafeinne you will probably have a couple days of headaches to put up with, especially the first day. I haven't drinken (drunk?) any cafeinne in about 3 weeks, but started again yesterday and today. Oh well. If you are hardcore addict (whatever that might mean) then I'd recommend a gradual, planned reduction to reduce the headache problem.
Caffeine is bug poison. Tropical plants use it to disturb the central nervous systems of insects, so that they discourage being eaten.
I am a academic clinical psychologist. I do not specialize in caffeine per se in any way, academically or clinically, but I can tell you what I know.
(1) Caffeine is not addictive in the true sense of addictive. That is, it does not lead to abnormal cravings or pathological activation of neural approach systems per se. However, it does induce withdrawal, in the sense that your body develops a tolerance to it to maintain a certain equilibrium. When you remove the caffeine, you get headaches because you're not providing the chemicals your body expects. So, it's not addictive, but it does lead to tolerance. I'm not sure if I'm explaining that well, but that's what's going on.
(2) Caffeine is known to increase levels of anxiety in various individuals. Some individuals, in fact, have acute, severe anxiety reactions to caffeine. I believe there is actually a relatively recent paper identifying the particular gene involved in this acute reaction. My guess is that you don't suffer from this, as most people who have this reaction become aware of it. But not all. And in any event, many individuals' levels of anxiety are increased by caffeine even if they don't have acute reactions. So, if you're worried about your anxiety or stress (meta-anxiety?), you might want to think about cutting caffeine and seeing if it helps. I do know various people who have stopped taking caffeinated substances and said they're much mellower and calmer people. I also know people who have starting using caffeine again after stopping it, and have commented on how much more anxious they feel. But for others, it doesn't seem to matter. You'll have to find out for yourself.
(3)As someone pointed out, caffeine habits can effect people's sleep. I once heard a rule of thumb that you shouldn't be drinking caffeinated beverages after 8:00 or so if you want to get adequate sleep. It seemed to help me; you could try it and see for yourself. Sleep problems are associated with all sorts of other issues, so even if caffeine doesn't have adverse effects directly, it may have such effects indirectly through sleep problems. But it should be okay as long as you are exposed to caffeine at appropriate times of day.
So that's what I know from that perspective. In terms of long-term physical outcomes, I don't know really. I haven't heard of such things, but I haven't paid that much attention those sorts of issues anyway.
Since my early teen years, I was a caffeine junkie. Coffee and colas, nonstop. I used it both habitually (urg, morning, give coffee) and recreationally (yeah, drink 3 espressos and feel wacky, then stay up all night playing D&D) [yeah, yeah, nerd alert]. When Penguin Mints came out, I was buying them by the box via mail order, and eating a few every hour at work.
It got to be a bit much. Shakiness and being groggy in the morning until I dosed up were acceptable, almost "cool" within the right circles. But when I started having some stomach troubles (which apparently were unrelated) I decided on my own to give it up cold turkey.
I've been off it for a few years now, and I certainly sleep more now and feel more alive in the morning than I did when I was using it.
I still miss it every day, though.
I mostly miss the "recreational" aspect of it, though -- getting a good caffeine buzz to make the night last longer. But I know myself -- if I started drinking it "just on the weekends" or "just on game night" it wouldn't be long before I was back to my insane ways....
Now, where's my beer?
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
Are some people naturally immune to caffeine?
If you're relatively young, bet on Alzheimers. It's a relatively rare disease that will almost certainly be perfectly treatable within ten to twenty years, based on the research I've seen going by. (I take a bit of an interest as it does run in my family a little bit.)
(Alzheimers can't be cured and the damage it does by its very nature can not be truly undone, but if it's prevented in the first place, the difference between an Alzheimer suffer and a non-sufferer will be an extra pill or two every so often, and little more.)
High blood pressure and the corresponding heart problems are extremely widespread and kill millions, and maim millions more, very frequently and very reliably. Anything you can do to reduce that risk is important, and worthwhile.
Therefore, I strongly suggest that you be rational about the parent; the point is valid but be sure to take into account the relative risks of each. Expected (in the statistical sense) damage of the high blood pressure is much, much higher then the expected damage of Alhzheimers, unless you're in a situation where everybody on both sides of your family has suffered from Alzheimers (which I am not in myself).
This is my personal experience ... treat the following like you would with any anecdote - with suspicion.
I observe Lent every year - not out of some sense of religious need, but to help me break "bad habits." I find it much easier to give something up when other people around me are giving things up, and if I can kick a bad habit for 48 days, it is easy to keep on kicking it.
Last year's target for me was caffeine - no Colas, no Tea, no Excedren (read the label on that pain-killer!) nothing. I had the usual headache for the first couple of days, which then wore off.
Some background: I have had a consistent problem with leg cramps for years. It was especially bad after exercise - play three games of volleyball on a Friday night, and a few hours later my legs would cramp so strongly that I would have to lever them against a wall to get them to stop hurting. I took to taking pre-emptive doses of aspirin . . . and really stepped up my consumption of Gatorade and water on the days of the games, just to be able to play.
Lent starts on a Wednesday, so my first volleyball league match was two days after going off caffeine - and for the first time in months, I did not cramp up after the game. This continued through the following six weeks of that season.
When Lent ended, I fell off the wagon, and went right back to my colas. The following Friday, my leg cramps were back with a vengeance. When I recovered, I decided to lay off the caffeine again, just to see if there was a correlation (or to see if I was imagining things), and to date, the leg cramps are gone.
Was it caffeine, or something else that I was consuming? I have no idea. All I know is that I avoid them as much as possible, now, and I do not even remember the last time that a leg cramp woke me up at night.
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
Back in '88 I was a senior in high school. I would consume Mountain Dew x 2 in the morning to wake up. I'd have various caffinated beverages throughout the day. After work at night to stay awake for homework I'd be using Vivarin chased with as much of a 6-pack of Jolt Cola as I could stomach. Then unisom when I was done to get to sleep. Better living through chemistry I said!
It took a little while for the heart palpatations to start. I didn't like those but I was a stupid kid then. I just cut back a bit on the Jolt, but not much.
It took until early in my first year in college for the real physical effects to develop -- incredible abdominal cramps that would lay me compeltely out ina whimpering crying ball on the floor. Think appendix + gall bladder + birth. It took me a little while to start to correlate it to caffeine, but I told the doctors everything.
After ramming a wonderful camera up my tail and submitting me to a string of other humiliating tests (complete with barium enemas -- can you say "shitting rocks for 3 days?") the doctors told me that essentially I would never be able to have caffeine again without side effects because of the damage it did to my bowels & intestinal tract. I was now caffeine intolerant.
There was a drug I could take if I really didn't want the incredible abdominal cramps but it gave me nightmares. I actually tried it and the night terrors weren't worth some caffeine.
It took me 2 weeks worth of pretty nasty withdrawl symptoms before I got over it.
I have now been clean about 14 years. Nothing with caffeine, no cola, no chocolate, nothing. I read ingredients lists religiously looking for anything with more than 5gm of caffeine. A cup of Swiss Miss Hot Cocoa (5mg) gives me a pretty good buzz and I can't tolerate two of them without some mild pain.
Yes, it is a drug. Yes, it is addictive. Yes, you go through withdrawl, and yes, you can live without it. I don't know ho wmany 36 hour days I've done on sugar and micro power naps alone.
Time is the quality of nature that keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working. -Anon
If you want medical advice, don't ask Slashdot. Ask your doctor.
Balzac is said to have died from a heart problem induced by his love for coffee. The man was an addict. See his "The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee". Of course, one also note that the guy wrote well over a hundred novels during his career so it might have been a good trade -- depends on where your priorities are. I always thought Balzac should be the patron saint of geeks and programmers.
Actually I only know of one bottler in the US that makes Dr Pepper using the original recipe using cane sugar. The original plant in Texas (Dublin I think?) makes it and sells as much of it as they can make ... here in Austin the specialty stores sell it in the 10 oz bottles for like $6 a six-pack. And it is very, very good.
I had forgotten how good the old flavor was until I spent time in Moscow (CCCP) a few years back - over there they made it using the original (cane sugar instead of corn syrup) recipe and I was like WOW this is really good. Took some research but I figured out why.
Still really nasty to get all that sugar in my system though.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
I say this as an M.D. who relies on a pot of coffe to get going in the morning, and 2-3 20 oz cokes and/or a vente starbucks in the afternoon:
coffee has several known effects on an organism's health:
coffee's effect on wakefulness is likely mediated by interfering with adenosine receptors in the frontal lobes of the brain (competitive antagonism). although I personally feel that coffee makes me more alert and attentive, there is always the possibility that this is a fabrication of my own self-perception. which is to say: i do not know of an objective way of supporting the statement "coffee enhances my mental functioning despite being sleep deprived."
antagonism of adenosine receptors in the heart leads to an increased tendency for the cardiac muscle to contract spontaneously. this leads to an extra contraction known as a PVC (premature ventricular contraction). i do not know what the health implications of this are. common sense would suggest that there is little consequence to this unless you have a very sick heart to begin with.
caffiene is a weak diuretic (it makes you pee). this can promote the formation of kidney stones in some people. it can also dehydrate you, which is why you should never hit the StarBucks just before you cross Death Valley by foot.
caffiene both increases acid production in the stomach and weakens the tone of the sphincter (valve) between the esophagus and the stomach. this results in gastroesophageal reflux (heart burn). gastroesophageal reflux, if severe, can lead to esophagitis, Barrett's esophagus (metaplasia, e.g. precancerous change), and adenocarcionoma (cancer) of the esophagus. i don't know of any studies that show an increased risk of developing esophageal cancer in coffee drinkers, but such a study would be retrospective and probably very difficult to pull off with sufficient power.
Lastly, and I know this is kinda weak: people who drink X number of cups of coffee each day _may_ have an increased chance of developing bladder cancer.
all in all, though, coffee is a pretty benign habit. in a public health sense, it pales in comparison to simple things, like limiting saturated fats, not smoking, moderate alcohol intake, and wearing seat belts.
Fermat's other theorem: "I have a simple proof, but I can't write it down as I fear it's a DMCA violation to discuss it"
Coffee makes us speedy, irritable, sleepless, and often causes heartburn or ulcers. The removal of caffeine is supposed to reduce some of these undesirable effects. Coffee is an addicting beverage. If you consume more than 2 cups per day, you are likely to experience unpleasant withdrawal if you stop. The minimal suffering includes a headache, irritability, and fatigue. The popular ideas that the bad effects of coffee are caused by one chemical, caffeine, is misleading. The 800 or so other chemicals in coffee include aromatic or phenolic chemicals and many are probably neurotoxic; other chemicals are allergenic. Coffee is also a crop with pesticide residues. Coffee can be allergenic and makes some people obviously sick. Chlorogenic acid is one of the allergens which coffee shares with oranges.
Tea and coffee have much in common, although they different plant products from different geographic zones. Tea contains caffeine and other members of the drug family, methyxanthines. Tea also contains tannin, a good tanning agent. The caffeine dose in a cup of coffee ranges from 100 to 160 mg. A cup of tea has 20-60 mg and 12 ounces of regular Coca Cola has 45 mg of caffeine. The symptom complex produced by tea parallels coffee. Chronic heavy tea- users have sometimes been nicknamed Tuffers. Teas are addicting and are allergenic.
Daily coffee or tea ingestion induces a 24 hour cyclic disturbance with morning arousal, irritability, difficulty concentrating, subtle levels of disorganization, clumsiness, and forgetfulness. As the day progresses, 2 or more cups later, a heavy fatigue sets in by mid to late afternoon. Further coffee doses may rouse one a bit, but then further collapse is inevitable by evening. Irritability may evolve into disproportionate or inappropriate angry outbursts, pleasure-loss, absence of good-feelings, or empathy anesthesia. It is likely that the subtle pyschopathology of moderate to heavy coffee consumption contributes to the production of unnecessary conflict and dysphoria. The subtle cognitive and memory deficits which appear after coffee intake should alarm employers who expect their employees to think, remember, or carry out skilled, coordinated acts. It may be that coffee and tea intake facilitates dull, routine, rote tasks where thinking, skill, and initiative are unimportant. The cognitive and emotional defects of the coffee-drinker should also alarm a spouse or close family member who cannot understand why the relationship is not working. Until you consider coffee and other food-factors, mental and emotional disturbances may be totally mystifiying. Early sleep may be denied the infrequent coffee user. The chronic coffee-used may go to sleep readily but sleeps poorly and awakens feeling tired and mentally clouded. Morning fatigue demands more coffee to get going. A familiar recursive loop is established following the familiar addictive sequence.
If you begin in a clear state with no symptoms and a clear mind, the ingestion of even one cup of coffee will often produce a marked and undesirable effect. The sustained ingestion of even small amounts of coffee seems to produce a subtle psychopathology. The chronic coffee user risks a variety of physical and mental disabilities, especially coffee-user-fog. If your Cuffer spouse, employer, employee, or best friend seems irritable, obtuse, unduly nasty, or depressed, nurse them through the three-day- withdrawal headache and serve nice cups of hot water instead. Coffee substitutes are definitely not recommended. Many ex-cuffers find that a "nice cup of hot water" becomes a suitable drink. Others switch to light consume, soup, or hot water, lightly flavored with lemon and honey.
Caffeine can affect your mood. If you're already subject to mood swings, caffeine can be very bad news. I had a friend with a very mild case of manic depressive disorder (Mild enough that she was able to hide it from nearly everyone until it was too late.) At one point, she started pulling all-nighters and taking Vivarin. The combination of the three made the manic depressive disorder FAR worse - She became suicidal within days. (This could be related to the above comments about causing anxiety in some people.)
In moderation, if you have no preexisting conditions, caffeine should be safe. But don't use it to stay up at night - It just stresses out your body and mind in far too many ways at once.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Have you considered, I don't know, maybe... asking someone in the medical profession?
"I have cancer, and I'm wondering what course of treatment slashdotters would recommend?"
During my first year of college, I drank a lot of caffeine, mostly from Mt. Dew. I was drinking probably 6 or 7 12oz cans a day.
During the 2nd half of the year I started noticing that about once a day for 2 to 3 seconds my whole body (and especially my heart) would feel like I was running in super hyper mode. It felt like everything in my body was just running super fast. I didn't know what to think of it, but it only happened once a day for a couple of seconds so like an idiot I just didn't worry about it.
Over the next couple of weeks the incidents started becoming more and more frequent until I was having one of these 2-3 second super-hyper feeling spurts once every 10-15 minutes. At this point I got scared and headed straight for the local night clinic.
When I got there they took my pulse, blood pressure, etc and hooked me up to the EKG thing and had me just hang out there and lay around for 20 minutes or so. As bad luck would have it, I didn't have a single occurrence of the weirdness while I was hooked up. After a while, they unhooked me and were getting ready to send me home, but the nurse decided to go ahead and check my pulse and blood pressure one more time.
While she was checking my pulse, I had one of the weird speed up feelings. I didn't even have to tell her. As soon as it happened she looked up at me and said "It just happened, didn't it!" and I was like "Yes, how did you know?!?! What did you feel?!?!". She had actually felt my heart skip an entire beat while she was taking my pulse!
The doctor came back in and when she gave him this new information he said "Do you drink a lot of caffeine?" I didn't even know what was considered a lot or which drinks had a lot, so I was like "I drink a lot of mountain dew, I think those have caffeine". When he asked me how many and I told him 6 or 7 a day he told me that was my problem. The feeling I had been having was kind of an adrenaline rush where the rest of my body was trying to get my heart started back up again.
I immediately stopped drinking caffeine and it took about 2 weeks for the problem to completely go away. It tapered off at about the same rate it had built up in the first place.
At the time this happened I was in really good shape. It had been less than a year since I was a 2 sport athlete in high school and my fitness level was still pretty high.
So, caffeine may not have negative effects on everyone, but I'm pretty sure I could have killed myself on it if I had kept drinking it at the rate I had been.
I used to drink around 6 to 10 mugs of filter coffee a day, along with many penguin mints, cokes and other caffeinated products.
I also had frequent migraines, an insomnia problem, and was often too tired in the evening to go out.
About a year ago I cut down my caffeine intake dramatically. Now I have 1 or 2 coffees a day, or a coke instead. No Penguin mints. The difference was incredible: Hardly any migraines, I was able to sleep at night, I was more active in the evenings. As a bonus, my pericarditus (inflamed muscles around the heart) went away completely.
I still enjoy my coffee and caffeine, but I think it should come with a health warning. We certainly shouldn't be giving so much of it to children.
Steve.
A latent existence
Two words...
Kidney Stones.
About a year ago I had to deal with this blight. I can remember a remarkable conversation I had with the doctor at the time of diagnosis. She said that she could NOT believe the rapid increase in the number of young people (people not normally getting kidney stones, like me) who were getting them.
She attributed them to the increase consumption of soda's coffee (starbucks anyone) and such especially now that these are sold in junior and senior high schools.
ya See caffeine makes you go peepee. And when you replace the water you just lost with soda, you are only exacerbating the problem.
My advice... Dump the soda/coffe/jolt whatever. I was a 2liter diet pepsi bottle drinker a day.
now I'm clean and sober. No caffeine for over a year.
KStones are NOT fun.
Sure, taking a break from the computer once an hour would be good for health in general.
Which brings up a point about drugs in general. They are drugs and as drugs they will influence your perception at some level. That's common sense at its finest. Yes, we have a responsibility to learn about how they effect the body- and if we choose to use them, understand what they will do to you.
Having 6-10 cups of coffee a day, eating penquin mints, drinking code red, getting kidney stones and severe stomach aches will probably tell you that is too much caffeine for your body to handle. Common sense again... regardless of age. If you are in pain, your body is telling you something. Stop and listen.
If you smoke 3 packs a day and can't breath, sleep, or get it up, you probably should cut back.
Believe it or not, there are folks out there who use drugs moderately. They enjoy a few beers, have a cup of coffee, a smoke, and it isn't taken to the extreme. Its a freedom, and we are slowly loosing that right to choose what we want to do.
This is the lesson we should be teaching... Open our eyes, listen, and question everything.
A few important replies: