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Death by Coffee?
Clif Griffin writes "Slashdots question of the year, are you ready for this? No? Too bad, you'll hear me anyways. Will drinking 100 cups of coffee (the good kind, not that crappy decaf mocalatte crap) in 24 hours kill a person? Sure, there is one way we can find out but we can't let myself die under mysterious circumstances."
About ten grams of caffeine in a short period of time will kill you. There is about 100mg in your average cup of coffee (though it can vary wildly). So the math is right, but you'd have to suck down all one-hundred in a short period of time to get a fatal amount of it. Too much liquid, I think, you just can't process it that fast. All that would happen is you'd probably be urinating like a racehorse (caffeine is a diuretic), and and have a really bad headache to show for it at the end of the day.
;)
Over the course of 24 hours, a lot of the effect would probably be mitigated by the time span. I don't know how long it would take you to get the caffeine out of your system, maybe someone else does. Google says around 13% of the caffeine in your body is removed every hour, but I haven't a clue how correct it is. Sounds dubious.
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..in the alt.suicide.holiday Methods FAQ and have fun.
One morning the cops showed up and asked him a few questions, because the other guy had died after drinking approximately 48 cans of coke in a 12-hour period.
So, yep, the caffiene and sugar will kill you.
IIRC the lethal caffeine dose is 10g oraly and 3.2g intravenously.
a cup of coffee contains ~80-120mg of caffine, so 100cups of coffee could well kill you...
if you drank them all simultaniously.
one after another... you'll just feel REALLY shit.
Back in my younger, experimentalist phase, I tried taking a lot of caffeine pills. I had 13, which is about 20 or 30 cups of coffee. It was an overdose.
For about an hour I had a huge, ever-increasing buzz. Then it became difficult to walk. Then I started to throw up. I was vomiting for about 10 hours straight.
Unless you want to go through the same hell that I did, lay off the massive coffee dose.
to accept the praise of personal wisdom is an affront to the very ideal i hold dear.
The LD50 for caffeine is estimated at 150 mg/kg body weight
or approximately 10 grams for the averaged size human. There is about 125 mg in 1 cup of coffee, which is about 12.5g/100 cups. So yes, there is little over a 50% chance it could kill you.
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels.
A cup of coffee has about 150 mg of caffeine in it.
Hence, 100 cups of coffee is about 10-15 grams of pure caffeine.
The lethal dose varies.. different people react diffferently. That's why there are LD50's.. which is the value which statistically kills half the subjects. (or, you could view that as a 50%/50% chance)
The LD50 for caffeine in rats (orally) is 192 mg/(kg body mass)..
A typical male human weighs about 80 kg.. 15 grams of caffeine divided by that is 187 mg/kg.
So, yes that amount of caffine can definitely kill someone. I wouldn't take my chances.
To elaborate slightly on the parent poster, the condition is called Hyponatremia. Essentially, it's the opposite of dehydration. Too much water decreases electrolyte concentration. So the important factor is, does coffee contain electrolytes? I suspect the answer is no.
Yes, it was one of the favourite inquisitors' recipe, so it is not a French specialty.
It's well demonstrated in the movie "Francois Premier".
Trolling using another account since 2005.
At 100 cups, Fry finds some inner mind power new age shit, and ends up saving everyone from a fire because time basically slows for him and he can bring everyone out of the burning building. Overall a pretty good episode.
"The truth suffers from too much analysis"
Dihydrogen Monoxide is two hydrogen, one oxygen. H20. You know, water?
The reference is from episode #67, "Three hundred Big Boys":
A news reel reveals that Zapp Branigan has overthrown a planet of arachnids and as a result, Earth President Nixon is rewarding the entire population of the planet a $300 "fun bill."
The rest of the episode consists of vignettes of how the Planet Express gang (and Kif) utilize their refund. Fry buys 100 cups of coffee; Leela has a unique encounter with a whale; Bender buys theft tools to steal the world's most expensive cigar; Professor Farnsworth tries an anti-aging cream and meets a woman hiding a weight problem; Amy rents an airbike, and her clumsiness results in Kif's gift (an expensive watch) falling into the whale's airhole; Dr. Zoidberg pretends to be rich and ultimately feels nothingness; and Hermes buys an out-of-control toy for his son.
After Kif is incarcerated for trying to retrieve Amy's watch, the gang goes to the Treasures of the Silk Surplus benefit, where Bender's cigar starts a fire and only the over-caffeinated Fry (moving so fast even flames appear to be still) can save all the attendees.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
Coffee contains electrolytes, and far too much. By drinking coffee you actually dehydrate your body, because the coffee has a higher electrolyte concentration than your body. This is one of the reasons behind the tradition to be served with a glass of water together with an espresso in an italian restaurant.
A Google for water torture "Conan Doyle" gives The Leather Funnel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as fourth result, which must be the story you read..
A Google for water torture inquisition will then give you more details than you probably wanted (once you get past the pr0n).
Now, what was I doing...?
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
That means the lowest lethal dose reported in the literature was 192 mg of caffine per 1 kilogram of weight of the victim. I'll let someone else look up plausible values of caffine content in coffee.
It is certainly possible to kill yourself with caffine, you just need enough of it.
I found a link for content of the beans, the values are around 1.3 %. So 100 grams of beans contains 1.3 grams of caffine, or 1300 mg.
Eating 100 g of beans is well over the limit, assuming any of my math is right :)
No, coffee isn't dehydrating because it contains too many electrolytes. It's dehydrating because caffeine is a diuretic, i.e. a drug that induces urination. In any case, though, the comment about serving with a glass of water points out something important- that you can theoretically overcome issues with overhydration/dehydration/mineral depletion/etc. by drinking something else or taking electrolytes at over the same time period that you're taking the coffee, negating its negative effects (other than the potential caffeine toxicity).
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Who needs to DRINK coffee anymore ?? ;)
m l
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/caffederm.sht
In the case of coffee, you don't really have to drink anything else. The diuretic effect of coffee only eliminates about half the water. In other words a cup of coffee is about equivalent to half a cup of water.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
As posted somewhere else, the lowest observed lethal oral doses for humans is 192 mg/kg. This is, however, roughly equivalent to 10g of coffee beans per kg.
Check out this debunking page.
An excerpt (for the lazy):"Lawrence E. Armstrong, a professor of exercise and environmental physiology at the University of Connecticut, found that caffeine is not the dehydrating demon some people believe. In fact, he concluded that caffeine is no more a diuretic than water."
Actually, hyponatremia can be a direct result of ecstasy use.
One of the effects of ecstasy is that the user may lose the ability to monitor and control water levels in the body--so simply put, they do not know how much water they have or need. As a result, the two most prevalent causes of death as a result of ecstasy usage are heatstroke (severe overheating, and not enough water) and drinking too much (hyponatremia).
Here in our neighbourhood in Belgium there used to be some smartshops, small semi-legal stores where they sell all kinds of herbal extracts, non-subscription drugs, ... They once sold caffeine caps of 500 mg caffeine, which would be the equivalent of around 25 cups of coffee. Once ate one of those, did have a hell of a party afterwards, but I experienced actually no real (short-term) negative effects, except some hyperactivity, nervosity and a lot of thirst. Of course taking four of those guys I wouldn't promote...
int main(void) {while(1) fork(); return 0;}
it's been mentioned, but i'll elaborate.
yes, caffeine is a diuretic. meaning that it directly affects your kidneys in a manner that increases their urine production. in addition, though, caffeine is a vasoconstrictor. so it causes the overall volume of your cardiovascular system to decrease, which increases blood pressure, which increases urine production. in addition, that vasoconstriction also affects the smooth muscle lining your bladder, causing its tone to increase. thus, its volume capacity to hold urine decreases, meaning that you feel the urge to urinate sooner (at a smaller volume of urine).
so caffeine's effects are more systemic than its mild duiretic effect. the electrolytes in the coffee only amplify the urine production even more.
now if you'll excuse me, i'm on my 3rd cup this morning and i really gotta tako a piss.
NO, 100 cups of coffee according to the show Futurama (episode: three hundred big boys) will actually set you in a super hightened and mobile state where you move at super human speed and awareness. Thus you can save people.
:(
"I think we were just saved by an orange Blur!!!"
I wish they would bring that show back.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
As far as I know (I am not a physician [yet]), higher blood pressure is caused by contracting of the arteries or by a high level of electrolytes or by an increase of the heart frequency. Nicotine for instance causes a higher heart frequency by having the coronar (heart) arteries contracting, thus signalling a lower level of nutrition to the heart muscle, which in turn increases its frequency to compensate.
Caffeine is a stimulant to the nervous system and increases the blood pressure by causing the injection of adrenaline, which in turn increases breath and heart frequency, thus bettering the nutrition of the body and making you feel awake and alert.
But caffeine is not the single ingredient of coffee. Coffee contains about 700-2500 different ingredients (The different sources give different numbers). Many of them are created during the roasting process, and the way the coffee beans are roasted thus strongly influences the later taste of the coffee. Many of those ingredients are solulable in water, thus increasing the electrolyte side of the balance.
Coffee has caffeine in it, and caffeine in large enough doses would be lethal. (As already noted, _anything_ including water, can be lethal in the right doses.)
:-)
Different people will have different tolerances to chemicals, so when toxicologists talk about the dose it takes to kill someone, things get a bit theoretical.
To determine a lethal dose of a substance, look up the LD 50 (a toxicoloty term that means the dose which will be lethal to 50 percent of the species it is given to. For instance, for the same chemical, rats and humans will have different LD50 numbers.)
Another number commonly used when talking about human safety is the LDLO, which is the lowest concentration of the chemical that is known to have killed someone.
Anyway, LD 50's and LD LO's are commony available on MSDS's (Material Safety Data Sheets.)
Here is an MSDS for caffeine: http://ptcl.chem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/CA/caffeine.html
As you can see here, the LD LO for humans is 192mg per kilogram. Considering that the average cup of coffee has (very roughly speaking) 100 mg of caffeine, this means you'd have to drink about 2 cups of coffee for each kilogram of body weight in a relatively short period of time so that your body doesn't have time to metabolize the caffeine, in order to (maybe) kill yourself.
Or, you might just die of drinking too much water which is also in the coffee, along with other chemicals that would kill you in the right doses.
IIRC, as a result the National Health Service here in Britain recently changed decades-old advice and now allows people to have tea after operations. Any medics here confirm that?
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
The LD50 (the dosage at which 50% of human beings will experience a fatal overdose of a substance) of caffiene is about 10 g for oral administration (intravenously, amounts as low as 3.2 g have caused death). A cup of coffee has about 120-170 mg of caffiene. So, 100 cups would easily put you above the LD50 (at 12-17 g), although your body attempting to purge the caffiene (via uncontrollable urination and vomiting, both of which will certainly occur at the doses mentioned) will mitigate the dosage somewhat.
It is worth noting that caffiene, like cocaine, is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor. Once you pass an amount as little as 250 mg (depending on your weight) you will begin to feel the effects of caffiene intoxication, which include a very reduced sensitivity to pain, and eventually a feeling of intense, vibrant physical energy. As dosage increases however, psychological effects such as paranoia and anxiety are common, and panic attacks are often induced (it's happened to me). Keep going, and you will manifest serious cardiovascular effects, including heart arythmia and fibrilation. A myocardial infarction (heart attack) can be induced, particularly in individuals prone to heart disease. Such cardiovascular effects are likely to cause physical incapacitation before you can drink your way to the LD50, but if you figure out a way to maintain your rate of ingestion then yes, you will very likely die.
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the overdose of caffeine is estimated at 20g
TOXICOLOGY OF CAFFEINE OR COFFEE OVERDOSE
from http://rcm-medicine.upr.clu.edu/publications/sidne y_kaye/toxicology-of-caffeine.htm
From the Institute of Legal Medicine, UPR School of Medicine, Medical Center, Rio Piedras, P.R.
Caffeine is probably the most widely used of all drugs. It is found in coffee, tea and "cola" drinks. Can it be harmful, or is it a perfectly safe refreshing beverage?
Millions of people drink countless cups of coffee daily - some are bound to drink excessive amounts (more than 5 cups). This could in some cases produce bizarre symptoms.
"Has caffeine overindulgence ever been overlooked and the symptoms diagnosed as psychoneurosis, anxiety type"? This was the question presented by Dr. J. F. Greden, the Director of Psychiatric Research, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, at the 1974 Spring meeting of the American Psychiatric Society (1). Coffee excesses can elicit symptoms of violent behavior in some persons; but what a feeling of relief to both Physician and patient to see the symptoms completely disappear on the physician's order to stop drinking coffee for 2 days.
The symptoms of caffeine overdose are varied and bizarre and could be easily misinterpreted, as it will be described in the following sections.
Caffeine Chemical Formula: C8H10N402
Occurrence (2)
Coffee (coffee arabica): There are about 100 mg of caffeine per cup.
Tea (thea sinensis): Has about 75 mg of caffeine per cup (caffeine + theophylline).
Cocoa (thio broma cocoa): Contains about 200 mg of theobromine per cup.
"Cola" drinks (cola acumenato): Has about 60 mg of caffeine per cup.
Synonyms
Methyl theobromine; xanthine chemical group; trimethyl xanthine.
Theophylline and theobromine are related xanthines that are pharmacologically similar to caffeine.
Uses
Caffeine is a powerful CNS stimulant, a mild diuretic and has been used as a mild antidepressant. It maintains wakefullness (Antihypnoid), decreases drowsiness, and fatigue, 'While increasing clearness of the mental process acting as a cortical stimulant. It is incorporated in "cold treatment or pain tablets" such as APC and others.
Caffeine is most commonly used in the form of coffee (by far) as a "pick up" mental stimulant, since
it decreases feeling of sleepiness, especially at breakfast and also the feeling of boredom or tiredness at
midmorning and midafternoon. Many millions of cups of coffee are consumed daily at the customary
"coffee breaks".
Physical Properties
Caffeine is a white crystalline and shiny powder with a melting point of 236° C and is a weak base.
MLD
Very few deaths have been reported by its use and probably when used in excess of 10 grams. The blood lethal level are probably in excess of 15 mg percent.
Remarks
No deaths have been reported by an overdose of drinking coffee, - but an overdose of coffee of more than 5 cups per day may have a direct dose related effect on the central nervous system, and may affect the heart and its rhythm, blood vessel diameter, coronary circulation and increase blood pressure, urine volumen and gastric secretions. These effects are capable of producing bizarre signs and symptoms which are very baffling, i.e.: High fever or low grade fever unresponsive to persistent antibiotic treatment (3), psychoneurosis (anxiety) unresponsive to Diazeparn (1) and paraxysmal atrial tachycardia (4).
Symptoms (1-9)
The symptoms vary with acquired or inborn tolerance, but in general the patients may complain of light headedness, dizziness, breathlessness, chest discomfort, nervousness, irritability, tremulousness, muscle twitching, tension headache, insomnia (difficulty in getting to sleep or staying asleep), psychoneurosis (anxiety), lack of appetite, loss of weight, restlessness, silliness, elation, euphoria, confusion, disorientation, excitation, and even v
It was not too long ago that a fraternity initiation involving massive amounts of water drinking resulted in the death of a pledge. The problem is that when you overload the body with water the brain begins to swell. The medical term is Hyponatremia. Google it if you want.
The LD50 (leathal dose, 50% occurance) of caffeine administered oraly in humans is 192 mg/kg. Meaning that a 70kg (150lbs) person who ingests 13.44g of pure caffeine has a 50% chance of survival. Since the standard cup of drip coffee has 150 mg of caffeine (a shot of espresso has substantially LESS) a 70kg individual would have to ingest 89.6 cups in once sitting to reach the 50% survival dose.
89.6 cups is a lot of volume so it is unlikely that one could drink that much at once. The question posed was whether 100 cups in 24 hours would be fatal. Since the metabolic half life of caffeine is 4 hours, this problem becomes a little more complicated. Assuming the 100 cups were spaced evenly throughout the 24 hour period (one each 14.4 minutes), we can calculate the total caffeine in the bloodstream at any time durring the 24 hour period.
At one cup every 15 minutes, the level of caffeine reaches an equilibrium with the rate of degredation arround cup #70 with a blood level of 2.4g -- much less than the LD50 of 13.4g. Even if you were drinking a cup every 5 minutes, the blood level would stabalize around 7.2g -- in the danger zone but still likely survivable especially with medical attention.
Caffeine is a dierettic (makes you pee) and so your biggest risk would likely be dehydration. But that's another story entierly.
-----------------
Just in case:
Drugs affect different people in different ways. Don't try doing your own experiments.
Argh. The laws of science be a harsh mistress.