Slashdot Mirror
Optimizing Your Caffeine Intake With an App
MrSeb writes "Two doctors at Penn State University have developed Caffeine Zone, a free iOS app that tells you the perfect time to take a coffee break to maintain an optimal amount of caffeine in your blood — and, perhaps more importantly, it also tells you when to stop drinking tea and coffee, so that caffeine doesn't interrupt your sleep. By reading through lots of peer-reviewed studies, doctors Frank E. Ritter and Kuo-Chuan Yeh found that a caffeine level of between 200 and 400mg in your bloodstream provides optimal mental alertness, and that you should be below 100mg when you try to sleep. Caffeine Zone plots your caffeination level after you consume caffeine, and warns you if that big afternoon coffee will keep you up at night. It also lets you change the 'optimal' and 'sleep' values if you're particularly resistant or weak to caffeine."
Than I can use an Arduino with a bluetooth shield and make it control my IV Drip Mr. Coffee machine?
Hold on, I am not thinking clearly, my iBarista seems to have crashed.
Silence is a state of mime.
Is there an Android version in the works? Or better yet, a desktop app that tells me time to get a cuppa?
that's why the heavy caffeine drinkers make sweden and switzerland near the bottom of the list of all country's life expectancies.......oh wait.
better take up the hobby, and *LIVE* boy.....
Realize I'm getting edgy and having trouble concentrating --- Stop drinking coffee.
I've had caffeine problems in the past and am now rolling back to Green Tea. Just enough of a prod. The problem with Coffee is it's a big hit and the subsequent sips provide a declining return on alertness, but an increase in fidgeting, anxiety, etc. A more modest dose from tea and I'm less likely to become accustomed to high levels of caffeine which only serve to keep me at a body-acclimated "normal".
I appreciate what they're trying to do, but really, each person has their own caffeine profile and has to find where it works and where it doesn't.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Does it come with testing hardware so that it can determine precisely how strong your coffee is, and thus more accurately calculate your intake? Does it come with measuring tools to know how much you're pouring into your mug? How about accountability for the additional influence of sugar? What about people who have become desensitized to caffeine? There are too many factors they haven't considered, not least of which being how they're going to convince me to jam a needle in my liver so they can determine how well it's working.
for(;;)
{ time_to_drink_coffee(); }
I've already optimized my intake: it's 0.
Honestly, why do people addict themselves to this crap? Stop eating McCrappers all the time, get some exercise and you might be surprised how much energy you have without caffeine. You'll feel a lot better, too, not being buzzed and strung out all the time.
I've never drank coffee on a regular basis. I've drank maybe under 100 cups of coffee total in my entire life. I've never had a problem with drowsiness or alertness. I get a good amount of sleep at night and decent exercise. This is all you need.
A big difference is that caffeine is naturally occurring in lots of plants and not a major health negative especially as far as stimulants go. On the other hand only my kids believe that there is a McNugget tree in the wild despite my best efforts to avoid that shit.
Which is worse: caffeine, or falling asleep at my desk every day until I get fired, run out of unemployment, and starve to death?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
that's easy,
just a screen that says
DRINK COFFEE NOW
there..optimized.
the paid version adds a -beep- every three seconds to remind you to take sip
I've already optimized my intake: it's 0.
Honestly, why do people addict themselves to this crap? Stop eating McCrappers all the time, get some exercise and you might be surprised how much energy you have without caffeine. You'll feel a lot better, too, not being buzzed and strung out all the time.
You sound really irritated and snappish - a cup of coffee might help soothe your nerves.
#DeleteChrome
Caffeine is a drug that's sadly overused to the max. Surely, the best thing must be to avoid taking caffeine at all? It's really mind boggling how our culture nurtures it to the point that they now talk about "optimum caffeine level" in your blood. Wow, just..wow.
No, it's because decaf inherently tastes bad.
Basically, when making coffee, the idea is to extract some chemicals from the coffee beans using hot water. Those chemicals are volatile organic compounds, for the most part. If you leave a coffee bean exposed to the air for a while (or a ground coffee bean exposed to the air for an hour), most of those chemicals will evaporate. The resulting coffee would taste terrible - much of what makes it taste like coffee would have evaporated.
Something similar happens with decaf. You have to try to extract the caffeine, without extracting the other compounds that make it taste like coffee. That's really difficult, because any process you might use to extract caffeine will extract other chemicals as well. Much of what makes it taste like coffee would be lost - you can take some decent coffee, decaffeinate it, and it'll end up tasting bad.
You can work around that by using much higher quality coffee beans - you take coffee that would taste really good, and it'd end up tasting OK. The problem with that is economics.
It turns out that people aren't willing to pay any extra for decaf compared to regular coffee. Since the decaffeination process itself adds cost, the only way to sell decaf for the same price as regular coffee is to use lower quality (cheaper) coffee beans. So now you're taking bad coffee, and making it worse. Aside from which, if you're producing coffee beans, why would you take the best you have and ruin it, when you could sell it as-is for a much higher price?
It is possible to have decaf coffee that doesn't taste like crap. It's just difficult.
I love America. It's full of Americans that sell shit I choose to buy. So much better than the alternatives...
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
It's actually in the roasting and processes used to make decaf. For one thing, it's almost universally roasted so dark that it's basically burnt, and becomes extremely bitter. The lighter and medium roasts that have the more mellow flavours actually have the highest caffeine content.
Caffeine is naturally occurring in lots of plants as an insecticide.
Fair, but chocolate is toxic to dogs. Yet to me it is yummy as hell, and some argue has positive health properties in moderation. Humans and insects are quite different by most measures.
making-love-in-a-canoe coffee.
Hey, I thought that comment ("fucking close to water") applied to our beer, not our coffee. :P
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
...that can keep me at the Ballmer peak? Now THAT would be useful.
Reportedly commercial cigarettes have sugar added to them [[citation needed]] which interacts with some of the other additives + nicotine in the tabacco to improve it's stimulating effects.
In Peru they make a really tasty margarita-tasting thing made with ice, vodka and coca leaves (the same species they extract Cocaine and Novocaine from - the leaves are legal and widely available in most of South America) which leaves you up all night and full of energy, which is good because the bars in the touristy areas never fully close.
moox. for a new generation.
Yeah, Koenigsegg Automotive AB makes really boring cars.
And for everyones information coffee contains a lot of antioxidats and other good stuff.
But somehow reduction of caffeine seems to severely lower the ability of many people to spot a joke. Even when it's striding towards them in a pink motorbike suit yodeling a novel esperanto interpretation of the national anthem of Kazakhstan.
You must not be American ... we don't get extended holidays to wean ourselves from caffeine. My longest work break in 12+ years of IT has been 12 days that I spent between London and Paris. Getting 8 straight vacation days took quite a bit of negotiation.
Asians figured this out centuries ago.
The drink green tea, getting a health boost with their caffeine, instead of the bone rotting chemicals in soda.
The drink it hot so they don't guzzle it and get swamped in caffiene and they drink it out of tiny tea cups through out the day giving themselves a steady burn without a crash.
I gave up caffeine purely on a whim about a month ago, and I cannot express how much BETTER my life is. I'm less nervous, I fidget less, I fall asleep earlier and wake up earlier. My appetite is more regular.
Do you have any idea how awesome it feels to fall asleep because you're sleepy (not because you know you have to), and to wake up because you've slept enough and not have to immediately start pouring more caffeine into the bloodstream just in order to function? It was a fucking miracle.