[HN Gopher] An evidence-based guide to reversing caffeine tolerance
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An evidence-based guide to reversing caffeine tolerance
Author : nkurz
Score : 108 points
Date : 2022-06-11 00:23 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lfbiohacking.squarespace.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lfbiohacking.squarespace.com)
| Herodotus38 wrote:
| Nice summary but I would point out that Huntington's is
| hereditary and the association with caffeine is of an earlier age
| of onset, not increased risk.
|
| Simonin C, Duru C, Salleron J, et al. Association between
| caffeine intake and age at onset in Huntington's disease.
| Neurobiol Dis. 2013; 58: 179- 182.
| spa3thyb wrote:
| Almost like cropping tables from a study isn't a sharp way to
| present data...
|
| From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8467199/
|
| > Simonin et al. [72] assessed caffeine consumption in 80
| patients with HD and it turned out that among people who
| consumed a caffeine dose greater than 190 mg per day, the risk
| of earlier HD was higher. [As parent referenced]
|
| > Tanner et al. [79], based on their study results, concluded
| that only caffeinated soda, but not other caffeinated
| beverages, was associated with Huntington's disease risk, nor
| was a combined caffeine dose associated, but this finding may
| be spurious, or not related to caffeine.
| cainxinth wrote:
| Fascinating. Now do one for THC please.
| ianai wrote:
| As a sufferer of very severe migraines, a little caffeine is
| daily requirement but too much is dangerous.
|
| I vacilate between "you'll have to pry it from my cold, dead
| hands" and "but I don't take much." (150 mg is starting to be too
| much in a day.)
| pstuart wrote:
| Just saw an article about ginger being very helpful with
| migraines -- perhaps worth checking out?
| wsc981 wrote:
| I used to make ginger / lemon tea, but didn't help with my
| migraines. Eventually went to a Thai massage therapist in
| Pattaya that helped cure many people from migraines. Ever
| since I visited his shop and had a massage session + some
| herbal medication, my migraines have not come back.
|
| I also heard about a Chinese therapist (no massage, perhaps
| acupuncture or something) that has cured migraines for many
| people in Chiang Mai, but he makes small holes in the head
| which will bleed a little. Was planning to go there if the
| massage therapist would not be able to help me, but so far it
| seems not needed.
|
| In the past I read using micro-dosing magic mushrooms has
| also helped some people reduce migraines, so could be worth a
| try if you're dealing with migraines.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Reddit has a good migraine subreddit.
|
| Usually mirgraines are caused by 1 to dozens of triggers.
| Finding and eliminating them all can usually resolve them. Or
| at least make them manageable.
|
| I always recommend starting with a complete elimination diet
| for 30 days. Plain chicken and Broccoli. Water or green tea.
|
| After that you'll easily notice any food based triggers. I
| was shocked at mine.
|
| Then you get into light, smells, muscle tension, etc.
|
| The supplements. Magnesium is the goto first choice. Get Vit
| d levels checked. Vit e, fish oil are usually good
| jokowueu wrote:
| Used to be my "medicine" so to speak for migraines until I got
| treated. Sleep was becoming difficult no matter how early I
| started drinking.
|
| Started with changing my diet which didn't help and then tried
| SPG blocks using the cotton swab method
| throw93232 wrote:
| You will never get tolerance to negative health effects.
| "Healthy" dose according to CDC is like 5 cups of coffee per day.
| Permant dierhia and no sleep is worth it, because it may reduce
| risk of alzhaimers by 2%.
|
| There is no upside. Just stop consuming that poison!
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| Data shows it is a net positive. TFA is about looking at
| studies rather than anecdotes.
| MarcoZavala wrote:
| charliebwrites wrote:
| If anyone's interested, I tackled the other end of this problem
| (building a tolerance) in a blog post a few months ago:
|
| https://medium.com/@TestingInProd/building-a-caffeine-tolera...
| brxck wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this. I'm also caffeine sensitive and
| unwittingly built up a tolerance as a teenager.
|
| I realized the degree of my caffiene sensitivity when I had to
| give it up. Just quitting my one cup of coffee a day was rough.
| (The headaches!)
|
| Now that I should be able to consume caffiene again, I can
| scarcely look at black tea without my heart racing. I really
| miss good coffee and it's effects, so I'm thinking about doing
| just this myself.
|
| It's hard to start however, now that I know that I'm basically
| cultivating an addiction.
| jotm wrote:
| I don't see the problem. You can taper off easily in less
| than a week - every day, drink half of what you had
| yesterday, for example.
| brxck wrote:
| You're right. What what bothers me most is not the stopping
| -- it's the maintenance required.
| ac130kz wrote:
| Drink green tea, it obliterates the side effects via L-theanine,
| while still providing the necessary energy boost
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| yaupon tea has by far the cleanest energy of any naturally
| caffinated beverage but supposedly it also has the highest
| l-theanine content as well. I've only found it in north
| america. The tannins in regular tea are too much for me.
| ta988 wrote:
| There is really little evidence of L-theanine being responsible
| of that outside of some papers that used doses in the gram
| range for adults (their minimal dose was 20mg/kg in
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22285321/). Some other papers
| showed that the effects were due to polyphenols that could slow
| the absorption of caffeine. But one should be careful with
| polyphenols in academic research as you will always find a
| paper that says "polyphenol X can do Y". We know that
| polyphenols cause artifacts in many kind of bioassays and they
| are rarely taken into account.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| I mean, compared to caffeine alone, if you take a bunch of
| L-theanine and caffeine, you can literally feel the
| difference. With high doses of caffeine, the effects of the
| L-theanine are strikingly obvious. All the anxiety and jitter
| just fades away.
|
| I also agree with what you're saying, though. The levels of
| L-theanine in green tea are way, way lower than the
| supplements I use, and I've literally never noticed any
| similar effects by drinking green tea, but I do think it's
| possible that the effects do persist at such low doses even
| if it's harder to measure and not as blatantly obvious.
|
| There's probably a reason Buddhist monks choose to drink it -
| they're far more in tune with their mental state at any given
| moment and are much more likely to notice very subtle effects
| on their consciousness.
| ac130kz wrote:
| I don't get a rush after green tea, compared to when I take
| in similarly dosed caffeine with energy drinks. That's what
| matters
| hackarimoo wrote:
| You really need a legend for the graph. What are Caff/Caff and
| Plac/Caff groups, exactly?
| starkd wrote:
| Indeed. The article also really does not introduce the concepts
| properly. For instance, I started reading it thinking the point
| of the article was to discuss lessening caffeine tolerance by
| weaning oneself off of it, but by the end, it promotes caffeine
| tolerance as a net positive. Confusing.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I believe what they did is take some time duration to develop
| tolerance and another time duration to read the effects from
| it, and during those durations, split study participants into
| four group, one of which received 400mg of caffeine during both
| periods (caff/caff), one of which received placebo then
| caffeine (plac/caff), one of which received caffeine then
| placebo (caff/plac), and one of which received placebo in both
| durations (plac/plac).
|
| Assuming tolerance and withdrawal are actually happening, you
| would expect the caff/plac group to be the only group
| experiencing both the tolerance and withdrawal. From looking at
| the paper, it looks like they gave 400mg of one thing (either
| placebo or caffeine) for 14 days, then gave 400mg of the other
| thing for 1 day and asked study participants to rate themselves
| after 24 hours. The caff/plac group seemed to rate higher on
| fatigue, weariness, and being tired (not sure what the
| distinction is between those three things) and lower on energy.
| starkd wrote:
| Thanks for this. Now it makes more sense. Interesting that
| the caff/caff and plac/plac group have levels that are
| identical for all four measures. As you may have noticed,
| coffee prices are through the roof now. I've been a heavy
| coffee drinker for most of my life, so I recently decided to
| confine it to just one cup in the morning. I'm becoming
| convinced that the feeling of more energy and wakefulness
| that caffeine brings is just an illusion. It only last for
| 10-15 minutes at best but thereafter leaves you feeling
| depleted and vacant. Also, for the addicted user, that good
| 10-15 minutes is only a period of relief from feeding the
| dependence.
| PainfullyNormal wrote:
| > Complete tolerance to caffeine's subjective effects is complete
| and takes at least 2 weeks at 400mg/day to develop. Caffeine's
| performance-enhancing effects remain for at least 20 days at
| 210mg/day. Tolerance to caffeine's effects on cerebral blood
| flow, blood pressure, and cortisol is incomplete. Tolerance takes
| 2 days to reverse at 100mg/day and up to 9+ days at 400mg+/day.
|
| So... 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off?
| Tenoke wrote:
| Being in withdrawal so often sounds worse than just taking it
| daily with occasional short breaks to reset a bit.
| jmpman wrote:
| As with all drugs, it's more fun to abuse them then simply use
| them.
| yamrzou wrote:
| At some point, Caffeine started making me feel jittery and
| anxious, so I stopped taking it.
|
| Is there a way to restore my tolerance for it?
| jotm wrote:
| Yeah, 3-4 weeks without it...
|
| Also, try different coffee brands/beans/roasts.
|
| I hate coffee now because of that variation.
|
| So better yet, use caffeine pills, but also try different
| brands, because some give you "cleaner" energy than others.
| There's only 2 ways to extract it, the rest is about dosage.
| Capsule vs tablet difference is almost unnoticeable imo.
| nverno wrote:
| I get similar jittery+anxiety and also sweaty palms from
| coffee, but not from tea. Have you tried different sources?
| yamrzou wrote:
| I tried Yerba Mate, same effect, although milder.
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| Actually linked earlier in the thread! A fun read about someone
| building their tolerance for caffeine during the pandemic, who
| was jittery and anxious before.
|
| https://medium.com/@TestingInProd/building-a-caffeine-tolera...
| yamrzou wrote:
| Thanks, exactly what I was looking for!
| r1ch wrote:
| Have you tried taking theanine with it?
| yamrzou wrote:
| No, what does it do?
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| Reduces the jitter/anxiety. It's present in green tea, and
| its to caffeine as CBD is to THC.
|
| Doesn't do much on its own, but dampens some of the
| unpleasant side effects of the main psychoactive chemical
| in its plant.
| ankaAr wrote:
| I cannot drink coffee last days because gastrointestinal problems
| (I need to avoid the acidity of the coffee) and it feels like I'm
| waiting a good friend to come back from vacation (IT IS NOT
| ANXIETY I SAID!)
|
| Meanwhile, I'm cheating him with mate, the South American
| infusion with 68 mg/100ml of caffeine.
|
| Being drinking coffee my whole life and not having it is sad, but
| embracing my regional drink it makes that better..., i think.
| o_____________o wrote:
| oh man, mate is so good. tastes like green tea mixed with
| tobacco. and energy is far more sustained. I've been making it
| in a french press lately.
|
| I do miss the mouthfeel of milk foam when I don't have an
| espresso-based drink once in a while.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| It's also a popular fizzy soft drink. There is nothing better
| than a cold bottle of Mate in the morning.
| ankaAr wrote:
| Angry tradition noise
|
| Jokes aside, I don't like it, but it is really popular in
| Paraguay and northern provinces from Argentina.
|
| It is called terere.
|
| They even use orange juice or other things with the mate
| leaves... Angry tradition noise again :v
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| My cousin who spent some time in Paraguay did terere the
| way she learned there. It wasn't fizzy though.
|
| It was made in one cup with a steel straw/strainer
| combination, and you'd pour ice cold water on it. Then
| you'd drink it all (with leaves+strainer the cup didn't
| hold much), then pass it on to the next person. Everyone
| drank from the same cup/straw.
|
| And you'd use the leaves for many drinks before replacing
| them. There was a lot of leaves for the amount of liquid.
|
| And you wouldn't let it steep at all either. Fill, drink,
| pass it on, repeat.
|
| I really liked it.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Nah they're referring to Club Mate, a German yerba mate
| based soda which I am a fan of. Very popular out that way
| from what I have been told. I like the pink one
| ankaAr wrote:
| Try to have it as the original way, sipping from the metal
| straw in the container (the mate.., same name) serving one at
| the time. Tip: add a filter to avoid the little leaves
| pieces.
|
| It helps you to avoid eat a lot while you are working on the
| computer.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20120405-drinking-mate-
| in...
| toast0 wrote:
| > I need to avoid the acidity of the coffee
|
| My ancestors will say it's not coffee anymore, but if you put
| in cream or at least milk with fat, that reduces the acidity,
| at least somewhat.
| ankaAr wrote:
| I'm lactose intolerant :v
| toast0 wrote:
| Sorry :( most of the alternative milk products don't have
| much fat either. Non-dairy creamer is pretty meh. I think
| you've got a good thing with embracing your local culture
| and making angry tradition noises at people that do it
| wrong, though.
| gs17 wrote:
| Most non-dairy milks haven't been good as creamers to me,
| but I've had decent luck with NotMilk.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| Have you tried the cold brew method? That is supposed to reduce
| acidity by a huge amount. Makes me wonder if you can even
| further reduce it by running the cold brew through a paper
| filter.
| ankaAr wrote:
| I Will ask my nutritionist. Thanks for the idea! :)
| soared wrote:
| Another thing to look into is buying low acidity beans. I
| think they give the beans a short hit steep or something to
| reduce the acidity.
| jotm wrote:
| Caffeine pills. You might need to find a good brand, because
| the effects can be different (though none of them have negative
| GI effects).
| tsol wrote:
| This is probably dumb, but what if you put something like tums
| in their? Acid + base = neutral. That won't help the extra
| stomach acid your body produces, but you can just take an
| antacid for that
| dav_Oz wrote:
| One omitted hard part is to accurately determine caffeine content
| which can fluctuate widely depending on the beans, roasting,
| brewing method, water temperature ... E.g. 100% _robusta_ coffee
| can be nearly double in caffeine than 100% _arabica_ coffee.[0]
|
| Another important thing also missing in this context is the
| individual "activity" of the CYP1A2 enzyme which helps to
| metabolize caffeine (so called "fast" or "slow metabolizer"); it
| is dependent on genetics and environmental factors. [1] E.g. a
| regular smoker breaks down caffeine a lot faster.
|
| [0]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8228209/
|
| [1]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33397254/
| ianai wrote:
| Yes, and I remember being able to read caffeine content on most
| thing's until recently. I wish it were standard on nutrition
| labels.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| It's still clearly labeled on the drinks we have in the house
| now. (USA)
| mrfusion wrote:
| Anyone know if exercise speeds up caffeine metabolism?
| jotm wrote:
| Just from my personal experience, yes it does.
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