[HN Gopher] Caffeine suppresses cerebral grey matter responses t...
___________________________________________________________________
Caffeine suppresses cerebral grey matter responses to chronic sleep
restriction
Author : danielskogly
Score : 166 points
Date : 2024-07-22 06:18 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| hu3 wrote:
| Am I wrong to conclude from the abstract that sleep deprivation +
| caffeine = reduction in grey matter?
|
| Abstract:
|
| > Evidence has shown that both sleep loss and daily caffeine
| intake can induce changes in grey matter (GM). Caffeine is
| frequently used to combat sleepiness and impaired performance
| caused by insufficient sleep. It is unclear (1) whether daily use
| of caffeine could prevent or exacerbate the GM alterations
| induced by 5-day sleep restriction (i.e. chronic sleep
| restriction, CSR), and (2) whether the potential impact on GM
| plasticity depends on individual differences in the availability
| of adenosine receptors, which are involved in mediating effects
| of caffeine on sleep and waking function. Thirty-six healthy
| adults participated in this double-blind, randomized, controlled
| study (age = 28.9 +- 5.2 y/; F:M = 15:21; habitual level of
| caffeine intake < 450 mg; 29 homozygous C/C allele carriers of
| rs5751876 of ADORA2A, an A2A adenosine receptor gene variant).
| Each participant underwent a 9-day laboratory visit consisting of
| one adaptation day, 2 baseline days (BL), 5-day sleep restriction
| (5 h time-in-bed), and a recovery day (REC) after an 8-h sleep
| opportunity. Nineteen participants received 300 mg caffeine in
| coffee through the 5 days of CSR (CAFF group), while 17 matched
| participants received decaffeinated coffee (DECAF group). We
| examined GM changes on the 2nd BL Day, 5th CSR Day, and REC Day
| using magnetic resonance imaging and voxel-based morphometry.
| Moreover, we used positron emission tomography with [18F]-CPFPX
| to quantify the baseline availability of A1 adenosine receptors
| (A1R) and its relation to the GM plasticity. The results from the
| voxel-wise multimodal whole-brain analysis on the Jacobian-
| modulated T1-weighted images controlled for variances of cerebral
| blood flow indicated a significant interaction effect between
| caffeine and CSR in four brain regions: (a) right temporal-
| occipital region, (b) right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex
| (DmPFC), (c) left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), and (d)
| right thalamus. The post-hoc analyses on the signal intensity of
| these GM clusters indicated that, compared to BL, GM on the CSR
| day was increased in the DECAF group in all clusters but
| decreased in the thalamus, DmPFC, and DLPFC in the CAFF group.
| Furthermore, lower baseline subcortical A1R availability
| predicted a larger GM reduction in the CAFF group after CSR of
| all brain regions except for the thalamus. In conclusion, our
| data suggest an adaptive GM upregulation after 5-day CSR, while
| concomitant use of caffeine instead leads to a GM reduction. The
| lack of consistent association with individual A1R availability
| may suggest that CSR and caffeine affect thalamic GM plasticity
| predominantly by a different mechanism. Future studies on the
| role of adenosine A2A receptors in CSR-induced GM plasticity are
| warranted.
| Strumpfli wrote:
| That's what I concluded as well. What seems interesting is that
| sleep deprivation alone increased the GM, while combined with
| caffeine, the effect is reversed. Surprising, since I feel like
| the general impression on caffeine in media is that it does not
| harm the brain.
| regularfry wrote:
| My interpretation of that (especially over a short period
| like this) is that sleep restriction causes swelling in the
| grey matter, which caffeine reverses. Interpreted like that,
| caffeine would be _protecting_ the brain, not harming it.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I think it's far too early to assume assume the "swelling"
| is a net harm or that preventing it is good in the long
| run.
|
| Perhaps it serves an important protective or regulatory
| purpose which we haven't yet identified, because we still
| know so little about sleep and consciousness.
|
| An analogy: There are lots of systems in your body that try
| to prevent and deter you from casually walking on a damaged
| leg, and we can override some of them with various external
| drugs, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea.
| code51 wrote:
| So it very well could be that _thinking_ on a worn
| neuron, trying to do memory access on it, might damage it
| even more (leg analogy)? It could be possible that the
| "swelling" could be redirecting brain to use other paths
| but with caffeine you're utilizing a worn-out neuron.
|
| Maybe with chronic deprivation + caffeine habit, you're
| weakening your cognitive function - repeatedly using a
| misfiring neuron. At least, with no caffeine, you'd feel
| your memory is hazy and hard to recall, go to sleep.
| Terr_ wrote:
| IANANeuroscientist, but my idle-thought was that a lack
| of sleep could cause a buildup of waste byproducts, and
| structural adaptations might either reduce the effect of
| the buildup or else make its removal marginally easier.
| regularfry wrote:
| Yes, that's my point. You can read this either way. But
| we _do_ know that sleep deprivation is harmful, and it 's
| conceivable that this might point to a mechanism by which
| that harm is caused. Or it might be a defence mechanism
| which the caffeine is now interfering with, making things
| worse.
| newzisforsukas wrote:
| What about the imaging method makes you interpret it this
| way?
| mrinterweb wrote:
| How did you make that connection? I didn't get that info
| from this study, but I have seen other studies that suggest
| sleep deprivation causes neuroinflammation, and I have seen
| studies that say coffee can reduce neuroinflammation. I
| have seen that the neuroinflammation described as a defense
| mechanism to assist with the removal of toxins. Possible
| connection being that if coffee reduces neuroinflammation
| when there are toxins present that may be a cause for more
| damage? I have zero qualifications, just trying to
| understand.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9658704/
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5476750/
| alias_neo wrote:
| That's what I understood too, so I came here to see if I was
| misunderstanding.
| grumple wrote:
| It sounds like it temporarily reduces the measure of the volume
| of the gray matter due to changes in blood and cerebral fluid
| flow. I'm imagining it like a sponge that absorbs more without
| caffeine. I don't see any judgment about whether this is good,
| bad, or neutral.
| hnbad wrote:
| Oh, great, so my brain really is soup after decades of drinking
| caffeine and not sleeping enough because of untreated AuDHD.
| Bumblonono wrote:
| I read a while back that people with ADHD have even holes in
| their brains after years/decades :|
|
| I love my work from home because i started sleeping in on
| wednesday if i had a shitty night.
|
| For nearly a decade i was super tired after wednesday
| redoubt wrote:
| Medical engineer here; I would suggest anyone whoms interest was
| caught by the title to read the Discussion, not Abstract. The
| authors have made good use of the section to broaden their
| conclusions, answering some of the questions I've observed in
| this thread.
|
| For anyone starting to second-guess their relationship to sleep
| and caffeine; do note that this is a small-sample study and that
| more research is needed before any conclusions can be drawn with
| regards to the population at large.
|
| EDIT: I'm not a medical professional (i.e a Doctor), I'm simply
| an engineer with domain knowledge in medicine. I am accustomed to
| reading studies like this. If anyone needs help interpreting the
| study, I'm happy to assist.
| bovermyer wrote:
| Thank you for this. I am not anywhere near to a medical
| professional and can't interpret these results correctly, I'm
| sure. It's good to have an experienced perspective.
| redoubt wrote:
| I'm happy you found it helpful, medical studies don't pop up
| all too frequently here at HN so I try to assist when
| confusion arises.
| bovermyer wrote:
| The important sentence from the abstract:
|
| > In conclusion, our data suggest an adaptive GM upregulation
| after 5-day CSR, while concomitant use of caffeine instead leads
| to a GM reduction.
|
| I'm not sure what to take away from that. It sounds bad, though.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I like caffeine. It's fun to drink a cup of tea or coffee once in
| a while and feel an extra surge of productivity.
|
| What I don't like is that it has encouraged the grind of people
| working far longer and harder than they should for no reason
| except economic gain which is fundamnetally unsustainable. When
| people feel tired, they should take a break, and not develop a
| habit of drinking caffeine every day to keeep going. It's an
| unhealthy society and reinforces the message that economic gain
| is important above all else.
| velcrovan wrote:
| I think people should be able to do what they want with their
| time.
|
| I don't think people should have to sell their labor for a wage
| in order to live. I wonder what happens to your opinions about
| caffeine in a society where owners have little to no leverage
| over workers, or where the workers are generally also the
| owners.
| mhb wrote:
| What kind of tea do they serve in the gulag?
| velcrovan wrote:
| I dunno, ask the people who work at Mondragon.
| https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/about-us/
| ta988 wrote:
| care to explain?
| TeaBrain wrote:
| They were trying to be irrelevantly clever. Mondragon is
| a worker cooperative, where workers are the "owners".
| velcrovan wrote:
| Sure. I was replying to a comment in which worker
| ownership and worker leverage were being equated with
| "the gulag", a collective term for the Soviet Union
| prison/labor camp system.
|
| To illustrate that large-scale freedom, ownership, and
| autonomy do not result in labor camps, I provided
| Mondragon as a productive counter-example.
|
| Mondragon is a federation of worker-owned cooperatives
| that netted EUR593 million on EUR11 billion in revenue in
| 2023, and which did not make use of a forced labor camp
| or prison system to achieve these results. Instead, they
| use widely distributed equity ownership and democratic
| control of the workplace to create a good work
| environment and a healthy culture.
|
| Since the comment I was replying to did not invest any
| words in supporting their comparison of worker ownership
| with a system of forced labor camps, I responded in
| spirit, inviting them with a minimum of words and effort
| to investigate possible counter-examples to their mental
| model.
| ta988 wrote:
| That makes a lot more sense with the explanation thanks.
| asats wrote:
| Unironically this kind:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chifir
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| I think people should be able to instantiate super hot
| anthropomorphic girlfriends of their choice into and out of
| real life at will. (Me first; I thought it up.)
| themaninthedark wrote:
| I agree, we should structure society so that people don't
| have to sell their labor to live merely that they choose to
| do so.
|
| We should give those who choose not to sell their labor the
| ability to go and live without buying and consuming the labor
| of others.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Unfortunately, there is almost nowhere on earth where a
| Hunter-gatherer can survive any more. The few remaining
| have been pushed to the very edge of survival by
| agriculturalists taking all the best land.
| guerrilla wrote:
| When I understood this is when I formally became an
| anarchist. Before grasping that, I didn't realize that I
| really didn't have a choice, no matter what. You serve or
| you die. Those are the options.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| I used to think that was what this song was about:
| https://youtu.be/wC10VWDTzmU
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| That is absolutely true. And the reason is that if you
| did have a choice, the system would crumble quite easily
| since those that find the system intolerable would then
| have somewhere to go and start something new or just
| live.
| mrinterweb wrote:
| Ideally we would live in that utopia, but the vast majority
| of us live in the reality of needing a wage.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Yes, indeed. But that does not mean we cannot fight for
| that utopia.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| For work? I drink it for headshots in CS and to grind for loot.
| (I am unemployed)
| BossingAround wrote:
| Anyone with anxiety or sleep issues should reexamine their
| caffeine usage. Maybe those problems do not stem from caffeine,
| but maybe they do. I don't know many people that do not consume
| caffeine regularly, at least once a day - in such cases, you
| cannot know whether your anxiety, sleep problems, general
| tiredness, bad moods, ... are or are not caused by one's caffeine
| consumption.
|
| Some people swear by drinking a shot of espresso right after
| dinner, claiming that they can "sleep just fine" (or that it even
| calms them). It's not whether you can or cannot fall asleep, it's
| how deep and restorative your sleep is that is important here.
| kachapopopow wrote:
| Caffeine makes me very sleepy if I drink it mid-day and I do in
| fact usually fall asleep early.
| BossingAround wrote:
| How much caffeine do you consume regularly? Sounds to me like
| your body potentially has too much already, and is reacting
| by making you drowsy. Note that caffeine is also in non-
| coffee/tea related beverages like sodas (e.g.
| Coke/Pepsi/...), or sometimes certain pain killers (e.g.
| migraine pain killers frequently contain something like 50mg
| of caffeine).
| kachapopopow wrote:
| I mostly drink decaf. Not a soda drinker. Tea with sugar
| mostly or just plain water.
| BuggieSmalls wrote:
| Exactly the same experience here. I have ADHD. Caffeine seems
| to give me a parallel (albeit lesser overall) experience to
| taking my prescribed Adderall.
| kachapopopow wrote:
| Most people around me have diagnosed ADHD, makes me wonder
| if the reason why I'm in such a group is because I have
| ADHD as well, but I don't really care for medication as I
| never had issues handling it on my own so not planning on
| getting diagnosed.
|
| And if I do, I actually prefer it since it allows me to go
| on for days without a break discovering solutions to very
| hard problems.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Anyone with anxiety or sleep issues should reexamine their
| caffeine usage.
|
| They should. The relationship between caffeine and mood
| disorders like anxiety is incompletely understood. Caffeine may
| help some, particularly at lower doses [1]. However some
| studies find that the effect on anxiety is minimal or doesn't
| occur [2]. Caffeine seems to improve psychological well-being
| at a minimum [3]. There may be a self-medication element
| between ADHD and caffeine too, though the data isn't good [3].
| The interactions with medications is also complex and hard to
| control for due to the large number of caffeine users.
|
| [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38362247/
|
| [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10616803/
|
| [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8850715/
| themaninthedark wrote:
| What about those of use who may or may not have ADD and have
| been using caffine to regulate our mood and focus....
|
| I honestly can't tell at this point if the coffee is helping me
| focus and I have ADD or if I am just lazy(or depressed) and the
| coffee is helping get me motivated.
| BossingAround wrote:
| Isn't it better to find out? I.e. first to stop with the
| caffeine, then wait until your body readjusts (e.g. a month
| or two), and possibly get diagnosed by a professional in case
| you do feel like you need help? Diagnosis doesn't necessarily
| mean prescription stimulant drugs.
|
| I was using caffeine to mask my burnout. Needless to say, it
| only exacerbated the total feeling of burnout, and "helped"
| only short-term. It took me a long time to get out of the
| burnout, and I'm still feeling the effects. It would have
| been much healthier to not mask the burnout, but deal with it
| right there and then.
| istjohn wrote:
| You might want to get diagnosed so you can get a proper ADHD
| prescription. I'm told Vyvanse is like a smooth day-long
| caffeine high without the jitters or stained teeth. OTOH, if
| caffeine is working for you, it sounds like it's performing
| the same function ADHD medication does for my loved one.
| boringg wrote:
| Great line --> "I honestly can't tell at this point if the
| coffee is helping me focus and I have ADD or if I am just
| lazy(or depressed) and the coffee is helping get me
| motivated."
|
| Ill change the last bit -- "or if I am just tired and the
| coffee solves my cold start problem"
| itishappy wrote:
| Are you sure coffee isn't _causing_ your symptoms? Poor mood,
| focus, and motivation can also be caused by poor sleep.
| janpmz wrote:
| Recently I've learned that half of the people are slow caffein
| metabolizers. The caffein stays longer in their system and it
| might negatively affect their sleep. Considering how many people
| drink coffee, I think a lot of people are affected by this.
| b800h wrote:
| Yep - raising my hand here. I've completely given up caffeine
| (including decaf, which isn't totally) because after I got a
| Fitbit, I realised that my morning coffee spiked my heart-rate
| to 120, and kept it thereabouts, slowly dropping to normal
| overnight, after which I'd start again.
|
| A genome sequence shows I'm a slow metaboliser (I expect more
| will show up with more research).
|
| I feel terrific now.
| roywiggins wrote:
| I suspect I am an unusually fast metabolizer, since I can be
| tipped over into very nasty withdrawal headaches extremely
| easily, even when my baseline consumption is a couple of
| smallish coffees in a day. The only way I've found to fix this
| is to get almost completely off it, which as you might imagine
| I find very difficult to do, since I have to step down very
| carefully.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| My withdrawals only kick in on the second day of no caffeine.
| Also, I feel a cup of coffee on the day I drank it _and_ the
| day after (with no additional caffeine). :D I guess I 'm
| turbo slow. Although I didn't use to be...
| roywiggins wrote:
| For me it can happen in less than 12 hours, which can mean
| _overnight_. It 's not a great time!
| BossingAround wrote:
| Sounds to me more like you consume _a lot_ (therefore have a
| very strong physical dependence) rather than having extremely
| fast metabolism.
|
| Alternatively, you might be prone to migraines, and thus are
| sensitive to headaches of all kinds. That's me, I truly hope
| that's not you (wouldn't wish that upon anyone).
| roywiggins wrote:
| I promise I don't. I can be on a teaspoon of strongish
| instant coffee twice a day and it still happens sometimes
| (though it's worse when I'm drinking more of course). It
| can happen literally overnight, even when I'm on a steady
| intake.
|
| The headaches are reliably cured within maybe 20-40 minutes
| by application of more caffeine, so I don't think they are
| migraines.
| istjohn wrote:
| I'm not a regular drinker and even a coke after 11 am means
| I'm going to have a late night. It's frustrating how often
| there are no caffeine-free diet soda options.
| shard wrote:
| I've learned to drink coffee only in the morning. If I drink
| coffee any time after 12PM, I'm not going to get much sleep
| that night. Therefore I have limited my coffee intake to
| medicinal purposes (i.e. as needed in order to stay awake).
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| Found that out the hard way twenty years ago. The stated half
| life is NOT for me what they say.
| lemonlime0x3C33 wrote:
| An interesting article to read, would love to see a larger
| samples size at some point. I am also going to continue drinking
| my mid-day espresso, morning coffee, and afternoon pick me up
| caffeine drink...
| ilaksh wrote:
| I love my caffeine. But caffeine is an addictive, highly
| profitable substance. So advertising it and trying to promote it
| as somehow having real health benefits is widespread.
|
| I would not be surprised if routine consumption of caffeine was
| at least mildly detrimental to health.
|
| I think some drugs have managed to gain a special place in our
| society . Advertising and lobbying warps our perception of these
| drugs.
|
| I even saw a comment in this thread suggesting that if caffeine
| has a prolonged affect on you, then you have some unique genetics
| and it's essentially your problem, not the drug. Similar to the
| narrative about alcohol. It's interesting to compare that
| attitude to the way illegal drugs that can't advertise or lobby
| are viewed.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Alcohol reduces functions, caffeine clearly enhances functions.
| If caffeine was involved in nearly all violent crime like
| alcohol is, we would think differently of it.
| andor wrote:
| I would claim that for regular users of caffeine, it merely
| restores function to a baseline level.
| jwells89 wrote:
| While I don't have hard evidence to support the idea, I
| believe this is highly variable between individuals.
|
| I'm not a heavy coffee drinker, but I do have a cup in the
| mornings some time between 6:30-8:00. This makes it easy to
| stop as needed; there are some days where I skip it out of
| necessity (too busy), and occasionally I'll go a weekend
| without it just to keep my tolerance in check. During these
| periods, I never experience adverse effects.
|
| The main benefit I glean from coffee is not feeling awake,
| but notably improved ability to focus. In my experience, my
| baseline ability is just not as good; there's no "bounce
| back" after extended periods of going without, it just
| stays somewhere between bad and average indefinitely.
| NBJack wrote:
| I strongly suspect this manifests more in folks that
| consistently intake > 100mg per day. I used to regularly
| intake 200mg total across ~2 beverages (mostly because I
| just enjoyed the flavor), and suffered mild headaches if
| I skipped my schedule. I know others that _start_ their
| day with 200mg in a single, quad shot beverage.
| riversflow wrote:
| Everybody is different.
|
| 3 years ago I took a summer and then autumn off of
| caffeine; my intent was to quit and only use caffeine in
| "times of need". This would be an on-brand thing for me to
| do as a person, and something I wanted pretty bad. But
| after 4 full months without touching any caffeine, my
| mood/energy levels never returned or even really rebounded
| any further than they did after the first month. I'm just a
| different person with caffeine, even after I'm
| addicted/habituated/develop tolerance. Notably I have a lot
| more energy, and I'm not a high energy person to start
| with. This energy allows me to better take care of myself,
| exercise, and be social, all things that I struggle with in
| its absence.
|
| From experience, I can function fine without caffeine, even
| under an acute withdrawal scenario. In fact, some of my
| greatest achievements were done without caffeine for one
| reason or another. Not having caffeine just makes those
| things more miserable in the moment, at least for me.
| snikeris wrote:
| Possessing the GG variant of COMT rs4680 gene might
| explain this. Conversely, AA types might get
| overstimulated and irritable.
| Sammi wrote:
| This makes me so tempted to get one of those whole genome
| tests. I had issues with anxiety from age 20 to 38. I was
| a regular drinker of coffee between the age 20 to 38.
| About a month after quitting I was finally able to yawn
| properly like I remember I was able to when I was young.
| Coffee overstimulates me I figure.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| All stimulants enhance some functions to some degree, so that
| is a poor metric of value. Cocaine, for example, temporarily
| boosts intelligence, but consuming cocaine is not
| recommended.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| Does cocaine temporarily boost intelligence? I thought it
| boosted the feeling of being intelligent.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| It does. Intelligence is the capacity for learning
| potential and cocaine boosts the ability to retain and
| process learned sensory matter, even when sleepy. That is
| really the greatest appeal of that drug. Again, I
| strongly do not recommend reliance on any stimulants,
| especially powerful ones like cocaine.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| Interesting can you cite a source?
|
| I found this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2096405/
| which shows a consistent improvement in tests, but the
| performance increase was only 4%. I'd be willing to guess
| that the improvement would be higher when sleepy/fatigued
| (up to a point!) since it would increase the alertness of
| the user, but I have never seen anything that suggests
| cocaine boosts the ability to retain information.
| zhengyi13 wrote:
| Anecdata here, but I met a person in university in the
| 90s who claimed:
|
| 1) they had access to really, really pure cocaine, and
|
| 2) they used it to study for tests.
|
| If I recall correctly, they were only using cocaine for
| the studying, not the test taking, and that they had good
| recall on tests.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > Does cocaine temporarily boost intelligence? I thought
| it boosted the feeling of being intelligent.
|
| For people who lack confidence or an ego, this may very
| well be the same thing.
|
| Just the urge to prove myself got me far in life.
| Sometimes I clearly struggle more than others, especially
| when surrounded by extremely smart people at university,
| but at the end of the day I've gotten much further than
| those who capitulated at the very beginning, claiming
| they're not smart enough.
|
| At this point I've taught things considered hard to a
| fair number of people, and those who give up for no
| objective reason at all vastly outnumber those who really
| (probably) can't do it. You can tell someone "it will
| probably take you twenty hours to understand this", and
| they'll still throw their hands in the air after one hour
| and declare they can't do it or just silently quit.
|
| Being a quitter is as bad as being stupid. Worse, because
| it's also a waste.
|
| So maybe instead of doing drugs, try to scrounge up some
| arrogance, confidence, pride, whatever it takes to make
| you hang in there.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| There is _a lot_ of wisdom in this comment. So many of
| the world's most 'accomplished' people at first appear to
| have been born special and to be fundamentally different
| from the rest of us but usually aren't; they simply got
| on with it and then persisted long enough to have great
| success. They didn't let the little voice in their head
| that says they're not as good as the others win -- either
| because they consciously chose to fight it, or because
| they were lucky to be born without it at all. To that
| extent, some of us _are_ born fundamentally special.
|
| It's so incredibly true that even if you tell someone
| something's hard and it'll take a while to get they're
| still likely to give up too early and feel inferior for
| not 'getting it'. This is why almost everyone (at least
| in the western world) thinks they "can't do math".
| alias_neo wrote:
| I've long believed most people can learn most things if
| they're willing (and able) to make the effort and have
| the right resources available to them.
|
| When I left university, I started a job writing Android
| apps that required high-performance and low-level stuff,
| at the start I couldn't imagine it ever being "easy", I
| struggled at first to understand it all, and often
| wondered if I'd ever be good at it; but over time as I
| learned more and more of it, it got easier, then a few
| short years later I was a team lead, teaching others.
|
| 10+ years before this, as a child, I couldn't imagine
| understanding how to compile a driver for Linux and the
| dependencies and so on, I was tinkering with distros and
| reverse engineering/cracking software as a young teen,
| fast forward to now, I run Linux exclusively, write
| software targeting it exclusively and teach others as
| team lead (different company, different team, different
| role, different software, no longer client-side)
|
| These are just two major examples that have affected my
| every day life, both of these things put me through
| immense frustration and took years to develop to
| "expert".
|
| There have been others, but my take away was that I've
| done it before, I can always do it again, it gets a bit
| harder and a bit slower with age, but I've more
| experience underpinning anything I do try to learn (tech
| or otherwise) and am better at learning.
|
| For me, it was all about proving myself, mostly to
| myself, and being unwilling to fail. These days, I pick
| and choose what it is if I don't believe I have the time
| or resources (or desire) to succeed, we don't have to be
| good at everything, just whats important; the
| aforementioned skills pay my bills, allow me and my
| family to live comfortably, etc. I could learn to play
| the piano (I still might), but I don't _need_ to.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| While this is true for many people, and most of the
| people you'd interact with on HN or, possibly in your
| daily life, it is not true for all people.
|
| High IQ correlations with life outcomes are usually
| pretty weak, but low IQ correlations with undesirable
| outcomes are very strong - I think smart people
| systematically underestimate how limiting it is to be
| not-smart.
| guluarte wrote:
| No but increases focus
| strken wrote:
| I remember having a look for papers relating to performance
| on cognitive tasks and caffeine, and not being able to find
| any high-quality studies that showed an improvement. Could
| you provide a source?
|
| Cocaine would be interesting too, although I've never
| searched for papers about it.
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| I heard investment bankers rely on it from the 90s. How
| addictive it is?
| austin-cheney wrote:
| Cocaine is less addictive than sugar and opium, but it is
| still considered highly addictive. I don't know how
| addictive.
| ta988 wrote:
| A lot.
|
| And what's "funny" for bankers is that the return on
| investment is clearly negative. It degrades your
| cognitive function over time, your nose if it is used by
| that route, your relations, etc
|
| like every psychostimulant (caffeine as well and roughly
| to the same extent), short term low dose use has some
| positive cognitive impact, but it goes down with repeated
| use and/or increased doses.
|
| in the end not really worth it if your objective is
| cognitive enhancement (and not talking about the societal
| impact in the zones of production, which at least with
| coffee you can control a little)
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| in my experience, not very addictive at all. But at the
| same time, I didn't have easy access to it, and I was
| already heavily addicted to amphetamines at the time, so
| maybe my experience isn't typical. But I was able to do
| some, wait a few days, do some more, etc. With
| amphetamines, If I had them, I was taking em all day
| every day.
|
| Also when you do the math on what a coke habit costs to
| maintain, its mind boggling. I think that in and of its
| self prevents a lot of would-be coke heads from
| establishing a habit.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| I'm curious, what do amphetamines feel like to you that
| makes them addictive?
|
| For several months I took (extended release)
| dextroamphetamine and later lisdexamfetamine, because I
| was having a mental health crisis from a lifelong
| ignorance of ADHD(inattentive type), autism, and what was
| probably some sort of covid induced severe depression.
| This was in addition to Wellbutrin.
|
| While I've not found them useful in regards to the ADHD,
| the amphetamines seemed to be highly effective
| antidepressants in my case.
|
| The very first day I started, I felt something that
| wasn't really euphoria, but more like a sense of
| wellbeing after months of daily spirals of passive
| suicidal ideation that would last for hours. But after
| that first day I basically felt no effects, other than
| not having depression. I didn't feel good, I simply
| didn't feel involuntarily _bad_ anymore.
|
| Other effects -I was able to find a small degree of self
| satisfaction after working out (with a trainer, or it
| would not have happened), rather than it being 100% suck
| during and after, with the only motivation being
| intellectual. It should be noted that working out had no
| observable benefit towards my depression. -I was somewhat
| more chatty if I had lapsed taking the pills and had
| started again. -I think it somewhat negatively affected
| late evening drowsiness and energy levels during the day
| (made me more prone to wanting naps around noon)
|
| Eventually whatever was causing my underlying depression
| seemed to resolve, so I simply ceased taking the
| medications since there was simply no reason to continue.
| There is no desire to take my remaining pills, it's just
| nice to have a tool known and available should I get
| another depression flare up. A blended mocha is _far_
| more tempting.
|
| So I'm curious what amphetamine addiction feels like,
| what do they do for you that pulls at you?
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| When I take them, anything I do feels insanely
| gratifying. Its just euphoric. Like as soon as they kick
| in I feel like im on a big drop on a rollercoaster.
|
| It goes away quick though, and gets replaced by a cadre
| of horrible side effects, which makes me just want more.
| They also make my mind race with ideas which excites me.
| They are never good and never go anywhere but the racing
| thoughts are thrilling.
|
| Honestly cant describe why I was so impulsive with them.
| Like I knew they made me feel horrible on a longer time
| scale but I still ate them like m&ms.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| No that explains it really well, thank you. While that
| exact sort of experience is alien to me (my capacity for
| happiness or excitement is generally _very_ muted),
| thanks to analogous enough experiences I can definitely
| see how that could become uncontrollable if people have
| them at hand.
|
| If someone gave me 2 pounds of gummi bears that were
| secretly caffeinated, I could see doing something similar
| to myself.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Alcohol reduces functions, caffeine clearly enhances
| functions.
|
| In occasional users this might be true, but is it true in
| regular users? Anecdotally, I hear far more people
| complaining about being completely unable to function (and
| I've often recognized that they're perceptibly out of it)
| until they've had their next cup of coffee than I have heard
| people talk about getting great productivity _gains_ from it.
|
| I don't use caffeine regularly in part to keep it available
| for when I really need it, and I have never once felt like I
| was lower functioning than my coworkers as a result--on the
| contrary, my energy levels seem to be far more stable
| throughout the workday.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| > I hear far more people complaining about being completely
| unable to function (and I've often recognized that they're
| perceptibly out of it) until they've had their next cup of
| coffee than I have heard people talk about getting great
| productivity gains from it.
|
| Unable to function == 0 productivity. How is getting over
| that not effecting productivity gains?
| lolinder wrote:
| It depends on if some significant chunk of the population
| naturally can't function on a regular basis and caffeine
| solves that or if caffeine withdrawals cause someone to
| be unable to function until they get the next dose.
|
| If it's withdrawals then caffeine is creating the problem
| that it later solves, which means that consuming it
| regularly is not a net productivity gain over not using
| or using rarely.
| BossingAround wrote:
| Caffeine doesn't enhance any function, it simply masks
| tiredness in the short term, at the cost of reduced quality
| of sleep.
|
| The question is, does caffeine "clearly enhance" cognitive
| functions long-term.
| pcai wrote:
| Actually caffeine is a well known and widely studied
| performance enhancing drug, for example in endurance sports
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| If you haven't done long-haul driving, you might think
| caffeine doesn't enhance any function.
| boringg wrote:
| "cost of reduced quality of sleep" - very dependent on
| dosage and timing.
| m0llusk wrote:
| It is not clear that a boost to speed is always an
| enhancement. Really deep expression and learning often
| involves slowing down.
| pengaru wrote:
| relevant: https://xkcd.com/323/
| m463 wrote:
| I think it is a matter of perception.
|
| For example, lots of DUI type accidents are blamed on
| alcohol, but it might actually be sleep deprivation that is
| the most fundamental cause of the accident.
|
| In a similar way, I wonder if similar sleep-related accidents
| or incidents could more properly have caffeine as a root
| cause (after it has worn off)
| nikanj wrote:
| People do joke about being dangerous without their morning
| coffee, but I have yet to see a coffee addict breaking into
| vehicles to score their morning fix. Also I have never had to
| worry someone is going to mug my loved ones to get some quick
| cash for a double-double. And have you ever heard of someone
| who skips important appointments because they stayed out
| getting high on caffeine instead
|
| Pretending caffeine is as detrimental to our society as e.g.
| fentanyl is prime intellectual dishonesty.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Pretending caffeine is as detrimental to our society as
| e.g. fentanyl is prime intellectual dishonesty.
|
| These are your words, not OP's. OP isn't claiming that
| caffeine is as bad as any other drug. They're claiming that
| it, like other drugs, is likely to have negative health
| effects that outweigh positive ones and that it's interesting
| that it gets a special place in our culture while other drugs
| get banned and shunned.
|
| Nothing in that claim says that caffeine is as bad as the
| worst illegal drugs.
| anthony_d wrote:
| > They're claiming that it, like other drugs, is likely to
| have negative health effects that outweigh positive ones
|
| That alone is a strong and unsupported statement. Drugs
| frequently involve tradeoffs, but saying the negative out
| weighs the positive is not the same thing.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Only drugs that have artificially high prices caused by
| having no legal source lead to addicts committing crime to
| find their habit. Caffeine and alcohol are cheap and easily
| available.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| With all due respect, I wouldn't commit any crimes if
| caffeine was suddenly illegal. I'd have headaches for a few
| days and that'd be it.
| itishappy wrote:
| With all due respect, I've heard the exact same thing
| from a number of folks taking Opioids after surgery. They
| were right, fortunately, and navigated their withdrawal
| symptoms without incident.
|
| I'm sure you're right too, but it's not a particularly
| convincing argument. I've definitely seen behaviors that
| horrify me from some of the caffeine addicts in my life.
| I bet caffeine prohibition would lead to a rise in
| domestic disputes, for starters, followed by Starbucks
| speakeasys and coffee cartels.
| jpalawaga wrote:
| Comparing opioids to caffeine is also not a particularly
| convincing argument... Is your comment satire?
| guluarte wrote:
| Withdraw from caffeine is not the same as opioids
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| A Starbucks speakeasy sounds awesome actually.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| This is what the drug war has done to our minds.
|
| People would absolutely be burglarizing homes to feed their
| caffeine habit if caffeine wasn't dirt cheap due to the free
| market. If it were legal to produce meth your local meth-head
| would not be raiding your house for copper because it would
| be cheap enough that his minimum wage job could support his
| habit.'
|
| And frankly I've showed up to important events absolutely
| fucking geeked on caffeine, feeling like complete dogshit,
| but because caffeine use is normalized no one bats an eye.
| thecrash wrote:
| Drug war bad, but I'm not sure these drugs can be equated
| so simply. Caffeine has a mild euphoric effect but not
| nearly as much as meth. Both caffeine users and meth users
| are prone to hyper-focused behavior loops - e.g. super
| meticulous house cleaning. But meth is so much more
| euphoric that the behaviors don't have to be intrinsically
| rewarding at all. For many people, when you feel that high,
| doing pretty much anything is rewarding. That's why you get
| weird behaviors on meth like people pulling out their hairs
| one by one, or completely disassembling a working TV.
|
| Those behaviors are not conducive to holding down most
| jobs. If our society did more work educating and supporting
| people in productively integrating their use of drugs into
| a functional lifestyle, maybe it would be less of a
| problem. Certainly there are some ways people could use
| meth that are positive. But I still think there's something
| about meth that makes it more likely to ruin lives than
| caffeine.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| I agree, but Id say theyre part of the same continuum
| rather than fundamentally different.
| saganus wrote:
| It feels like the strength and type of withdrawal symptoms
| for each substance plays a big role here.
|
| I've only ever been addicted to caffeine and cigarettes and
| while my withdrawal symptoms were terrible (almost-
| disabling headaches, anxiety, etc) I don't think they were
| ever so bad that it would make me violent.
|
| As opposed to people I knew that were addicted to cocaine
| and meth which would go absolutely crazy for their next
| fix. In the particular case of the person that was addicted
| to cocaine, money was not an issue and would still become
| violent when the fix was not available, so I don't think
| it's necessarily a function of price or access to it.
|
| Of course, my sample size is very small but given that I
| also know a ton of people that quit cigarettes and caffeine
| without becoming violent, I would say withdrawal symptoms
| are probably a strong component on how violent people get.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >People would absolutely be burglarizing homes to feed
| their caffeine habit if caffeine wasn't dirt cheap due to
| the free market.
|
| I'm about as caffeinated as most anyone else I know, and I
| would not. There are times where just putting on a pot of
| coffee is too much work for me to make my daily fix and I
| lazily skip it for the day.
|
| I do get withdrawal headaches and probably behave a bit
| differently, but even then sometimes I don't make the
| effort to get it. I've been at conference and hotels where
| the only options were so badly made I skipped it for days
| and just took the headache.
| meroes wrote:
| I have to agree when my coworkers and I are chugging energy
| drinks from before work till the afternoon. I finally quit
| that level of intake because of panic attacks (still have
| 1-2 cups of coffee occasionally).
|
| 240mg of caffeine for breakfast! Certainly!
| kkielhofner wrote:
| > highly profitable substance
|
| Yes and no. I've been a fan of caffeine pills for years. They
| are very cheap, readily available (portable), and most
| importantly to me offer completely consistent dosing. With
| caffeine pills I'm able to ensure I stay below the FDA
| recommended maximum daily intake of 400 mg (worst case).
| Another fun bonus - when a physician asks you what your
| caffeine intake is and you respond in milligrams they look at
| you funny.
|
| Otherwise I completely agree with you. Every time I'm at an
| airport, etc I marvel at how many caffeine addicts are standing
| in line at Starbucks for however long ready to drop $10 (or
| whatever it costs) for a beverage with a completely unknown and
| highly variable dose of what is fundamentally a drug. Doubly so
| for variations that have other negative things like
| adulterations and calories.
|
| Caffeine is a drug and should be treated as such. If you were
| taking any other drug (over the counter or RX) would anyone
| tolerate "today it's 100 mg, tomorrow it's 400 mg"?
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| caffeine pills are awesome for the reasons you described, but
| I do find that coffee "feels" different as a result of the
| Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (probably). coffee feels more
| pushy and dirty - more peripheral nervous system stimulation
| wildzzz wrote:
| My wife uses caffeine pills on occasion but I prefer energy
| drinks most mornings alongside something like toast.
| Obviously more expensive but the drink has a slower come-up
| (likely due to the extra water and food). Whenever I do take
| pills instead, I'm in a rush so I'm not drinking more water
| than necessary and definitely not eating anything. I like the
| Celsius drink mixes since I can put one in my water bottle
| and dose slowly over the course of the morning but they
| aren't that much cheaper than buying a case of cans. Coffee
| is definitely the cheapest energy drink available and I
| suppose instant coffee is probably the quickest and cheapest.
| I like coffee but I'm not a huge coffee drinker. I would love
| to be able to buy a jar of instant energy drink of a
| inoffensive flavor and be able to toss a couple scoops in my
| bottle. I've tried to do this with caffeine pills but the
| caffeine powder doesn't mix well with cold water.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| I completely understand what you mean by intake over time.
|
| Caffeine pills are more like take a pill, wait X minutes,
| and then get the sensation of "oh, there it is" as it all
| "hits" at once.
|
| There are more expensive time release variants but I don't
| have much experience with them.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I just take the 200mg tabs, crack them into quarters and
| take the bits over time.
|
| A quarter tab with a glass of cold water should hit
| slower than the same amount of caffeine pre-dissolved in
| an espresso. Likely matches up with a quickly downed
| coffee.
|
| From time to time, I put a tab in a sodastream
| seltzer/sodawater (and wow does it make the bubbles
| release!)
| xyst wrote:
| > I like the Celsius drink mixes since I can put one in my
| water bottle and dose slowly over the course of the morning
| but they aren't that much cheaper than buying a case of
| cans.
|
| In addition to your caffeine, you get a "healthy" dose of
| synthetic sugar (aka Sucralose) [1] and other crap added by
| the drink company to market it as "healthy"
|
| Personally, I can't stand those drinks. Every "0 calorie, 0
| sugar" drink is nearly identical in ingredients. Some use
| different forms of synthetic sugar. The taste is off
| putting.
|
| Sure, there _might_ not be a glycemic spike but at what
| cost that has not been studied?
|
| - what's the impact to gut microbiome?
|
| - what's the impact to other human physiology? (Increased
| cancer risk?)
|
| I'll take my risk with real sugar and just limit the
| consumption to very sparingly.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucralose
|
| [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37256996/
| xanderlewis wrote:
| > caffeine addicts are standing in line at Starbucks
|
| Have you considered that those people queuing outside
| Starbucks might be drinking coffee because they enjoy the
| whole experience? Caffeine pills are an absurdity to me
| because I only drink coffee for the taste. Why suffer the
| unwanted effects of a drug _without_ the enjoyment that it's
| supposed to come with?
| luqtas wrote:
| i think you are bitting the dust of getting used to the
| taste of a drug, just like people who drink wine, beer etc.
|
| these are literally toxic & you get a natural avoidance
| response the 1deg time you try, with very rare cases of
| acceptance without repulse
| skhunted wrote:
| I never understood the acquired taste thing. If I don't
| like the taste the first time I try something then there
| won't be a second time. Why acquire a taste for something
| you didn't originally like?
| NobodyNada wrote:
| For coffee, for me personally: because it wasn't that
| hard to acquire. It took me like 2 cups of black coffee
| to get used to the bitterness, and the rest of the flavor
| is delicious.
| BazookaMusic wrote:
| Sometimes the first time you try something the new
| experience can be overwhelming. You can focus on a
| specific part of an experience, for example the
| bitterness of a drink and quickly decide you don't like
| it. It can also be that the first time you try something
| you are in a bad mood or negatively predisposed towards
| something, eg. your parents may have said something
| tastes bad while growing up and you haven't tried it
| yourself.
|
| Multiple tries of something can lead to different
| experiences by tweaking different factors.
|
| In the end, some things we just don't like, but one try
| is not necessarily a good sample.
| skhunted wrote:
| I'm specifically talking about taste and not experiences
| in general. I don't like the taste of something I don't
| try it again. I haven't found it limiting and as I said I
| don't understand people drinking coffee enough to acquire
| a taste for it. I know people do this and they end up
| liking coffee. I just don't understand that mentality
| though. It's not for me but clearly is for some people.
| com2kid wrote:
| Brains find familiar things comforting and "good". Brains
| can also find brand new things, especially experiences
| that have nothing in common with anything we've
| encountered in the past, as "bad".
|
| This applies to almost everything. Music is a good
| example, someone who has only grown up listening to folk
| music will likely find death metal incredibly hard to
| listen to, but they may find folk metal a little bit
| relatable.
|
| Same goes for art, when the classical artists first came
| out with super realistic portraits, many people found
| them ugly and repulsive, because they were so different
| than what came before. Then when things got more
| abstract, the same reaction occurred.
|
| This is also why people may not like a new song until
| they have heard it a bunch of times, then it can become
| one of their favorites! It lights up the "I know this
| thing" pathways in the brain.
|
| Well food is the same. People from cultures that don't
| eat cheese are not likely to enjoy a super stinky cheese
| to start with, but you can likely give them a mozzarella
| or a super mild Brie and they'll be fine with it
| (possibly after trying it a few times). Then after their
| brain gets used to "this is brie cheese, and it is pretty
| good" they may end up enjoying a slightly more
| aged/funkier brie cheese, and after a few years down that
| path they can be eating a wide variety of soft cheeses.
|
| This is why trying food again is worthwhile.
| skhunted wrote:
| As it pertains to food and drink I don't agree with or
| understand repeatedly trying something I don't like. It's
| good that you find that it works for you but it doesn't
| for me. Cabbage makes me vomit. I don't like it and will
| never again knowingly try it. Once was enough.
| com2kid wrote:
| > As it pertains to food and drink I don't agree with or
| understand repeatedly trying something I don't like
|
| Let me give an example.
|
| My wife used to _hate_ lamb. An American style lamb
| roast[1] was atrocious to her.
|
| Then one day at a friends house we had super thin cut
| highly seasoned grilled cumin lamb. It is a _completely_
| different taste than a lamb roast. She liked it.
|
| So after a few times of having that dish, that she was
| open to trying some other lamb dishes, but always highly
| seasoned and cut into small chunks. These other dishes
| _she did not like_ before, but now she found that she
| did.
|
| Her brain had adopted the idea that "small pieces of
| highly seasoned lamb taste good".
|
| > I don't like it and will never again knowingly try it.
|
| There is plenty of horrible cabbage out there. Like,
| awful stuff that I would not want to eat.
|
| But a Korean kimchi cabbage is a lot different than a
| Vietnamese pickled cabbage which is a lot different than
| sauerkraut which is a lot different that cabbage fried in
| bacon fat.
|
| Seriously if you are a person who likes bacon, try some
| thin sliced cabbage fried in bacon fat. I know people who
| _hate_ sauerkraut, but who love crispy fried cabbage.
|
| It also depends on the type of cabbage, and there are
| lots of types. Different types of cabbage are as
| different as grapefruits are to oranges, if someone hates
| grapefruit they should still give oranges a try. And if
| someone hates lemon juice they should still try orange
| popsicles! (and maybe that person hates all citrus fruits
| equally, but they won't know until they try more than 1!)
|
| But I also have food that I just cannot eat w/o puking it
| right back out. Mushrooms are my weakness, but only
| certain types of mushrooms. Pretty much every type of
| mushroom used in western cuisine makes me sick, but I am
| fine eating enoki mushrooms or wood ear mushrooms, and
| I'm glad I gave both a try despite my vomiting reaction
| to button/portobello mushrooms!
|
| [1] TBF American style lamb roasts are a waste of a
| perfectly good lamb.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| I used to be this way, but then I realized two flawed
| assumptions. Both related to each other:
|
| 1. Some % of the time, my first experience will not be
| like the others.
|
| 2. I will not be the same person the next time I try
| something.
|
| If your strategy works for you and you don't feel
| limited, that's great! Many people do feel limited if
| they only ate things they liked the first time. I am very
| happy that I eat bell peppers, onions, yoghurt, coffee,
| and (less happy due to calories) beer. If I only ate what
| I liked when I first tried it as a kid, I would be eating
| a lot of cheese pizza, candy, soda, and ice cream.
| criddell wrote:
| If people lived by that there would be a lot of adults
| who never want to eat anything other than chicken nuggets
| and mac 'n cheese.
|
| For me, the biggest example is sushi. I didn't like it
| all the first time mostly because of the texture of the
| raw fish. Eating it with somebody who knew a lot about it
| changed everything for me. Now going to a great sushi
| restaurant is one of my very favorite things to do.
| socks wrote:
| I really disliked beer until I was about 25 years old. I
| kept occasionally trying it, maybe because my girlfriend
| liked beer, and one day, to my surprise, found a
| particular beer I really liked. Trying new craft beers is
| now a bit of a passion, and have had over 250 different
| beers (I avoid buying repeats [unless extremely good] or
| a multipack)
| rfrey wrote:
| I wonder how long my son would have survived on an
| exclusive McDonalds french fry diet.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Probably to 53:
| https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/24/entertainment/morgan-
| spurlock...
| skhunted wrote:
| I doubt your son did not like the taste of any other
| foods beside McDonalds french fries. I don't understand
| your point.
| c22 wrote:
| Maybe it's cheaper or has health benefits?
| xanderlewis wrote:
| It's like asking 'why practice an instrument you can't
| already play?'.
|
| If you only try each thing once and give up, you'll get
| stuck in a local flavour maximum.
|
| Basically, what I'm saying is: it's perfectly possible
| that the best experiences you can have are those that
| require a certain amount of less-pleasant experiences
| preceding them. You can stick with the medium-level
| experiences and you'll never try anything bad twice, but
| you'll also never discover things that might change your
| life.
| criddell wrote:
| Coffee is one of my very favorite things in the whole
| world and I don't ever remember a time where I didn't
| like it. Right from the start I've always preferred it
| black - no flavors or dairy.
|
| Alcohol is a little different. Beer I loved from my first
| sip when I was probably 5 or 6. Whisky, gin, vodka,
| etc... I mostly didn't like until I learned a little bit
| more about the drinks and the flavors that alcohol can
| carry (it's why cooking with alcohol can be amazing).
|
| My life with vegetables is similar. As a kid I thought
| there was nothing more vile than broccoli and brussel
| sprouts. I thought tomatoes were gross and grapefruit was
| pure poison. As an adult, I've learned to love all that
| stuff.
|
| Palates change.
| guhidalg wrote:
| > Have you considered that those people queuing outside
| Starbucks might be drinking coffee because they enjoy the
| whole experience?
|
| Not the OP, but to respond to your question I think that
| Starbucks is actually hitting its customers with a triple-
| whammy of caffeine, sugar, and fat that most brains can't
| resist addiction to. Are you sure they actually enjoy
| Starbucks coffee and not its addictive components?
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| > Are you sure they actually enjoy Starbucks coffee and
| not its addictive components?
|
| That's the same thing. Enjoying the components of
| something is basically the definition of enjoying
| something.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| Not OP but I generally only order black coffee when I go
| to Starbucks, so yes.
| elevaet wrote:
| It's that triple-whammy plus the comfort of consuming the
| spell that Starbucks has woven for their customers.
|
| I think for a lot of people buying a "special"
| coffee/thing at Starbucks squeezes that "I'm treating
| myself" gland just right.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Are they ordering decaf?
| jayd16 wrote:
| Yes, sometimes.
| hangonhn wrote:
| Many people enjoy both the effects and the
| taste/experience of drinking coffee.
| david-gpu wrote:
| It is my understanding that decaf coffee is typically
| made from poor quality beans, because consumers typically
| expect decaf to cost as much as regular coffee even
| though the decaffeination process means an additional
| cost.
|
| For decades I only drank decaf and only in the past few
| years I have replaced my morning cup with regular coffee
| because it's so much easier (and cheaper!) to find good
| beans.
|
| In other words, there are good reasons to consume
| caffeinated coffee besides an addiction to caffeine.
| 0x457 wrote:
| I make coffee at home and I always have decaf beans on
| hand. Sometimes I just want to:
|
| a) Go through a process of making espresso (yay coffee
| toys^Wtools)
|
| b) Just want to drink some coffee because of its taste
|
| I eye-ball how much caffeine I consume and cut-off myself
| waaaay before the guideline and 10 hours before target
| bedtime. Given that caffeine half life is about 5 hours
| it works out perfectly. However, if still want coffee due
| to any of the reasons above - I make decaff.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Overly competitive people over-optimizing everything. Why
| waste the time drinking a cup of coffee when you could just
| swallow a pill? The only enjoyment these people get are
| from beating others. They're not capable of appreciating a
| cup of coffee, or they think they're too busy to.
|
| One of them is reading this comment right now and thinking
| about adding "appreciate coffee" to their calendar.
| skeaker wrote:
| This seems too defensive/aggressive. The pill guy made
| his case very well I think, he wanted the benefits of
| caffeine in a consistent dosage and pills fit that
| purpose. His motivation is inherently different from
| someone who wants to enjoy a cup of coffee, but having a
| different goal doesn't mean your goal is better or worse
| than someone else's. Nobody's "beating" anyone, and
| "these people" certainly don't only get enjoyment from
| beating others.
| neves wrote:
| I agree with you about the experience, but nobody who
| really likes coffee goes to Starbuck for the taste:-). They
| are really addicted
| goosedragons wrote:
| At the airport though it's not hard to believe Starbucks
| might actually be the best option.
| out-of-ideas wrote:
| we used to take a 10m walk to a SB just to gtfo the
| office, to have a walk after the hour+ commute, to people
| watch, and to BS with the coworkers. it just also
| happened to be a great source of hot sugar that went well
| with the baileys. addiction to having a mental break from
| the stresses, yes, but in no way addicted to the caffine
| (nor sugar)
| dnissley wrote:
| It might be true that they're addicted to caffeine, but
| it's likely also true that they're addicted to Starbucks
| xanderlewis wrote:
| You do have a point there.
| grumple wrote:
| Starbucks is only a little worse than boutique coffee
| shops in my experience, but they are fast, conveniently
| located, open earlier, open later, pay their employees
| well (for a coffee shop) and pay for their employees'
| educations.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| Their coffee is significantly worse tasting (especially
| if you drink it black, as I often do). With milk it's
| perfectly acceptable, especially if you go for their
| 'blonde' roast.
|
| I totally agree about opening times! Starbucks is often
| the only place open after 5 or so.
| m463 wrote:
| I think true coffee lovers like decaf (lets them drink more
| coffee)
|
| hard to get good decaf though, it seems to me like trying
| to buy diet donuts.
| xanderlewis wrote:
| Decaf that tastes like caf would be great. Unfortunately
| it seems to be impossible. Or at least, I haven't found
| it yet. The standard processes used to remove the
| caffeine seem to also remove enough of the other
| compounds to make it noticeably more watery and thin.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| It's possible, but very difficult.
|
| The problem isn't really the removal of compounds, as far
| as I can tell, but moreso the change to the bean
| composition itself. Because the porosity increases so
| much roasting the decaf beans is much more difficult.
| Additionally, beans grind differently due to their
| porosity and brittleness.
|
| Basically, this means both the roaster and the grinder of
| the beans (and preparer of the coffee) need to change
| their behaviors slightly.
|
| Then, at the end of it, the coffee stales much faster so
| it'll go bad faster.
| bmacho wrote:
| This is my opinion about caffeine pills too. Cheap,
| convenient, effective, and safer against overdose than coffee
| (in one hand, a box of pills is probably lethal amount, but
| in the other hand, at least for me, it is much easier to
| control the amount of caffeine using pills, than using
| coffee).
| vkou wrote:
| At work, I drink coffee, decaf, black.
|
| If I'm going to a coffee shop to drop $7, it's not because
| I'm an addict, it's because I want to splurge on a sweet
| dessert.
|
| I also sometimes buy ice cream at the grocery, for the same
| reason.
|
| I'm assuming you eat nothing but bread and water,
| unadulterated by anything that makes food delicious.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Caffeine pills. Woah... so I guess I knew they existed but
| didn't actually know what their purpose was, but what you say
| about consistency is totally on the mark. I measure
| everything in my coffee process, and I'm lucky in Melbourne
| that so many cafes do too, but yes - I avoid most cafes that
| look like they have average and dark beans because of the
| wild inconsistencies and most certantly burned taste.
|
| So do you take them to maintain alertness as anyone else
| would with coffee, to boost nootropics, or none of the above?
| Sorry for being nosey but this is interesting to me, because
| if I'm away from my machine and going to an unknown place
| then I take my portable handheld espresso machine and already
| ground beans, but a simple tablet sounds WAY more
| convenient!!
| ssijak wrote:
| most people at starbucks are addicted to sugar and not
| caffeine
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I, like many others, drink a considerable amount of coffee
| for the taste. I typically drink decaf so it is difficult to
| ascribe the habit to addiction.
| c22 wrote:
| I must be the real sucker. I've stood in line at the cafe
| just to get steamed milk!
| snikeris wrote:
| You're missing out on the phytochemicals that contribute to
| the positive effects of drinking tea or coffee. You're
| getting all the bad (and good) of chronic caffeine
| stimulation, with none of the plant medicine benefits that
| tea and coffee drinkers receive.
| silverpepsi wrote:
| >If you were taking any other drug (over the counter or RX)
| would anyone tolerate "today it's 100 mg, tomorrow it's 400
| mg"?
|
| afaik melatonin. Not super happy about it but it is what it
| is, giving it up has a high cost too.
| ericmcer wrote:
| This really hit home when I started swapping caffeine out for
| Adderall on work days. Literal amphetamines have a more mild
| effect on me than a strong coffee.
| theragra wrote:
| I agree, reasonable amphetamine dose is easier on me than too
| much tea and coffee.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| Anecdotal: I gave up my caffeine when it got the point that I
| was consuming 3-4 cups a day to combat persistent sleep
| deprivation and I noticed my stomach no longer would cooperate
| with it. Immediately, I began having dreams again which I
| hadn't had in years and didn't notice when they disappeared. I
| had bad headaches that tapered off after about 2-3 months. I
| awake usually refreshed, and my sleep patterns are much more
| regular, my body no longer can deal with less than 7 hours of
| sleep and will complain to me if I try to get away with less.
| My experience was ultimately that caffeine kept me awake but
| not at my cognitive best. I think it only worked before because
| I was younger and I'm now middle-aged. My stomach, brain, and
| body are better without a doubt. I still have small glasses of
| tea every once in a while when I really miss a hot drink and a
| pick me up. Hope this helps anyone else considering.
| audunw wrote:
| Spinach is also mildly detrimental to health. (Oxylates)
| Doesn't mean you should think that it's bad for you unless you
| have a problem with kidney stones.
|
| Both black coffee and tea have several well documented health
| benefits.
|
| Even caffeine in isolation can probably have benefits when used
| correctly.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It's interesting that coffee (black) is essentially perfect
| (mostly pros, few or no cons) yet there is a small crowd bent
| on demonizing it.
| hereme888 wrote:
| Caffeine, up to a certain daily dose, is associated with long-
| term cognitive benefits and a reduced risk of dementia.
|
| This study hints that it specifically doesn't benefit gray matter
| volume during periods of sleep restriction, at least in the short
| term.
|
| I wonder if substances like Ashwagandha extract or Magnesium
| L-threonate could mitigate gray matter loss during short term
| sleep restriction among caffeine drinkers.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Ashwagandha extract Can only be safely taken up to 3 months.
| It's not a long term benefit. Magnesium affects your heart's
| signaling, which can be problematic if too much.
|
| I'm curious why you asked about Ashwagandha ahd magnesium? They
| seem to be THE supplements du jour, which is a pretty weird
| concept. There is a lot of grift going on, and little
| recognition of the potential negative health impacts of both.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Rule: if you drink (coffee) dot not stay awake.
| iamleppert wrote:
| I've sad it before, and I'll say it again: the human body is not
| meant to ingest any other liquid than pure, filtered water.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| Breast milk and the million sources of liquid in the foods we
| eat disagrees
| thebruce87m wrote:
| Maybe you should stop saying it? When we are born we 1) don't
| have a filter installed and 2) drink milk.
| andro_dev wrote:
| Caffeine does nothing for me at all, I do not get a kick when I
| drink coffee. It does not affect my sleep, it does not give me a
| boost at all. So I am a bit of jealous of those who can utilize
| caffeine for mental boost, I just drink it for the taste.
| maipen wrote:
| I used to say the same thing until I tried different types of
| coffee and different amounts.
|
| The average expresso doesn't do much.
|
| Also if you are already feeling well, it's unlikely you will
| feel a big difference unless you consume a high dosage of
| caffeine, which can also cause you some anxiety.
|
| Caffeine is great when we are feeling low energy or sleepy.
| andro_dev wrote:
| Thanks I will try higher dosage.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| What specifically do you recommend trying? I don't seem to
| get any physical symptoms after a coffee but my wife is the
| complete opposite.
| taeric wrote:
| I am growingly convinced that coffee/caffeine hit people in very
| different ways. https://www.23andme.com/topics/wellness/caffeine-
| consumption... has a few fun citations to look through on this,
| but discussions of how varied we are with how it impacts us is
| ridiculously invisible in most discussions of it.
|
| Sleep is similar. We speak of "night owls" and such, but most
| discussion around the varied needs of sleep are age targeted.
| With most discussion on how we should let kids sleep longer.
| claytongulick wrote:
| I'm one of those.
|
| I have this super weird thing where I'm hyper-sensitive to
| caffeine, and its effects will hit me sometimes 6+ hours later.
|
| If I have a cup of coffee in the late morning, it will keep me
| up most of the night, and a single cup of coffee will make me
| manic-ish.
|
| People have (doctors included) told me that what I was
| experiencing was impossible, that caffeine in metabolized in a
| certain way and completely out of your system quickly.
|
| Turns out, that's true with most people, unless you have a
| variant in the CYP1A2 gene, which can cause the effects I
| experience.
| lanstin wrote:
| On a cultural note regarding the threads, the moralistic make do
| with what god gives you side and the yay drink coffee and do
| stuff and be happy side have been around a long time. A little
| Bach Cantata about a grumpy old dad and his coffee drinking
| daughter: https://youtu.be/nifUBDgPhl4?feature=shared
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> Each participant underwent a 9-day laboratory visit consisting
| of one adaptation day, 2 baseline days (BL), 5-day sleep
| restriction (5 h time-in-bed), and a recovery day (REC) after an
| 8-h sleep opportunity.
|
| Was this a vacation? Was this study done at a resort? During push
| times I _aspire_ to 5-hour sleep times. Talk to anyone in any
| branch of the military. During any sort of active operation,
| 5-hours in bed is total luxury. Or fishers. Or cops. Or food
| service workers. Or doctors.
| EZ-E wrote:
| Side topic, but dropping coffee was the best thing I ever did. I
| used to drink only one cup a day, rarely two, for many years -
| but turns out when I stopped (for reasons unrelated) my anxiety
| unexpectedly 80% went away after a week or so without any other
| changes in my lifestyle. It was a big difference and I feel now
| very different than what I used to. I wake up much better rested
| too (much easier to get out of bed). Too bad, I really loved the
| taste but it's not worth it for me.
|
| I encourage anyone to give it a try a few weeks and see how they
| feel. You may not realize what you thought is your baseline is in
| fact caused by caffeine sensitivity. I heard of some people being
| sensitive to caffeine but I never thought it would affect me,
| after all I did not have that bad of a reaction but it really
| built up and I had gotten used to it.
| curmudgeon22 wrote:
| I've had a very similar experience. If i drink coffee daily, it
| bumps my anxiety significantly after a few days or a week. If i
| rarely have it, it's usually fine. But if I let myself have it,
| it's too easy to trend towards daily again.
|
| I drank coffee for years and don't think it had an impact, but
| at some point, I noticed it and the impact was very real when
| not drinking it.
| olegious wrote:
| Just curious, how do you define anxiety?
| broguinn wrote:
| I haven't seen this mentioned in the comments yet, so I'll
| mention it here. For the last year, I've seen health pundits
| (Huberman, etc.) recommend delaying caffeine intake for two hours
| after waking, for the purpose of allowing adenosine to clear from
| the brain first.
|
| Ever since I've adopted this strategy, I find myself avoiding a
| mid-morning crash, and generally feeling more alert in the
| mornings. I wonder if the deleterious impact on grey matter could
| be mitigated in part by delaying consumption until fully awake.
| ninininino wrote:
| Are any of these results applicable to a non sleep-restricted
| state?
|
| The study was on 5 days of 5-hr sleep only. How does caffeine
| affect 8-hrs sleep?
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