Caffeine could limit damage of chronic stress | Hacker News Reader

Caffeine could limit damage of chronic stress

arstechnica.com

83 pointsmkagenius25 comments

I can't be the only one here who regularly drinks coffee all day and night, maybe its the constant stress of working more than a dozen hours a day. Studies like this help validate my beverage of choice.

What happens when you develop a tolerance to caffeine after prolonged use? Study doesn't really explain that.

I'm sure many drugs / stimulants make you feel better in short term but what about the long term?

Finnish people drink a lot of coffee; in my place of work it's a mug (0.2 litres) every two hours or so during a twelve hour shift. Some people there have been doing that for over a decade and apparently their dosage and consumption interval has remained the same, keeping blood caffeine levels quite steady.

Finland has the highest coffee consumption per capita in the world with ~12kg annually; compare to the US with ~4.1kg: http://www.worldmapper.org/posters/worldmapper_1038_coffee_c...

Same here, but I take that 0.2 litres every hour during a 9-10 hour workday.

I have noticed that if I don't get caffeine, I have a headache within a day. It lasts for about 3 days, or up to week. Then the cold turkey is over. I switched to green tea for 1.5 years when living in Asia (quite bad coffee, sorry) and then started again with coffee.

Decaffeinated is not popular here (e.g. our office does not have it) but Finnish coffee is no espresso so it's not that strong in caffeine. I prefer espresso beans though, not the light roast that is typical here.

> What happens when you develop a tolerance to caffeine after prolonged use? Study doesn't really explain that.

I've seen a couple of studies on the effects of coffee/caffeine on alertness. They showed that initial usage produced heightened alertness, but the body adapts relatively quickly, resulting in lower baseline alertness and a need to use caffeine to reach an alertness level roughly matching (or often not quite matching) the original pre-caffeine baseline.

So: you start drinking coffee, you get short-term alertness, long-term you have to keep drinking it to get back to the alertness you started with before you started drinking coffee.

So it basically works like heroine or other hard drugs, it's bad side effects are just not as apparent.

That's what I was wondering about too. I remember reading that tolerance to caffeine, regarding alertness, develops very quickly - around 12 days. It would be most interesting to know if the same happens to the effect on memory and mood.

When I develop a tolerance? Considering I can and sometimes do finish an entire pot after 10pm, especially if I'm going out on the weekend. Yet afterwards I can still shut my eyes and fall asleep within half an hour.

So your worries are well founded as drinking so much has given me the powers to turn Coffee into Water

I drink probably a full pot of coffee or more a day during the workweek. I pretty much have a cup on my desk all day, and refill it when it's empty (every 30 min or so -- also works as an ersatz pomodoro timer).

I'm with you, I drink about 15 cups of coffee a day but I do switch to decaf around noon.

See this sounds way too much. What kind of coffee? can you calculate amount of caffeine/day?

Nice humblebrag

There are occasional studies that say coffee is bad, but I just never trust them.

paid for by the national coffee association of concerned citizens and caffeine addicts

"National Coffee Association" ftfy

This appears to be the abstract: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/25/7833.abstract

In the footnotes it declares "The authors declare no conflict of interest."

This is more a convenient excuse to post a link to the real abstract than "correcting" snark. To Ars' credit, they did link the paper's full ID number at the bottom, which is cool, but at the moment it 404s. Gripping had, it did give me great Google fodder to find the paper quickly so I'm still scoring them "wildly ahead of the conventional media".

Not The Coffee Brewing Institute? https://youtu.be/YVkusuvTdHw?t=1m15s

Taking this at face value: one lives an inordinately stressful life (read: tries to be successful in a competitive, capitalist environment) and consumes caffeine to prevent the damage; as habitual caffeine use increases caffeine tolerance, one increases caffeine consumption, thus moving them asymptotically towards the breaking point. If one was less fortunate in the genetic lottery, the tolerance continues increasing beyond the point where it can be sated. Don't call it a breakdown; call it the obvious endpoint of a society that tacitly forces non-recreational drug use.

(I guess I'm saying the problem with The War On Drugs as a policy wass that it didnt go far enough)

Well we stand on opposite sides of that war, now find something else to fear monger

Pharrington doesn't seem to be fear mongering. They seem to be saying that some people take drugs because they lead miserable lives, and if the war on drugs meant anything the people waging that war should have focussed on why those people took drugs, rather than on just criminalising them and removing the supply of drugs.

That's an interesting take seeing as he wrote this (I guess I'm saying the problem with The War On Drugs as a policy wass that it didnt go far enough). The thing is drugs can be fun and useful if taken responsibly, I'm not certain where you stand but I'm guessing you and I are not aligned. Have a good day sir

Has anyone actually tried the bulletproof recipe (Coffee + Butter + MCT/Coconut Oil) as an alternative to the standard daily coffee?

I did for a while. I added cinnamon, turmeric and black pepper as well. I know how it sounds, but I loved it. I stopped when Seth Roberts died because I got a bit freaked out, and didn't really pick it up again except now and then.

I can't say that it made me feel more clear headed or energetic or anything, but that might just be me (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10573324).

Though I like the fact that caffeine helps your body heals better, and that, in turn, helps limit the damage of chronic stress, I don't like the fact that caffeine has also been linked to impotence.

Skipping my morning Joe often gives me a little stress so I definitely agree with this article.

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