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Comment by dreamdu5t | Hacker News Reader

Note that caffeine does not increase cortisol, it reduces the time your body takes to clear/lower cortisol.

Everything I've previously come across has pretty clearly stated that coffee stimulates cortisol release in the body. That's one of the ways it fundamentally works to stimulate alertness.

This study linked to below is about developing tolerance to caffeine, but the very first line says: Caffeine increases cortisol secretion in people at rest or undergoing mental stress.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2257922/

Reduces? Because then that’s the opposite of what the other guy was saying, and we should all drown our stress with caffeine.

Reduces the time to remove the cortisol.

Well, a reduction in the time it takes to remove the bad thing, is a positive, isn’t it?

I think what they means is that the amount removed per unit time remains the same, so if the body spends less time removing cortisol there will be a buildup.

this is hilarious. two comments from two different users made the same apparent mistakes with their intended meaning.

"reduces the time taken" = "speeds up"

From context, it seems like the intended meaning is that caffeine slows down the cortisol removal, but what was actually written was that it speeds up cortisol removal.

What if cortisol isn't the problem, but the production of it? Afaiu, the adrenals are like a switch: if they produce cortisol, they can't produce other hormones.

So keeping cortisol up through other means could possibly be beneficial.

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