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Comment by chrischattin | Hacker News Reader

I have a theory that 50 years from now people will look back on caffeine the same way we look back on everyone smoking in the 50's. There were tons of "smoking is healthy" articles back then too, and it was baked into the culture. Caffeine's negatives are more hidden and second order effects that come from increased cortisol levels, lack of sleep, adrenal fatigue, etc. I've done a bunch of research on this and might write it up in a blog post someday.

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The difference being that caffeine is consumed today pretty much the same way for hundreds of years (unlike modern cigarettes) and doesn’t have all the lobby behind it (at least not one as strong as alcohol or cigarettes, if any). The whole “smoking is healthy” phase was marketing (and the studies showing the link to cancer date back to 1920s) - same for eating bacon & eggs in the morning, or tricking people into consuming sugary corn flakes as if it’s a healthy food.

If I’d have to bet, I’d say we’ll trend to having purer caffeine drinks, or maybe better understand how it plays out with other chemicals.

> same for eating bacon & eggs in the morning

Eggs are pretty nutritious and don't have a lot of calories. I eat mine with a small amount of bacon and feel full 'til lunch. It is odd to me that you put it in the same breath as sugary cereals.

I'd assume it depends on where the eggs come from: Are eggs that are from caged chickens fed antibiotics, the same as eggs that come from chickens that are free to run around and feed on food made only from organic plants?

No chicken are fed antibiotics! It’s against the law and chicken manufacturers use that as a marketing ploy - “antibiotic free chicken” is as much as “water is wet”. Also free range is a sham - you can add a small fence leading to outside opening but the rest of the building can be dark and crowded and still call it free range. The chicken industry is truly a modern day mafia

Sorry, I meant specifically the combo of bacon & eggs. Bacon, historically, isn't a breakfast food - it just became a staple in the US due to a lot of marketing, trying to make it sound "healthier" than it is (in particular the nitrite-heavy, thin-sliced bacon sold in supermarkets, which is a lot unhealthier than the european/canadian style)

> write it up in a blog post someday

No time like the present! Brew up a pot, and get hammerin'! :)

Drinking coffee doesn't mean you have lack of sleep. I drink 4-10 cups a day and still easily sleep 9 hours

Caffeine is well established to interrupt sleep. Interrupt doesn't necessarily mean a person wakes up either. It can mean 9 hours of less restful sleep than without caffeine. Over the long term, the less restful sleep can lead to other problems.

I think it effects people differently.

Coffee/caffeine doesn't stop me sleeping, it makes me not want to sleep.

The difference is, I can drink a couple of coffee (long black, strong) then go to bed and sleep soundly. But I have to argue with myself all the way to bed... because now I dont feel like I need it :-P

Not everyone's body works the same way.

I used to be like that but it completely changed once I hit my 40s. Now coffee (even decaf to some degree) makes me anxious and causes sleep problems. Going off coffee improved my life a lot.

If you're already drinking that much, your tolerance is so high you could probably down a double before bed and still sleep fine.

> Caffeine's negatives are more hidden and second order effects that come from increased cortisol levels, lack of sleep, adrenal fatigue, etc. I've done a bunch of research on this and might write it up in a blog post someday.

Care to post any links to this research/citations for those claims?

You aren't going to find any legitimate research that caffeine causes adrenal fatigue or is associated with adrenal fatigue because there's no such thing as adrenal fatigue.

True on "adrenal" fatigue, but it does increase cortisol levels and blood pressure. Chronic use will also lead to increased run-of-the-mill fatigue.

Caffeine works by blocking adenosine receptors, which is part of the mechanism for feeling tired. So the brain compensates by creating more receptors and flooding the brain with adenosine.

If there are no caffeine molecules in the brain to block the receptors, you will crash. Consume more caffeine, and voila: you feel normal again.

You mean, it hasn't been proven

People have had a hunch that coffee has been bad for hundreds of years and have been trying to prove it ever since.

Mostly we just find new ways that it's good for you instead.

We have enough examples to look at. Even if caffeine ends up linked to some detrimental effects, its nothing on the scale of smoking/lung cancer. Plenty of people both drink or don't drink coffee and in the aggregate its not affecting outcomes to a noticeable degree.

I'm skeptical it will go that way. If you look at the history of smoking, wikipedia has

>Pipe smoking gradually became generally accepted as a cause of mouth cancers following work done in the 1700s.

ie. the negative effects were obvious for a long time. There's nothing like that with caffeine - if anything is seems to extend lifespan perhaps in humans and definately in Caenorhabditis elegans https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3922918/

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