An evidence-based guide to reversing caffeine tolerance | Hacker News Reader

An evidence-based guide to reversing caffeine tolerance

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121 pointsnkurz65 comments

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.

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.

I Will ask my nutritionist. Thanks for the idea! :)

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.

> nutritionist

I don't know what the situation is in your country but in most of the world any idiot can call themself a nutritionist. There is no qualification required. The advice that I've heard from self-proclaimed nutritionists in my country has almost always been unscientific nonsense.

First sentence is the same here. Second is not, here is 4 years career in medicine university. Third sentence is the same also.

But she is helping me with my gastrointestinal problems, reflux, weight, etc.

You know in some countries they boil the coffee on the stove with egg shells. The science is simple, when the pH falls below 8.2, calcium flows into solution and buffers the pH. The downside is that coffee wrecks your breath and your smile, and costs about 10x more than other commonly prescribed stimulants.

I will google that now

how did it go

oh man, maté 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.

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...

It’s also a popular fizzy soft drink. There is nothing better than a cold bottle of Mate in the morning.

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 tereré.

They even use orange juice or other things with the mate leaves... Angry tradition noise again :v

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.

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

There is more than Club Mate now, in the last decades a large variety of Mate brands have entered the market, many also vanished again.

Club Mates largest competitor is probably Mio Mio Mate, while generally the cheaper alternative, their Ginger Mate really adds a new twist. There are of course many small regional Mate breweries which often lean more on the tea flavor side. I really liked Lux Mate, which added Mint to the mix, but it appears to no longer exist.

That sounds good I was making mint yerba mate when I got a big bag of cruz de malta one time and it was great, but fizzy sounds even better heh

The only thing I didn't like about these drinks is the amount of sugar, it's kinda high

Caffeine pills. You might need to find a good brand, because the effects can be different (though none of them have negative GI effects).

> 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.

I'm lactose intolerant :v

Most non-dairy milks haven't been good as creamers to me, but I've had decent luck with NotMilk.

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.

I've found unsweetened oat milk to be pretty amazing with coffee.

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

Guarana based products help as well.

I use Berocca boost in real emergencies.. (vit B + Guarana) https://www.berocca.com.au/products/boost/berocca-boost-effe...

Black tea is my once a day "wake up" in the morning... and I try hard to make sure i get at least 7 hours of sleep

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/

Yes, and I remember being able to read caffeine content on most thing’s until recently. I wish it were standard on nutrition labels.

It's still clearly labeled on the drinks we have in the house now. (USA)

Anyone know if exercise speeds up caffeine metabolism?

Just from my personal experience, yes it does.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

You're right. What what bothers me most is not the stopping — it's the maintenance required.

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.)

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

Just saw an article about ginger being very helpful with migraines -- perhaps worth checking out?

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.

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

You really need a legend for the graph. What are Caff/Caff and Plac/Caff groups, exactly?

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.

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.

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.

Drink green tea, it obliterates the side effects via L-theanine, while still providing the necessary energy boost

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.

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.

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

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.

Fascinating. Now do one for THC please.

> 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?

As with all drugs, it’s more fun to abuse them then simply use them.

Being in withdrawal so often sounds worse than just taking it daily with occasional short breaks to reset a bit.

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?

I get similar jittery+anxiety and also sweaty palms from coffee, but not from tea. Have you tried different sources?

I tried Yerba Mate, same effect, although milder.

Have you tried taking theanine with it?

No, what does it do?

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.

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...

Thanks, exactly what I was looking for!

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.

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!

Data shows it is a net positive. TFA is about looking at studies rather than anecdotes.

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