Regular caffeine consumption affects brain structure | Hacker News Reader

Regular caffeine consumption affects brain structure

sciencedaily.com

54 pointsmusha68k66 comments

I recently quit caffeine and was surprised at what followed. I knew I was going to feel tired, and that's how I felt for the first day. It was tolerable, and I was otherwise functional. For the following 4 days, I was seriously couch bound. Not only was I tired but I had zero motivation and I slept during the day after already having slept more than 8 hours at night. All of a sudden, my dreams became way more vivid and memorable without any other dietary changes.

After a week, I pretty much got over it and returned to normal. Quitting made me realize that caffeine wasn't giving me energy so much as it was just affecting my alertness. I kind of knew it already but it's one of those facts I had only thought about and not experienced.

I can't say that I feel like it permanently changed me in any way. I'm sure it did on some level, but perhaps not in a way that's noticeable. I was having about 160mg a day, so maybe that wasn't enough for outwardly noticeable brain changes.

Caffeine withdrawal sucks. From my experience, weaning off with decaf coffee can help. You can also do combinations of decaf / caff on the way to decaf. From decaf (which usually contains about 10% caff, not 0), going to 0% isn't so difficult.

Yeah, the big mistake was going cold turkey. I tricked myself because there have been days where I missed a dose and it wasn't that bad, and that was how my first day of abstinence went. But the days afterward were pretty brutal. I've never experienced any other kind of drug withdrawal so I can't say how it compares, but I definitely wasn't feeling anywhere close to my best. Using decaf sounds like a good idea for the future.

Cold turkey is better in my opinion.

People often lack the self control to keep with something for many weeks

You feel 60% as bad anyway

Relationships suffer because you move from "just a bad week" to "they've been irritable for a couple months now"

If you're intending to repeatedly go back on and take breaks from caffeine, give Lions Mane supplements a try. I can get them from the local VONS like any other vitamin, often 2 for 1. It's been a game-changer WRT mitigating caffeine withdrawal effects, and also takes the edge off the high esp. with high doses. No other negative effects observed, actually it seemed like a pointless placebo until playing with caffeine use simultaneously.

I drink maybe 3 cups a day. If I have zero coffee, I have a constant headache in the afternoon which continues for over a week. In the evenings I actually kinda feel good, as I just go to sleep. During the day it feels like my brain is trying its hardest to maintain alertness but it is running on fumes. In the evening I just kinda slip into unconsciousness. It's been a multi year goal for me to lower this dependency. Step one was buying worse quality coffee which has less caffiene (inflation and getting laid off during the pandemic helped here). I think step 2 should be 1 cup of coffee and then tea in the mornings, then a cup of decaf and tea, then just tea, then we are clear?

Mostly I just want to do this just to see how it affects my life because my dependency is pretty massive.

First they only tested 20 people, which is pretty low. And they don't seem to have tested anyone who wasn't previously a caffeine consumer. To be fair they conclude more study needs done.

Genius!

A "gateway" study to justify a larger, more scientifically thorough, and therefore much more expensive, study in which grant money is necessarily spent on lots of coffee!

Every study ever conducted ends with the recommendation that "more research is needed". Granted, not all studies are as self-evidently important as caffeine research :)

20 people is very low, presumably becuase the goal of the study was sleep effects, and they were using sleep labs, so I'd say that budget was a big issue here.

No doubt they wanted to maximise sample size, which is why they used the same 20 individuals for both the test and control groups.

Well, coffee withdrawal headaches are due to blood vessels expanding back to their natural size, and increasing blood flow in the brain . Surely reducing blood flow, and, conversely, supply of oxygen and nutrients should affect brain tissue

…Temporarily.

> Although caffeine appears to reduce the volume of gray matter, after just 10 days of coffee abstinence it had significantly regenerated in the test subjects.

Do many people temporarily take caffeine regularly? I've been drinking 3 cups a day for most of my life.

95% if my coffee drinking is because I love the taste. The other 5% is due to not wanting a migraine when good coffee is not available. (Like being subjected to instant coffee or Starbucks)

I gave up coffee once. But missed the taste. No desire to give it up.

I suspect liking the taste is somewhat of a Pavlovian response to the effects caffeine once had on us when we were unaccustomed to the effects of caffeine. In other words, I can't imagine many 15-year olds trying coffee for the first time, thinking "this tastes awesome." That'd explain why many people add sugar and milk into the coffee.

I loved the smell of coffee before I started drinking it. The taste takes some getting used to but I liked it the first time anyway. I drink one cup a day with small effects but don't seem to get worse when I stop.

It's very different from tobacco, where people seem to hate the first time and start liking it as the addiction sets up.

I absolutely love the smell of coffee.

However, I don't enjoy drinking it in particular. I like it with a lot of milk and I find the taste of some coffee varieties quite interesting, enjoyable even. But not enough for daily drinking.

I think there are people who genuinely don't mind the taste, or at least acquire a palette for it. I for instance cannot handle the taste of many German beers. A Pils, sure; an IPA, if I have to; an English Ale fermented in a basement bartub, no problem. But a standard Helles, forget it - I've tried many times, it just doesn't take.

>I suspect liking the taste is somewhat of a Pavlovian response to the effects caffeine

Yup. Let's not forget added sugar however

I find I often crave a taste sensation, any will do. Doesn't even have to be a taste I find pleasurable. Kinda to stave off boredom really. Tea (even herbal), coffee, soda or alcohol all scratch that itch.

I don't. A lot of things with caffeine in them taste yummy, and the bitterness of coffee appeals to folks (just look at the popularity of bitter cocktails and other foods to see it in play in other areas). Not to mention that a fair amount of folks begin drinking coffee with milk and/or sugar in it - this is especially true if you start drinking coffee by drinking lattes.

Plus, there is definitely a social component to drinking it if you are in the right area of the world (tea has some of the same social connections).

I mainly drink black coffee no sugar.

As do I - but I started with cream and sugar. I quit using cream and sugar both because black coffee is easier and because I try to drink mostly unsweetened beverages.

But not everyone follows our example, and that's really the point. (I'd probably edit to make it more clear, but that time has passed)

I wonder if black coffee, which is objectively worse tasting and harder to drink, has something to do with the drinker accepting that it's no longer a social thing but now just feeding an addiction/self-medicating. So taking the 'pill' straight becomes a practical choice.

I object to the word "objectively" there. Subjectively to you it is worse. I can't stand coffee with sugar. It's just a sugary drink, not coffee. I drink coffee either black or with a bit of milk - not coffee cream. Coffee does not taste bitter to me. Grapefruit on the other hand I cannot stand. I'll spit that out right away. I would say grapefruit is objectively the worst thing you can eat, yet I have to accept that it's definitely subjective as some people eat it without blinking an eye.

Same goes with sour. I love sour stuff and things I drink and eat that are perfect, you might find "objectively too sour", while it's really subjective.

I don’t think so. There’s different types of coffee. More bitter, more acidic. I do drip coffee at home. I tend to lean to the bitter more than the acidic.

If I go to a cafe and it’s done by an expresso machine then I get it with milk. As sometimes I can taste when they haven’t cleaned the machine in a while and it bothers me. Milk masks the bad beans or unclean machine.

Be honest - milk does a lot more than that. Changes the drink entirely.

Sure. But doesn’t change the fact that for me, when you have good beans, black coffee is much nicer without any added milk or sugar.

When you use cheapo beans from Starbucks or the super market, it’s difficult to make good tasting black coffee. So making it with milk makes it drinkable.

Sure it does. But perhaps you underestimate the serious variety in coffee (and that folks still drink decaf). I've purchased a coffee advent calendar the last 3 years from a specialty coffee roaster here in Norway. 24 different coffees to try.

And let me tell you, they aren't all bitter. If I did a blind taste test, I'd swear some of these were teas. Some are more of the taste I'd expect from black coffee either here or the US, sure. But wow, is there variety.

> I wonder if black coffee, which is objectively worse tasting and harder to drink

This is quite literally a matter of personal taste. There's nothing "objective" about it.

Quite literally a matter of chemistry and digestion.

Bitter or acid are univerally recognized as objectionable. Sure as spice in another dish they can do something. But that's not how they work in coffee?

> Bitter or acid are univerally recognized as objectionable

That isn't remotely true. If it were no one would eat dark chocolate or sour candy.

> But that's not how they work in coffee?

Also not true. While you might not personally appreciate it, coffee is far more complex than just "sour" and "bitter".

I add cream and sugar if I'm getting coffee out. At home, I'm drinking it black.

Most places, especially ones that don't specialize in coffee, do not properly clean their equipment and prep the brew.

If I was just a junkie, I would use cream and sugar at home too.

> I can't imagine many 15-year olds trying coffee for the first time, thinking "this tastes awesome."

If that's your litmus test then no one would eat (warning: polarizing list approaching) durian or Vegemite or lutefisk.

Acquired tastes are a thing. I personally used to hate olives and now I love them, and they don't, to my knowledge, induce positive psychoactive effects that would create a Pavlovian response.

I hated pumpkin as a kid. Now I love it. Especially pumpkin soup.

It’s not the migraines from Starbucks. It’s the upset stomach. Starbucks is hard on the GI.

I gave up heroin once. But missed the taste. No desire to give it up.

If you know addicts you see this for what it is. You'll find the same excuse from alcoholics.

I do January without coffee and alcohol, recommend.

Yes. For me it is a mild alergen, so I can drink coffee a few days in a row but then I take several weeks of break. I drink coffee when I have a change in schedule, like waking up earlier than usual for a few days for some projects.

I did a very healthy 2 year complete abstinence from coffee and it did my sleeping very well. I've been able to go back to controlled amounts of coffee since.

I can take it or leave it, and only use it as a tool when it's convenient. I will sometimes drink caffeinated drinks several times a day for a week or two (usually when I have to shift my sleep pattern), and then go weeks or months without it.

I regularly go on and off caffeine, it's far more enjoyable that way. When I never take a break the tolerance completely kills the high, and I treat caffeine mostly as a recreational drug but also as a tool to Get Shit Done when that mode is especially required.

A pro-tip I've stumbled across that seems to work really well is to always supplement with Lions Mane. It has two notable effects combined with caffeine:

1. it takes the edge off high doses, I can consume 200+% the amount I normally would before getting really jittery and short-tempered.

2. it seemingly eliminates any withdrawal effects except for the pronounced lower activity level/motivation of the first day, and of course less active bowels. No headaches or any of that hangover-like shit, none.

It feels like Lions Mane is a sort of caffeine antidote while still permitting the desirable effects to occur. The combination has made caffeine a much more attractive tool in my life, which I will employ and discard at will without ever thinking about headaches etc. YMMV

Daily intake of anything psychoactive changes the brain.

Very wise, very obvious. The title isn’t the research finding. Surely the specific results are worth more than platitudes, engage the curiosity a bit.

N=20

Effects still appear to be significant in those studied

You can find some statistical power with any number of observations. Doesn't mean results can be generalized, which is what the article wants to do. 20 extremely low. At that level it is more reasonable to ask why anyone would assume there to be no differences between two groups of ten people.

when the effect between 10 people is small, agreed, the results aren't significant. But if there are extremely large effect differences, one can't help but raise an eyebrow, even if the n is low

This does not account for monoamine oxidase inhibition by non-caffeine psychoactives in coffee.

This process is my current working theory as to why I can't drink coffee.

Could you elaborate a bit? Based on my confused search queries, it seems like coffee might interact with anti-depressants? (I might have completely misunderstood the point though)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030881462...

Does this imply that coffee (not caffeine) can act alone as an antidepressant?

Not really, since coffee is a mixture of dozens of MAOIs and other bio- and psychoactives. Some of them have been hypothesized to cause anxiety and depression. Some of them are also neurotoxic.

I can totally attest that coffee has multiple psychoactive substances in it. I need at least one good cup a day. Preferably made via the espresso method with 'good' beans. This seems to extract the most 'chemicals'. The satisfaction scale goes down from there. Not so good beans, non steam/pressure extraction method, all don't hit the spot. A good cup of coffee - not so easy...

Yep, I can attest to that as well. I sometimes stop drinking coffee and notice that there seems to be no amount of tea that can make the withdrawal symptoms go away.

Just to cross check: More coffee -> less MAOI -> more serotonin -> less depression ?

Ok so going through several links you get that the dose uses was:

> (3 × 150 mg/day)

That's a high daily dose, and I'd say not many people get to that dose "naturally" (some do, of course)

A cup of coffee has roughly 100mg already, no? So 450 aren't that much over a day.

Depends on the cup, a big starbucks cup might have that, a smaller one not so much (and most people don't go over 4 of those in one day)

I once asked a manufacturer of instant coffee and got this reply:

“Moccona Freeze Dried Coffee has approximately 60-80mg/ 250ml cup for every 1 rounded teaspoonful (±2.0g). Our Moccona Decaffeinated Freeze Dried Coffee has less than 0.1% caffeine.”

You'll get used to everything. I take 300-400mg in caps as pre-workout and another 200-300 via coffee per day. There's a reason why an espresso for dinner doesn't affect your sleep.

> There's a reason why an espresso for dinner doesn't affect your sleep.

Or are you just telling yourself that?

With 600-700mg of caffeine per day, your sleep is pretty much screwed with or without an espresso, that's probably true.

I must be an entirely different person with how much coffee I consume.

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