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Comment by aeternum | Hacker News Reader

This cites no data or studies.

Companies that created a coffee break during the industrial revolution did see significant productivity and quality improvements.

It's quite possible that caffeine blocks adenosine and then your body metabolizes it away via another mechanism for it maxes out. Thus you don't end up paying all of it back. Why? Perhaps our brains may be evolutionarily programmed to use less energy than they could because food was previously much harder to come by.

From an energy conservation POV, overproduction of adenosine makes biological sense.

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Were there significant productivity and quality improvements for a coffee break, when compared to a simple break of the same length without coffee?

My gut feel is that the important part here is the break, not the coffee — prior to that point it was common to work without stopping.

And even if the caffeine did improve productivity over and above the break itself, that still doesn't prove that the bill doesn't come due later, outside of work hours.

I'd like to see the results from comparing coffee, tea, a caffeine-free herbal tea, water, a break without any substance, a break at your workspace vs a break at a breakroom some distance away, sitting while drinking vs standing while drinking, sun vs indoors, conversation vs silence, and so on.

Literally every link in the page is a paper. Pubmed, NCBI, HSPH, etc.

Also, the interaction of caffeine with adenosine is not new.

I also read somewhere else, in relation to the tolerance build-up, that as the caffeine intake becomes regular, your body produces more and more adenosine than usual to counter-act it. Thus, if you quit the caffeine intake suddenly after many days or weeks of regular intake, you get a crash of biblical proportions. I don't have a source for this right now, but it's also consistent with my own observations. It's also why articles typically suggest to lower the dose progressively when you're trying to quit.

And another myth might be its "positive" effects on exercise. While there are mixed studies on whether caffeine is a diuretic and/or whether it causes dehydration, from my own observations, the motherfucker does make me want to drink insane amounts more of water. So the fake energy sensation is kind of counter-acted by that. Of course, this is my own biased, non-scientific opinion, but I've experimented with this, doing the same exercise the same day of the week, across multiple weeks, with/out the coffee shot. If I want to maximize exercise output now, I stay clear of it, get a good sleep, stay hydrated.

Being fair, none of the studies linked showed that you were "borrowing a bit" that you would have to "pay back later." That does feel like a stretch over the rest of the articles.

It is neat to read on how/why it works. That said, the claim that "it is not the creation of energy" feels like a stretch anyway. Do people really think they get energized in some magical creation way from coffee? Worse, the claim is there that the adenosine "doesn't go away," but there is no cite for that rather key claim. (Did I miss it?)

Edit: For why that last claim needs a cite, it would be like saying ADHD meds for those that take them are "borrowing focus from a later time." Which... feels very contra to how that works.

The studies show that coffee is an adenosine receptor blocker. We know that this means increased neural activity that the body cannot downregulate via adenosine. We know that neural activity is responsible for adenosine release during ATP breakdown.

Which means coffee gives you temporary energy (because activity isn't downregulated), but the body continues to consume energy at a higher-than-desired level, releasing more adenosine trying to stop that. As soon as you stop blocking the receptors, you'll get downregulated fairly hard.

Is it OK to characterize this as "borrow and pay back later"? IDK. It's a good enough metaphor to summarize what's happening.

As for comparing it to ADHD meds - these are completely different systems. A comparison doesn't make any sense.

But if you must see a cite, we've known for a long time that caffeine induces adenosine buildup: https://www.nature.com/articles/38160

Should it have been cited? Maybe. But it's a very well known fact, and not everything needs to be proven from first principles. (Also, Occams razor applies - things that go away need a mechanism to make it go away, while things staying around don't)

This is a pop-science article that's surprisingly well sourced. Nitpicking the exhaustiveness of the sources seems somewhat contraproductive.

My point was as much that showing it is a blocker on the receptors is not the same as showing it just "builds up" in your system. It isn't so implausible that I don't believe it, but a study would be good. Similarly, showing it moves to another part of your body does not imply that it is just "waiting its turn" for getting into the receptors later. Indeed, if they reach a steady state in the rest of your body, it seems to imply you are always binding less of it.

The link you gave showing it is increased in plasma levels feels good. I would still question whether or not it only gets consumed in the receptors, versus changing where it is stored in the body. (That is, does your body "burn" the same amount of the stuff regardless of whether it is in the receptors or not?)

That said, these questions are just asking how far we have come in understanding. And, really, my main point was to be fair to the question asked and see if there is evidence of the claim. And... quite frankly, there isn't. There were no studies linked showing that you will be tired later if you have coffee. None. To claim that what is there does that, is to hide behind sophistry of science to push claims that it isn't making.

> Worse, the claim is there that the adenosine "doesn't go away," but there is no cite for that rather key claim. (Did I miss it?)

It "doesn't go away" in the sense that the adenosine stays bound to the caffeine until your body metabolizes that caffeine away. At that point, the adenosine is released back and follows it's usual cycle. It's not that it "doesn't ever go away".

That reads differently to me. Claiming that caffeine is a receptor blocker reads more that it displaces the adenosine in a way that it is not in the receptors. This does not imply that it cannot be processed in some other way, or that it is waiting for the receptor forever.

Do SSRIs work by just "delaying the depression" to later? Because that reads in very much the same way.

I get that the body is complex. I also get that things are necessarily watered down for people like me. I would still like to see studies that were done against the main claim here.

> Thus, if you quit the caffeine intake suddenly after many days or weeks of regular intake, you get a crash of biblical proportions.

Anecdotally, I had the flu a week at a bit ago. When I'm ill I take my caffeine intake down to zero (so I'm not compromising my sleep). This time I stuck with it. Over the last 10-ish days I've had half a cup of caffeinated coffee. The rest has been decaf (which I believe typically has some trace amounts of caffeine).

I used to drink at least 2 cups, usually 3 per day, occasionally more. I've had no side effects from going to zero. Maybe I wasn't heavy enough of a coffee drinker? But I did expect to feel it while I detoxed. Guess not.

Or to borrow the ideas of the paper, the coffee break served to shift energy to working hours by taking it from the off work hours.

Rest would give you energy regardless, both physically and mentally. Nearly every sport has built in sitting breaks.

> This cites no data or studies.

The version I have links to many papers, including these:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10870...

https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ben/ctmc/2011/0000001...

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-0773....

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1471-4159...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/026988119100500...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29514871/#:%7E:text=The%20ph....

I may misunderstand what you mean by cite. Perhaps it has an academic meaning I'm missing? I'm thinking links may not be sufficient as a citation?

The key claim of the article is: "the adenosine that it blocks doesn’t go away" (thus the borrow/debt analogy)

This is false, it does go away. Adenosine is metabolized back into AMP, then ADP, then ATP (the fuel for cells). And this does not only happen during sleep.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adenosine_monophosphate

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3246291/

Not sure what's with all the articles that have citations throughout then conveniently exclude the one that matters.

Pretty great comment, thanks. TIL.

I like how you complain about the lack of sources, which appears to be wrong, then you say

"Companies that created a coffee break during the industrial revolution did see significant productivity and quality improvements."

Without providing any sources.

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