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Comment by jsyolo | Hacker News Reader

It also increases anxiety/stress which makes any benefit a moot point.

I’m not sure it does. I am almost completely stress free in my entire life. I drink a fair bit of coffee and red bull (both without sugar) and never have any sleep, stress or anxiety problems.

The important thing with stressors is to identify them, write them down and deal with them. By dealing with them you have to ask if you really give a crap about them or not and the answer is usually no. If it is something you give a crap about then it’s usually pretty easy to sort out by coming up with some ideas and trying them out.

You can indeed live a stress free caffeinated life.

I am currently watching other people getting stressed over something I don’t give a crap about whilst drinking my morning brew.

> am currently watching other people getting stressed over something I don’t give a crap about whilst drinking my morning brew.

That's the spirit

Not going to solve any problems by getting stressed at them. Have to approach them with a level head and detachment or you end up with emotional outcomes.

Good for you, but probably difficult to extrapolate your n=1 anecdote to the entire population…

While it is good that you feel safe from stress and are able to manage the stressors you encounter, it's important to remember that not everyone experiences stress in the same way. Some people face external stressors that are beyond their control, such as financial difficulties, health issues, difficult relationships or even the impact of larger systemic issues.

Stressors can also have a compounding effect, as seen in the Holmes-Rahe Stress Inventory scale.

The scale assigns a numerical value to different life events based on how stressful they are considered to be. The idea is that when a person experiences a series of stressful events, the effects can compound and lead to greater levels of stress and negative health outcomes.

Caffeine can have different effects on different people. While it can help you feel more alert and focused, it can also increase anxiety and insomnia in others. Heightened anxiety resulting from caffeine intake can occur regardless of whether stressors exist in one's life.

reduced body weight and risk of diabetes may well be worth some moderate side effects. Not to mention tolerance. I basically drink coffee and black tea like water and sleep like a baby

I find that adding L-Theanine to my morning's coffee offset a lof of its negative effects. This is a popular ingredient in some "mind booster" products but you can do your own version at home easily by just buying supplement capsules.

Red bull never gives me the jitters so I’m going to experiment with taking taurine and drinking a couple of strong cups of coffee to see if it is helpful to my usual extremely stressed out response.

Caffeine also takes a while to leave your system and affects your sleep, leading to long term cognitive decline.

Caffeine knocks me out. It makes me tired, always did,

There's an non-regular effect on caffeine to people with ADHD/ADD. Could be related to that.

I believe so; speed knocks me out too. This condition was not there (recognised) when I was young and now I like it.

> leading to long term cognitive decline.

Source?

Michael Pollan on the radio. I believe he discusses it in This is Your Mind on Plants.

Who? On the radio?

Someone who is currently a professor at both Harvard and Berkeley gave an interview on NPR about recreational drugs, an area which they specialize in. Caffeine was brought up as drug that people generally consider acceptable but how it has side effects worse than some drugs which are illegal. One of them being that the half life for caffeine prevents you from getting a good night's sleep, which, if done over a lifetime, will contribute to cognitive decline.

From my surroundings, those who drink coffee normally have gray hair.

Due to coffee or statistically?

I doubt that's caused by coffee. Hair graying is mostly genetics. Coffee does stain your teeth though.

Which is just cosmetic. You can then cosmetically whiten them back again if you want.

We have the same thing. We’re all just old though.

Hair graying may be caused by melanocyte stem cells (MSC) depletion by genotoxic stress in the hair bulge. Hair graying may also be sometimes caused by dysfunction of the melanocytes by oxidative stress in the hair bulb. In addition, hair graying may be attributable to MSC depletion by active hair growth. Graying is associated with age-related defects in MSC maintenance. Irreversible DNA damage caused by genotoxic stressors such as ionizing radiation interrupts MSC comeback in mice.

Hair graying is associated with various autoimmune disorders including vitiligo and several rare premature aging syndromes including the Hutchinson Gilford and Werner syndrome. Hair graying may also reflect nutritional deficiencies (especially of vitamins) and the use of drugs such as chloroquine.

We do not know exactly the cause of hair graying in humans.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6029974/

This sounds like a ChatGPT answer!

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