A miracle drug sold over the counter | Hacker News Reader

A miracle drug sold over the counter

trevorklee.substack.com

23 pointsklevertree20 comments

The LD50 of caffeine for my cat is approximately ten Monster Energy drinks?To an untrained mind, that simultaneously seems like a lot and not much at all. I guess given my cat is 1/10th my weight, that’s like me having 100, which feels like it should kill me.

Holy crap. A Dunkin Donuts Large Ice Coffee is 396mg of caffeine. That’s insane. That’s 4.5 Red Bulls.

I originally felt a wee bit dismissive of the article’s thesis. But wow, we are absolutely cranking up the caffeine content. I remember Jolt or Bawls or other drinks in high school being edgy because they had “twice the caffeine” (about 80mg for 355ml can).

But now we’ve got 400mg in a single beverage.

Is this a feedback loop? We keep increasing caffeine content because we need more for our beverages to have the desired effect for customers?

> Is this a feedback loop? We keep increasing caffeine content because we need more for our beverages to have the desired effect for customers?

Tolerance, or physical addiction is exactly that. A given dose is less effective after a certain amount of repeated use and a larger dose is required for the same effect. Not using the drug at all may cause withdrawal symptoms.

And now we’re selling a litre of iced coffee in a single serving vessel, which has 396mg of caffeine (or 475mg if you get the extra charged version).

> Is this a feedback loop? We keep increasing caffeine content because we need more for our beverages to have the desired effect for customers?

Jolt was marketed to kids, and had twice the caffeine of other sodas. Coffee is an entirely different beverage, marketed at an entirely different group (at least it was when I was in school). What was the caffeine content of coffee in 1950, and how much did people drink? That's what you really need to compare the Dunkin Donuts Large Ice Coffee against.

Well there’s also energy drinks that are double jolt.

Holy crap. A Dunkin Donuts Large Ice Coffee is 396mg of caffeine. That’s insane. That’s 4.5 Red Bulls.

But to put that in perspective an 8oz cup of coffee has about 100mg of caffeine and up to 400mg per day is considered safe assuming someone isn't sensitive to caffeine. Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Norway consume 400mg+ of caffeine per day on average and that's just the average.

https://www.caffeineinformer.com/caffeine-what-the-world-dri...

A tiny amount of caffeine (in 1 can of a soft drink like Coke) can wreck my sleep for 24 hours. And I love caffeine. Sigh.

I’ve struggled with sleep for so long that I’m basically one big, tired Petri dish.

I’ve found the same in my experiments, which surprised me: 100mg of caffeine between 7-11am is enough to make sleep impossible until maybe 3-4am. Meanwhile my wife can have 200mg at 7pm and be out by 10. I knew caffeine did this but I thought such a small amount so early in the day would easily be gone by night.

Next I want to somehow measure caffeine content over time and get a feel for how fast my body processes it. I also want to experiment with media (hot drinks, cold drinks, pills, etc.) I love caffeine.

Man, do I feel you. Very similar here. Also, I often try different remedies that work a day or three and then stop immediately.

> I’m basically one big, tired Petri dish

LOL, added that to my quotes folder.

Does 'power naps' work for you? What happens if you drink a small coffee past 5pm?

Try taking l-theanine in conjunction. About half as much theanine as caffeine. See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4480845/

I shall. Study looks compelling.

What about soy isoflavones? Would those count as a drug of that class? They seem to have a wide range of benefits with a limited number of possible negative effects.

I liked the build up, but

> The drug that I’m thinking of is currently predominantly used as a pesticide

Is that true? I would think it's predominantly used as a drink additive...

> Is that true?

Plants use caffeine to kill bugs.

CGP Grey video on the matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTVE5iPMKLg&t=69s

CGP Grey isn't really a credible source, he's an entertainer. He may not be wrong in this case, but everything he says should get verified.

It might be true if you (like the author, at least that's my interpretation) include the use by the original plants, which I guess occurs until the plant is (destructively, which I'm not sure how common it is) harvested.

Dementia wards are full of people that drank coffee.

Implying non caffeine users all met a clumsy untimely end before reaching that age?

Data?

Caffeine is a mild anticholinergic, but I haven't seen hard data to support such a claim.

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