Hacker News Reader

Comment by ano-ther | Hacker News Reader

Didn’t realise caffeine was used IV in anesthesia. Apparently it speeds up awakening (which makes sense to me as a non-medic). https://theanesthesiaconsultant.com/2019/06/18/intravenous-c...

But the story in OP is that the patient received caffeine IV at the beginning of the surgery (inducing severe anxiety).

Does anyone know why you would do this?

View on HN

I know people use a similar strategy for napping. Some people (not me) can fall asleep very fast so they down a coffee and go sleep for a nap...and then wake up super fresh 30 mins later

Combined the effect is stronger than each on its own. Caffeine takes ~15 minutes to work. Sadly no source handy but i once read that naps are most effective below 15 minutes. Above it is possible to enter deeper sleep states and wake up worse than before.

So when people talk about napping like this, do they ever actually "fall asleep"? I cannot possibly imagine falling asleep in 15m in the middle of my work day or whatever.

I've done this sort of caffeinated nap when I chugged a cup of coffee and passed out. It feels as bad as it sounds but it was effective.

I don't fall asleep. But just lying in bed, eyes closed, sleepmask on and low Binaural Beats on the ears helps me when i feel a slump. When i set a timer to 12 minutes i usually feel the urge to get up after roughly ten minutes.

I had caffeine in an IV before. I was going under for surgery, and the doctor asked are you a coffee drinker? I told him oh yes, I'm a huge coffee drinker.

When I woke up from the surgery, it was pretty weird. I was wide awake and alert very quickly. Never got a caffeine withdraw headache. It was awesome.

Epinephrine increases the strength of painkillers. That's why there's caffeine in Excedrin.

I thought the caffeine was there to restrict/narrow blood vessels which usually helps with migraines. Multi-purpose maybe?

AFAIK, I think it depends on where in the body, vasoconstriction in the head vasodilation for the rest of the body.

What does epinephrine have to do with caffeine?

Caffeine directly kickstarts the adrenal glands

Maybe for vasoconstriction.

Maybe someone put the wrong IV in?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com