The coffee & alcohol cycle is also an interesting one in the West
High paced work environment & coffee jacking up your nervous system, and then in the evening using alcohol to calm it down (or other calmers like weed or painkillers).
Europe went from a depressant to a stimulant, suddenly lots of science.
Why didn't the caffeinated beverages stimulate the advancement of science in the countries where those plants are native from?
The enlightenment happened for the same reason that the renaissance happened. Exploration and introduction to new lands, knowledge, goods, wealth, etc. The renaissance was the result of western europe's direct connection to east ( china, india, etc ) via the mongol empire in the 1200s. The enlightenment is the result of western europe's direct connection to the americas via columbus in the late 1400s. It's not an accident that most scholars use 1500 as the boundary between the renaissance and the enlightenment.
No.
> My understanding of history is that up until like the 16th century North Africa, the Middle East, and India were global leaders in science and industry.
If anyone were 'global leaders' back then it was probably india and china but both were predominantly tea drinking societies. But there were no real global leaders of 'science and industry' back then because 'science and industry' didn't exist as we define it today and nobody had global influence. North africa hadn't been a leader of anything since the fall of ancient egypt. The middle east had it's moments of glory but far more moments of embarrassment ( european, mongol, turkish, etc conquest ).
Arguing coffee was behind the enlightenment is as silly as arguing tea is why britain conquered the world.
Not true; see Carthage. They dominated trade and seafaring, and were even the first to sail around Africa (as opposed to the Portuguese, 2,000 years later). Ancient Egypt was in its heydey 2,000 years before Carthage.
If your daily diet was previously primarily vegetables with some meat and in season fruits, and then suddenly you're having sugar with every meal, you would probably have more energy to work harder with the extra focus the caffeine provides.
https://michaelpollan.com/books/caffeine-how-coffee-and-tea-....
Citation? It sounds a lot like that's something that you find convenient to believe, perhaps because you gave up coffee and you want to tell yourself you did something good for yourself.
Coffee is essential for my productivity, not for pleasure.
>Coffee is essential for my productivity, not for pleasure.
For sure it is (for the reasons I described above). As for pleasure: I don't know, maybe you are the one who hates its smell, and taste, and just takes it as a medecine. It's not impossible, but it would make you an outlier.
Btw, I do consume caffeine, nicotine, and sometimes alcohol. I'm just conscious nothing of those gives me a superpower. Even though they can give a subjective feeling of superpower sometimes.
Yes, the baseline is unchanged - but it's controlled and on demand.
I've heard that green tea can calm down the effects of caffeine (despite containing a bit of caffeine itself). Something to try if you don't want to give up coffee like me.
L-theanine
This product is excellent for energy on the go. Caffeine and l-theanine in a single pill. I keep a few in my bag. I don't know if there's anything special about this particular product. There are other ones that may be better/cheaper. But I've gone through a few bottles of it in the past years and am pleased: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MQWJYJ3
You can buy it separately but I don't see the point.
I do buy it separately. It's dirt cheap. I stir it into my coffee. Reduces caffeine jitter.
That all said, editorial time: caffeine is not awesome. It is a psychoactive substance (duh) and eventually it goes from "fun boost" to "I need this to feel normal." At least for me. I do have some every day but my goal is always to drink the smallest reasonable amount for me in order to manage my energy. Respect to people who drink 0mg.
Biggest issue I think would be making sure that there aren't any tells like flavor or some quality of the additive.
Brew identical looking bottles of cold brew. Label the bottoms 1 through whatever. Mix them up. Label the lids A through whatever. Probably need to add some creamer to mask any possible sediment. Drink from them throughout the week. Note the lid label and your reaction. At the end of the test period look at the bottoms of the bottles to correlate the controls and placebos with your experiences.
I personally don't feel the need with this particular thing though. It's a fairly pronounced difference.
It's also not really susceptible to the placebo effect IMO. Could I imagine some vague promised positive effect? Absolutely yes. Could I imagine the erasure of jitters? I don't think I could placebo that away.
Anyway as linked in another post this is well-studied.
That said:
- I'm middle aged and have had tens of thousands of cups of coffee
- The difference is pronounced, not subtle
- It's well-studied https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18296328/
FWIW, I've played around with a lot of supplements. Generally the effects are non-existent or subtle. I'm not generally given to a placebo effect wrt this kind of stuff
But caffeine and even coffee specifically seem to have positive health effects. If people are happy with 0mg they should continue that, but if people are happy with low doses of caffeine they should also continue that.
Personally I love coffee, but I limit myself to one cup a day and drink yaupon when I want more caffeine. This results in less sweating, nausea, anxiety. Supposedly yaupon should help with stress relief as well, but I doubt it's a strong enough effect to overcome learning that a new ticket is due in 5 hours.
I've been overwhelmed by Gyokuro before...