Daily coffee habits may affect brain plasticity and learning
neurosciencenews.com
neurosciencenews.com
If I’m being objective (as a “chronic” caffeine consumer) it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if daily consumption of more than 100mg of caffeine had long-term negative effects for many people. Even ignoring possible brain changes proposed in this article, the effects on mood, stress, sleep, etc. are apparent in my personal observations.
Now if only I could figure out how to consume coffee in moderation…
Heh, when you prefaced with this I thought you were going to say that it will be full of people talking about how it was always obvious that it's bad, how they can't fathom why we as a society accept it, how they would never mess with their brain by using such substances... :-)
Key words: "chronic caffeine consumption" and "potentially".
Main takeaway: Avoid chronic caffeine consumption to retain proper brain functions. So basically common sense, that excessive use of a psychostimulant will be bad for you.
There goes HN with the health quackery again. Citation needed other than your opinion on you circle of acquaintances.
Drinking 300mg vs 50mg of caffeine a day are not the same, and lumping everyone under chronic just because you have a strong opinion on the topic is silly.
In this case they define chronic as someone who consumes over 200mg per day but the article and paper itself is very weak as they did not accurately measure subject's caffeine intake, they just went on subject's self reported data("I drank a coffee and a red bull") and built estimations on that which is weak science as there's not a fixed amount of cafeine in a cup of coffee but can vary wildly.
https://www.statista.com/chart/19524/cups-of-coffee-drunk-by...
"The average American coffee drinker drinks just over 3 cups per day."
https://www.ncausa.org/newsroom/nca-releases-atlas-of-americ...
200 mg is about two cups of coffee.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/how-much-caffeine-in-co...
What about those who consume it in small moderation?
Just because other people abuse it doesn't mean those who do not suffer the exact same negative effects in the same manner.
Of course studies will mostly focus on the cronic consumers as those will generally show the biggest symptoms and will be easier to study and draw conclusions versus the non coffee consumers, but that doesn't mean everyone is chronic consumer.
Not as defined in the study we are discussing, which labels "chronic consumers" those who take more than 200mg of caffeine per day.
200mg is not the highest number but the threshold they seem to define for chronic. There are definitely people who drink way more than 200mg as that's only about 2 cups of coffee. I assume heavy cafeine users go above 300mg.
Before learning about caffeine psychosis, my peak caffeine consumption was probably 8 cups/day where each cup was 2 table (not tea) spoons, so, ah, in retrospect terrifying: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=caffine%20in%2016%20tab...
I've known people who are completely unproductive if they're not on Adderall, or on cannabis, I can't think of any reason there aren't people who are entirely useless without caffeine.
75% of people surveyed drink coffee every day?
People don't necessarily do what common sense would say if they have to do something else for other reasons.
Caffeine doesn't stimulate you, it just makes you unaware of how tired you are. You are still tired with many of the downsides of being tired like the negative impact on learning. People who drink coffee routinely have to do it to mask how tiring their lives are.
Caffeine strongly dysregulates nervous system and sleep patterns. Surprising thing for many people is that after stopping caffeine a lot of nervous drama inside your head might simply fade away.
“I don’t really smoke for the nicotine; I enjoy rolling the cigarette, the sensation of holding the cigarette, it gives me something to do with my hands, I like to get fresh air, it’s a social activity, etc.” The human mind is extremely good at rationalizing addiction.
I go on decaf stints occasionally, and not opposed to it. I'm grateful it exists. But you do pay for it in taste.
Maybe you can tell, maybe not?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/decaf-vs-regular-coffee-taste...
Still, comparing breathing air with drinking coffee is one hell of a bad analogy. Ironically you did succeed in showing the ambiguity of common sense by your own lack thereof.
Why can't it be both good and bad for you? Water is also good for you but you can also die from drinking too much. Same with oxygen. Anything that's good for you in moderation, can kill you when consumed in excess.
The article doesn't say that any amount of coffee is bad for you, it says "chronic caffeine consumption is bad for you" which again, should be common sense. Chronic consumption of anything is generally bad for you.
It may very well be that light to moderate consumption could be beneficial at the same time as chronic being bad.
So if you drink 0.5mg of caffeine a day you're now a chronic user just as those who drink 300mg a day?
Sorry but that's bullshit. How can you draw any scientific conclusion without focusing on the most important aspect which is the dose of caffeine.
The word chronic alone doesn't mean jack here, when the daily does is all that matters.
It seems like you’re jumping to conclusions.
Media: Scientist claims scientific findings are meaningless!
Personally I place little to zero value on these "we asked people to estimate something and then found a correlation" studies, there are too many potentially confounding variables to account for. Perhaps the non-caffeine drinkers have different types of occupations, social class, health consciousness etc.
Not according to the authors, who make this clear in the paper:
> we estimated an average daily consumption of 137 mg/day, with a range of 30-270 mg/day by using averages reported in previous trials
Starbucks is bad coffee anyway. Boycotting them is easy.
It's better coffee than those places that want to make coffee the "proper way", but can't. I understand the "corporations-bad" source of the hate for Starbucks, but their coffee is okay precisely because they're driven by corporate goals: Press button, coffee comes out, calibrated the same as every other Starbucks in the world; to be passable.
No, you don't. If you did, you wouldn't talk about it like that.
And their coffee is bad, not [just] in a "this company illegally attacks unions, treats their workers heinously, undercuts small businesses to gain a monopoly, and are currently actively supporting a genocide" kind of way, but in a "these beans are literally burnt" kind of way.
Some people might like burnt beans, in the same way some people like burnt steak, or prefer McDonalds over a real burger. Fine. You're allowed to like bad coffee.
Yeah not so exciting this way round is it.
My addiction will continue, at least for now.
> found that MEP facilitation, an indicator of increased brain plasticity, is more pronounced in non-caffeine users compared to their caffeine-consuming counterparts
When we want more, we drink decaf.