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Comment by swader999 | Hacker News Reader

High amounts shrink the brain, increase dementia risk. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1028415X.2021.19...

And very few people drink 1-2 cups. The travel mugs and typical coffee place cups are close to this danger range.

"High amounts" is a bit of an understatement, the study is talking about more than 6 cups of coffee daily, which is going to be in the 550-600mg range. Up to about 400mg a day is safe for adults[0]. 600mg is a lot of caffeine. For context, a Bang energy drink which is on the upper end of what you can get in a single drink, is 300mg. Most "energy drinks" are around 200mg less. I'm not sure anyone is surprised by the statement "habitually drinking 3+ energy drinks a day, every day, for an extended period of time, might be bad for you."

[0] https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...

Panera Bread was selling lemonade with 390 mg of caffeine in it.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/12/12/panera-ch...

They're 20 ounces so nearly twice the size of an average drink. Even energy drinks which are typically bigger are usually 16 ounces (though sometimes 20). Looking at the website the highest-caffeine version has just under 160mg in 20oz.

Regardless, not sure what this has to do with the overall point, which is that you could consume multiple "high-caffeine" drinks and still be well under the amounts discussed in this study.

I think you are using energy drinks in your example for effect, only because people overrate their caffeine content relative to coffee. Coffee drinkers who have a full tumbler/togo cup in the morning and a sbux or continual refills from the office pot at work can far exceed the caffeine intake of 3 energy drinks. Meanwhile, Red Bulls actually have deceptively little caffeine and are barely worse than just a regular Coca Cola.

It’s very easy to get into the habit of extremely high caffeine intake, speaking from experience. Not only is caffeine in many drinks and extremely well distributed, its psychological effects are pretty mild. But I think the worst part is that people don’t really think about how much caffeine is in the coffee they’re drinking because it’s hard to measure.

> After full covariate adjustment, consumption of >6 cups/day was associated with 53% higher odds of dementia compared to consumption of 1–2 cups/day

So what they're saying is too much of a (good? fine? reasonable?) thing can be a bad thing? Not sure this supports a case against caffeine.

You should look up what happens if someone consumes too much salt!

I think my edit addresses your point.

One travel mug is well within the safe range your own link describes...

If people are drinking 3 travel mugs a day... then sure...? Not sure what that changes.

A lot do and I think the brain shrinkage happens even with smaller doses.

Or water even

> You should look up what happens if someone consumes too much salt!

People are eating too much salt in general - which already has negative impact on health.

Sometimes it feels like if you just abstained from everything, you’d be immortal.

For sure, if you never eat or drink anything you probably won't die of cancer.

I am suspicious of studies that tout “% change in odds” in cases where the odds are pretty low (low enough to be modelled as Poisson) to start with.

"The association between coffee consumption and dementia was non-linear (Pnon-linearity = 0.0001), with evidence for higher odds for non-coffee and decaffeinated coffee drinkers and those drinking >6 cups/day, compared to light coffee drinkers"

So, reading the study, not drinking coffee is bad and drinking more than 6 cups a day is bad too.

6 cups a day is 48 oz of coffee. A travel mug and venti is 20oz. I don't know anyone who drinks more than 2 of those in a day.

Stop the hyperbole.

A travel mug is more an amorphous volume than simply 20oz.

A Stanley Mug, like the recent Stanley x Starbucks collaboration is 40oz. I believe this may be what they are referring to.

However, it's rare that individuals with the 40oz mugs are filling them with coffee, and if they're with espresso drinks, it's more likely that the volume of milk is increased rather than consuming 8 shots of espresso.

I'd assume most people with travel mugs that consume coffee are using 10 - 16oz mugs like myself?

Some Starbucks orders can compress 4 cups of coffee into one. The MG of caffeine in one of the larger orders can be enormous.

Of course non of the paper associations talks about causality, but lack of caffeine is probably a worse overall health association per this paper. More people don’t drink coffee at all than have more than 6 cups a day. From the paper:

“The association between coffee consumption and dementia was non-linear (Pnon-linearity = 0.0001), with evidence for higher odds for non-coffee and decaffeinated coffee drinkers and those drinking >6 cups/day, compared to light coffee drinkers.”

Thank you. It seems rather likely to me that people that are more prone to dementia are more likely to be self-medicating with these very high caffeine intakes. Unfortunately I have only anecdata for this intuition, but if you drink these quantities and/or know anyone with experience with dementia, I think you know what I mean.

On the other hand, we have Erdős: "A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems."

Coffee and amphetamines I guess.

“very few people drink 1-2 cups” - I really doubt this, most people I know drink 1-2 cups.

This paper is so ass, it brushes off reduced sleep and then implies it’s caffeine’s fault instead of the user drinking caffeine when they aren’t supposed to.

Shit like this is why nobody trusts science anymore

so you’re saying that for big brain types the high doses might reduce the risk of brain squeeze, in cases of lack of sufficient space in the brain box.

this is great news.

And if it makes more space for the brain, that should also reduce the risk of concussion. Sounds great to me.

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