The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/11/the-case-for-drinking-as-much-coffee-as-you-like/265693/

by alexpopescu • 14 years ago

88 92 14 years ago

theatlantic.com

alexpopescu• 14 years ago

Plus two older HN threads:

1. Ask HN: How much coffee do you drink?: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4606007

2. Ask HN: Coffee Drinkers, How Do You Brew? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4408221

AceJohnny2• 14 years ago

Like many, I started drinking coffee partway through college and continued enjoying it when I started working. However I started noticing it triggered some pretty bad anxiety and muscular tension and made me extremely moody. I stopped for a while.

I finally found some excellent decaf (Ethiopian Sidamo at Zombie Runner [1] in Palo Alto), so I can continue indulging the habit.

[1] http://www.zombierunner.com/store/categories/cafe_zombie/cof...

shardling• 14 years ago

This was exactly my experience.

It seemed to take a few months for my body to transition off caffeine. I recommend switching to tea for the first couple of weeks, since that'll at least prevent the terrible headaches.

I definitely feel healthier for quitting the habit, though I still miss "real" coffee sometimes. :(

alexkus2• 14 years ago

It was 'just' a solid week of bad sleep, horrendous headaches and night sweats for me when stopping.

Frightening to think of those withdrawl symptoms for such a seemingly innocuous drug.

sopooneo• 14 years ago

I second on the "moody". I've never seen it written about, but, even apart from alertness, caffeine makes me extremely emotional. Bouncing happy to sad in ways I otherwise wouldn't. And at high levels, I blaze with inspiration... with ideas that all turn out to be garbage on later review.

cma• 14 years ago

Try combining it with L-Theanine supplements.. Completely removes the tension effects for me.

laowan• 14 years ago

Coffee just makes me need to shit a lot more.

psweber• 14 years ago

This is rarely (if ever) mentioned in all these articles claiming that coffee is so beneficial. I drink a fair amount of coffee and try to cut back frequently because of this issue. It isn't just that coffee makes me crap more, it degrades the...qualify of the crap. Am I alone here? Seems like it can't be good for me.

jsolson• 14 years ago

I agree with you that the frequency of my shitting goes up while the quality goes down, although I was amused when I came across this line:

> That same high dosage is also effective in fighting against colorectal cancer

I do have to wonder if it's not a primary effect of anything in the coffee, but rather a byproduct of the secondary effects.

2mur• 14 years ago

Frankly, as someone who probably doesn't eat as much fiber as I should and who sits far too long all day, this is just another added benefit. Gotta keep moving.

raamdev• 14 years ago

I've actually found that one cup of a specific type of coffee, namely instant coffee, drank immediately after breakfast, nearly always guarantees a bowel movement.

I've actually found it to be extremely useful part of my daily routine and when I need to break the routine for whatever reason (I live nomadically so my routines are always changing), my whole day is usually a lot more uncomfortable (i.e., my digestive system and bowls feel slower).

I still haven't identified how all this works, but it's an interesting anecdote.

wamatt• 14 years ago

>I still haven't identified how all this works, but it's an interesting anecdote

Coffee acts as a laxative. Interestingly, this effect is observed in decaf as well.

Source: Boekema PJ, Samsom M, et al. Coffee and gastrointestinal function: facts and fiction. A review. Scand J Gastroenterol Suppl. 1999;230:35-9. PMID 10499460

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10499460

OriginalSyn• 14 years ago

I drink at about 8 8 oz cups of coffee a day during the week plus a couple cans of soda. I also poop once a day, withing 45 minutes of 4:30pm. I am scared of what the implications would be if I stopped consuming so much caffeine

wyclif2• 14 years ago

Sheldon Cooper, is that you?

cheald• 14 years ago

This makes me happy, because boy howdy do I go through a lot of it.

It's worth noting, though, that what you put into coffee may not be so good for you. I sat down and did the math and realized that I was taking in almost 1500 calories/day in milk and sugar that I put in my coffee. I've since switched to drinking it black or with just a bit of skim milk (to cool it - the first cup out of a french press is scalding!), and have lost a significant amount of weight just from that change alone.

jmmcd• 14 years ago

Yeah that's an important point, also mentioned in the article. It also mentions coffee that is designed to smell like "seasonal celebrations", ie pumpkin spiced latte and similar. We have to distinguish between coffee and dessert-in-disguise.

reddit_clone• 14 years ago

>dessert-in-disguise.

Double espresso with a dash of Baileys.. mmm..

pyre• 14 years ago

Well, all of those flavored lattes are done with sugary syrup. You can still flavor your coffee without sugar. Things like raw cocoa powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, etc. (maybe vanilla extract too, but I'm not sure how much sugar that might have on its own)

rpm43214• 14 years ago

Anecdotally, this seems like pretty reckless advice, and I'm a caffeine junkie.

Don't get me wrong, it's clearly not crystal meth, but Caffeine overdoses are real and can be dangerous, especially in a situation where you are drinking a boatload of coffee. I'm sure I'm not the only person on this board that has had some minor heart palpitations during an all-nighter after one too many coffees or Coke Zeros.

nickkthequick• 14 years ago

Caffeine overdoses are quite difficult to actually achieve[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Caffeine_intoxication

rpm43214• 14 years ago

Yep, I've read all about clinical definitions of caffeine intoxication, and its relative rarity isolated from any other factors.

I guess I was a little sloppy in labeling what I'm talking about a "caffeine overdose", although I think what I described happening to me (heart palpatations, dizziness) probably happens much more often than physicians are aware of, and could be classified as a minor caffeine overdose. Most people logically conclude they've had too much coffee and too little sleep, and just drink some water and go to bed like I did. They don't go to the hospital over it.

What I'm really saying is that people who consume massive amounts of coffee are usually trying to compensate for exhaustion or sleep deprivation. In fact, there's sort of a feedback loop, where massive amounts of caffeine make restful sleep much more difficult, which then leads to more caffeine consumption and possibly to a downward spiral in health. Studies have shown that a perfectly healthy person lacking in sleep is in sort of a pre-diabetic state already, so when you pile on massive amounts of stimulants at the same time, it's clearly bad for the heart. It won't lead to you being declared DOA of a caffeine overdose, but it could exacerbate heart disease, or help its onset, or even cause a heart attack.

Don't get me wrong, as I mentioned I'm a huge caffeine addict. I drink Coke Zero by the gallon. However, the picture the author is painting that massive ingestion of caffeine is consequence free is simply not accurate, and in fact dangerous.

Firehed• 14 years ago

There's overdosing (to the point where you risk it being lethal) and then there's general ill effects. Even as someone very light (OD dosage is based on your weight, unsurprisingly[1]), it would require me to take multiple caffeine pills before I'd have to potentially go to the hospital: I simply couldn't do it through coffee alone - it's just too much liquid to consume in too short a time. Even with crazy-strong coffee (250+mg/cup) I'd need to drink 30+ [2] cups.

But you can bet your bottom dollar that drinking a dozen cups of coffee by lunchtime will have some pretty interesting results. You'll feel your heart racing and probably experience something like extreme ADD. Probably headaches, nausea, crazy jitters. The severity depends on your tolerance to caffeine, of course. I get nasty headaches 6-8 hours after waking if I don't get my morning coffee, so it takes me quite a lot to get into overdose land.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Caffeine_intoxication [2] ~150mg/kg for LD50; I weigh about 50kg

rpm43214• 14 years ago

Yep, clarified a bit below in my response to nickkthequick that I was talking more about my personal experiences with what I would call minor caffeine overdoses, not the clinical definition of caffeine intoxication. My main point is that the notion that massive amounts of caffeine injestion is consequence free, especially as it's usually paired with sleep deprivation, is laughable.

neurotech1• 14 years ago

The effect of electrolyte imbalance or dehydration would occur way before caffeine "toxicity". I speak from experience.

j-kidd2• 14 years ago

The article is about coffee, not caffeine.

rpm43214• 14 years ago

Nope, the author uses coffee and caffeine pretty interchangeably, and probably refers to caffeine more than coffee. It's clearly about both, although there is a brief mention of some of the purported additional health benefits of coffee that caffeine might not be responsible for.

geoka9• 14 years ago

Or for Pete's sake...

What I tell patients is, if you like coffee, go ahead and drink as much as you want and can," says Dr. Peter Martin, director of the Institute for Coffee Studies at Vanderbilt University. He's even developed a metric for monitoring your dosage: If you are having trouble sleeping, cut back on your last cup of the day. From there, he says, "If you drink that much, it's not going to do you any harm, and it might actually help you. A lot.

What else can you expect from an "institute" with a name like this?

And, surely enough, a little more digging brings this:

Nashville's Vanderbilt University is to establish an Institute for Coffee Studies this fall, funded by $6 million from the Brazilian Coffee Association and other coffee-growing organizations.

http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v5/n3/full/nm0399_252b.html

gyardley• 14 years ago

That was a rather selective quote, given that the same article says this just a paragraph down:

Institute director, Peter Martin, stresses that his research group wants to maintain "arms length" from the coffee industry for ethical reasons. "We are setting up a foundation to oversee the funds which will be administered by independent scientific directors to ensure that there isn't even an appearance of conflict of interest," he insists.

In addition, the original article described a wide variety of studies done by many different institutions. I suppose it's possible that they're all just "studies" conducted by people in the pay of the nefarious coffee lobby, but we probably shouldn't start resorting to conspiracy theories without a little evidence.

patmcguire• 14 years ago

For the institute you have a situation where there's an institution regarded as objective and credible and someone who has a vested interest in the outcome donating money. This happens all the time. There's some form of regulatory capture in any industry, even if the regulation is something like "a general consensus among certain people that everyone in the industry respects that something is or isn't ok."

Like in government, sometimes there is quid pro quo and sometimes there isn't, but I've never heard anyone come out and say, "Whoops, you caught us! We're totally taking money to sway our opinion!"

The breadth of studies makes this look pretty legit. I just don't put much faith in obligatory denials.

DanBC• 14 years ago

The described articles may be impeccable, but selected because they agree with whatever viewpoint an institute wants to present. It's possible they've ignored anything not agreeing with them. And it's probable that groups do research that isn't published when it doesn't agree with whoever's funding it.

Ben Goldacre's book (pro science, about flaws in current system of research and science reporting) "Bad Science" is w useful read.

aptwebapps6• 14 years ago

" ... to ensure that there isn't even an appearance of conflict of interest ..."

Too late for that.

fkdjs• 14 years ago

Except the articles selected where in the pro-coffee camp, the articles against coffee were not selected. This is called selection bias. I'd take what this guy has to say with a grain of salt.

31reasons• 14 years ago

I am wondering how much of the world's (biased) research is being done by the special interest groups. As someone said (not sure who) "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

aptwebapps6• 14 years ago

John Updike, I think.

beagle35• 14 years ago

Upton Sinclair

jrajav2• 14 years ago

Ad hominem much?

Anyway, the article doesn't rest on that quote by a long shot, it goes on in enormously satisfying detail. It's a humanizing lead-in, at best. I think this is a great summary of recent research on the effects of coffee and caffeine, and it links to supporting studies on nearly every substantial point.

readme• 14 years ago

Huh? That's not an ad-hominem. That's simply pointing out a conflict of interest.

derleth• 14 years ago

> Ad hominem

'Ad hominem' is a fallacy of relevance, meaning it involves dragging irrelevant information into the discussion to sway emotions. How is the source of the study's funding irrelevant?

tatsuke95• 14 years ago

>Or for Pete's sake...

Why do we assume that the Coffee Association is promoting bad science for their interests, rather than finding scientists who are working on things that relate to their business, and supporting those works?

Who else is going to fund coffee studies besides people with an interest (and money) to fund it? This is how the free market works; as long as the science is sound, who cares who is behind it? I'd rather the coffee industry pay for the studies from excess profits than it coming from the public coffers. It's not perfect, but it isn't full on corruption, either.

enraged_camel• 14 years ago

>>Why do we assume that the Coffee Association is promoting bad science for their interests, rather than finding scientists who are working on things that relate to their business, and supporting those works?

This is the exact equivalent of the coal industry finding the minority of scientists who think climate change is not man-made and funding their studies. The problem with this is obvious, and it is not good science.

>>This is how the free market works; as long as the science is sound, who cares who is behind it?

Often times, those who are funding the science have an impact on whether that science is sound. It's called a conflict of interest because the source of the funding can corrupt the motivation of the scientist to practice good science.

czr80• 14 years ago

Congratulations, you've just discovered one reason why the free market isn't the best system to organise basic science research.

krishnakv• 14 years ago

In this case, the article is clearly a piece that's advocating coffee drinking. When research crosses over from "setting up and experiment and proving/ disproving a hypothesis" to "advocating something as good or not good in general", its important to look at the source of funding and apply a heavy discount on the validity of the research if its advocating "for the money".

This is not research "related" to coffee, so your hypothesis is not valid in this instance.

ScottWhigham• 14 years ago

Maybe you aren't familiar with Vandy but I assure you - they are a highly respected university in the US. There is zero chance - none - that Vanderbilt University is creating a shadow puppet institute.

My brother and sis, who both went there, love to point out that it is called "The Harvard of the South"

aptwebapps6• 14 years ago

It's not a binary proposition. You can have puppet institute and you can have a completely independent one. Usually you'll get something in between. I don't think that Vanderbilt's quality has a lot to do with it.

This next bit may be a bit cynical:

Even if they weren't funded by the coffee industry, however, they would have existential issues. If their whole purpose is to study coffee then I think that there will be a tendency to either promote coffee or to try to strike a balance. The latter is almost as bad as the former.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they would have no problem publishing nothing about negative results if that was what they got, but I would bet against it. If they get a string of negative results (and don't lose their funding), they are going to start looking for studies that have a more potential upside to balance things out.

pseut• 14 years ago

It is amazing that you're seemingly willing to stake your reputation that there's no possibility of a conflict of interest at an institution you're only distantly associated with. But, how serious are you? What odds will you give me that at least one conflict of interest scandal shows up at Vandy over the next, say, 30 years?

sk5t3• 14 years ago

Do you have any idea--any notion at all--how respected is the football program at Penn State? Why, the mere suggestion of any impropriety is such a laughable proposition that my vest-buttons threaten violent detachment.

roedog• 14 years ago

Did you mean to to type 'oh for Peet's sake?'

alexkus2• 14 years ago

I can't put in to words how much better I feel, and sleep, since switching to decaffeinated[1] coffee.

1. You still get some caffeine; decaf is about 5% of the caffeine of normal coffee.

wyclif2• 14 years ago

...or switch to high-quality green tea, which has trace amounts of caffeine— enough to maintain sufficient alertness in the morning, I've found.

beagle35• 14 years ago

According to Dave Asprey (self-described biohacker), you should drink good coffee but never drink decaf: http://www.bulletproofexec.com/coffee-5-reasons-you-can-perf...

If you are adventurous, you should try his "bulletproof coffee" (high quality coffee with butter, but there's more to it - you can find details on his website). Butter is also good for you. Really.

JosephHatfield• 14 years ago

Yes, butter (I think he recommends two thirds of a stick!) and something called MCT oil.

underdown• 14 years ago

Dave Asprey is certainly a quack but there is some evidence butter may be pretty good for you. Look up butyrate - which milk fat helps produce in your body (if you have healthy gut flora).

mistercow4• 14 years ago

I'm not saying this to be mean, but I think it's important to point out that Dave Asprey is a quack, and his "Upgraded Coffee" is snake oil. Asprey is happy to cherry-pick studies to support his products, but the fact is that there is simply no good reason to believe that mycotoxin levels in ordinary coffee are high enough to have any measurable effect on humans who drink it. (And if you look carefully at his citations, you'll notice that he does not bridge that crucial gap between "mycotoxins are bad for you" and "my coffee has lower mycotoxin content").

This guy's combination of scientific literacy and alarmingly poor reasoning really makes me nauseous, because I can't simply write it off as mere incompetence. For instance, look at this infographic: http://www.bulletproofexec.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Bu... . Specifically, look at the part comparing 1910 and 2000. That's not just a case of spurious correlation. It's like something I would make up as a wacky example of spurious correlation.

beagle35• 14 years ago

Well, you may call him what you want, and yes, he is not right about everything.

> you'll notice that he does not bridge that crucial gap between "mycotoxins are bad for you" and "my coffee has lower mycotoxin content"

I'm not sure which gap you think needs to be bridged here?

> Specifically, look at the part comparing 1910 and 2000. That's not just a case of spurious correlation. It's like something I would make up as a wacky example of spurious correlation.

I'm not sure what you're reading into this. When I look at it, I don't think "butter protects against heart problems" (which seems to be your interpretation, and I agree cannot be concluded from this data, not even remotely), but rather "butter can't be the evil it is made to be, as this statistic shows". Which is perfectly reasonable.

The thing about the QS movement, and people like Asprey, Roberts and Ferris, is that they offer very cheap experiments with easily measurable outcome, so you don't have to wait for a 30-year double blinded test that is blessed by anyone.

I've tried several things they recommend, and the vast majority of the practice checks out (regardless of the theory behind it).

I haven't tried his coffee, but I did start putting butter in my Lavazza coffee, and as a result lost weight and am feeling much better. You don't have to be a "believer" to try and see if things work for you. I don't think he's right about everything, but a lot of the counterintuitive things him (and Ferris, and Roberts) suggest actually work.

ryguytilidie2• 14 years ago

Yeah I can't imagine being permanently high on a drug being bad for you...this study funded by the Institute for Coffee Studies is probably right, everyone should take more of this drug!

chimpinee2• 14 years ago

I agree that being permanently high (and thus being out of touch with the body and with emotions) is unhealthy -- however, perhaps some drugs are less unhealthy than others.

[from the article]

>That there were no major differences in risk reduction between regular and decaf coffee suggests there's something in it, aside from its caffeine content, that could be contributing to these observed benefits

It could merely be that people who drink coffee eat less food, and that food is a less healthy drug

ryguytilidie2• 14 years ago

So your argument is that these people are actually having a more healthy diet by eating less food and drinking more drugs? Did you think out this point before making it?

justatdotin• 14 years ago

"and thus ..." : I actually sometimes find that being high puts me more in touch with body and emotions .. shrug

steve-howard• 14 years ago

I've never heard of anyone referring to consuming caffeine as getting "high." That sounds melodramatic.

leoh• 14 years ago

Misguided. For some people, Coffee is probably okay. But I have noticed that after drinking it for a few days, I suffer from general exhaustion, and I don't think I am alone. There is also some research that in some individuals, coffee can affect adrenal function. I think the key is to be mindful about usage of any substance; with respect to our person and how we feel, we can sometimes be the best scientist.

frankus• 14 years ago

The biggest issue for me is that I respond very negatively to caffeine withdrawal (I get extremely cranky and it often triggers a migraine). What keeps me from drinking more is that I don't want a missed dose to ruin my whole day.

Second biggest issue is that I tend to get hypoglycemic an hour or so later if I don't have a carby snack at the same time.

A cup a day (with a cup of tea in the morning) is the best balance of enjoyment versus drawbacks that I've found. If I want more I brew up a cup of decaf.

Also I find an Aeropress is easy enough to be convenient but not so easy as to trigger overconsumption (Cf. K-Cup). It doesn't hurt that it makes a great cup of coffee.

aptwebapps6• 14 years ago

Yeah, I get a headache when miss my dose. I have a variable schedule which causes that to happen about every other week so I've stopped drinking tea or coffee on any kind of regular basis. Now I only drink some when I need it and usually not more than once a week.

When you don't drink it all the time even a small cup goes a really long way, at least for me.

saryant• 14 years ago

I'm the same. I once tried going cold turkey from four cups a day and my headaches were so bad I was useless for three days before I gave up and started drinking coffee again.

Today I'm still at about four cups a day. Similar to you, I use a Chemex instead of an automatic machine to slow my consumption.

sk5t3• 14 years ago

I went cold turkey a couple months ago because I didn't like the afternoon headache and general feeling of uselessness that I'd suffer on days when it wasn't practical to get coffee. Nor was it pleasant to live with the very fact of a chemical dependency... I'm not quite as sharp in the morning on just chamomile, but afternoons and sleep are much improved.

bitteralmond• 14 years ago

Rule of thumb: Never trust a study funded by someone who would benefit directly from a certain result. It doesn't matter how sound the science seems.

eavc• 14 years ago

This is just stupid. Caffeine should either be consumed in moderation or not at all.

carbocation• 14 years ago

Epidemiologically, coffee consumption (even up to >6 cups/day) does not appear to be associated with risk for heart attack.[1] This is a large cohort study (128,000 people). Obvious limitations include the fact that the coffee intake assessment was via a questionnaire administered every few years, and that it's a cohort study and not an RCT.

I understand that there may in fact be organs in the human body that are not the heart, but when I hear people talking about caffeine risk, they generally seem to be referring to heart disease, so that's the kind of article I pubmed'ed.

1) http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/113/17/2045.long

rdtsc• 14 years ago

> says Dr. Peter Martin, director of the Institute for Coffee Studies at Vanderbilt University.

The director who is paid to study coffee says that coffee is good for you. I am shocked, shocked, I tell you!

tomkin• 14 years ago

I'm gonna call BS on this. Hiatal hernia's are frequently associated with over consumption of coffee, which has other effects on the heart, esophageal and stomach lining. Anecdotally, an alarming amount of heavy coffee drinkers also seem to be taking maintenance prescription antacids, Nexium, etc. None of which are intended for long term use as they deplete Vitamin B12, among other issues.

jacques_chester• 14 years ago

My hobby is weightlifing. About 3 weeks out from a competition I systematically wean myself off caffeine by substituting more and more decaf into my regular coffee until I'm purely on decaf.

Why? Two reasons.

The first is tolerance. Caffeine tolerance reduces the sense of freshness, alertness, energy etc that coffee gives for any given dose. But tolerance isn't a linear function for all the effects of caffeeine.

The practical upshot is that, on competition day, I wind up needing more caffeine than usual to give me the extra pep to really perform well. But if I'm already tolerant to caffeine, my "pep" dose will be high enough to cause sweaty hands and to degrade my motor control -- in my case my grip becomes weaker and my pulls are not as crisp. Olympic-style weightlifting is a precision sport; I can't afford that.

Whereas, if I've weaned myself off caffeine over the preceding weeks, there's been adenosine re-regulation and I've become more sensitised to it again. So I can get all the pep and energy to push through a competition (it can be very draining with all the warm up lifts) without the sweaty hands or weaker grip or less accurate pulling technique.

The second reason to wean myself is that going cold turkey is absolute hell.

One rule I observe these days is that I don't consume caffeine after 1pm. I can't get to sleep otherwise. In practice this means two cups a day: one when I wake up, one before or during lunch. Even after the noticeable effects of caffeine have faded, it has enough of a half life to make it difficult to fall asleep in a timely fashion. Then you get stuck in the caffeine-sleeplessness-caffeine feedback loop. Worth avoiding.

The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like

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