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Discussion (24 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Based on the number of people I see around me whenever I go to a coffee shop, I think there’s many people like me. It’s nice to see yet another study that shows there’s no real health impact to it.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36870101/
When I was in high school, I used to drink tons of Mt. Dew. I always thought having anxiety was just part of who I am. After quitting it for weeks and months at at a time, my anxiety mostly went away.
I gave up caffeine about 25 years ago after I figured out it was the source of my chronic headaches (they were withdrawal headaches). Any time I've traveled with a coffee drinker it seems most of the day, especially the morning, are centrally focused on finding and acquiring coffee. They can't focus on anything else, entertain conversation about other things, or do much of anything until they get their caffeine fix. It's actually quite disruptive and adds a lot of friction to mornings.
Is this "safe"? Maybe. It is healthy? It sure doesn't sound healthy. It sounds like any other addiction. It just so happens that we've accepted this one as a culture. At one time we accepted cigarettes as a culture as well, while it's a bit more taboo these days. Even alcohol use seems to be fading as studies have finally started to admit that it's actually not good for us in any amount.
Caffeine is likely not as damaging as cigarettes and alcohol, but I had a headache for a week straight when I quit it. That's rarely a sign of something good.
* People who drink coffee... enjoy drinking coffee, and seek it out, which bothers you.
* Some people (you in particular) have adverse reactions to stopping.
These two consequences _are_ shared by many addictive substances, but also by many other things, like water, or Grape Nuts, or human contact. I really don't see how it makes the thing automatically unhealthy. Like it or not, there's basically no evidence that coffee is unhealthy, and plenty of evidence that it may in fact be healthy.
> plenty of evidence that it may in fact be healthy.
This was part of my point. I think a lot of the studies are have a bias as people are always looking to justify their heavy coffee drinking. Those studies often make for good headlines that get shared a lot by coffee drinkers.
When studies repeatedly come out about the health benefits of what is often seen as a vice, it's worth being a little skeptical. There are plenty of studies with questionable funding that are effectively marketing dressed up as science. We've seen this play out many times in the past.
> there's basically no evidence that coffee is unhealthy
This article we're discussing had a whole section on how caffeine affects the body, and it wasn't all positive. I'm not here to turn coffee into the new tobacco, I don't think it's that bad. However, I think it has a bigger impact on people's lives than they would like to admit, even if it is just that morning anxiety they have until their first cup. It's hard to see these things until you stop.
Even within the article itself there are contradictions.
It says this...
> The latest research indicates that consuming up to 400 mg of caffeine/day (equivalent to up to 5, 8-ounce cups of caffeinated coffee per day) is generally safe for most adults and appears to be linked to a lower risk of several cardiovascular conditions, including heart failure, heart disease and stroke in some individuals.
Then it says this...
> However, drinking more than 4 cups of caffeinated coffee a day may increase the risk of heart failure.
So more than 4 cups of coffee per day may increase the risk of heart failure, and this article is recommending drinking 5 cups.
It also talks about high blood pressure...
> In people with optimal blood pressure, drinking 1–3 cups a day was associated with an increased risk of developing high blood pressure, while drinking more than 3 cups per day was associated with a lower risk.
So we need to drink more than 3 cups to make sure we don't have high blood pressure, but if we drink more than 4 cups we're at a higher risk for heart disease.
What are we supposed to take away from this? It sounds like the data is all over the place.
I still stand by the assertion that coffee is probably, overall, healthy to drink, and at worst neutral. Which is very unique for a substance provably, physically addictive. But I also can't really argue with a decision not to drink it.
I gave up caffeine completely, and after a week and a half of headaches, the problem was gone. This has been about 4 years now.
I consume some caffeine now but try to keep it under 60mg a day or so.
Energy drinks don't have much caffeine in them, way lower than almost any drink at Starbucks and so-on, it's exhausting to see this myth continuing especially when it's websites specialized in Health, I'm not saying energy drinks are healthy, but it's time to stop saying they are "high caffeine, high whatever" because it's not the case, except the ones that are made to be hardcore but those are rare. For the majority of them, they are just a soda, with caffeine.
I'm just pulling the most prominent ones at my nearest gas station:
* Celsius: 200mg
* Alani Nu: 200mg
* Rockstar: 160mg
* Monster: 160mg
* Reign: 300mg
* Bang: 300mg
* Red Bull: 80mg
* Ghost: 200mg
* C4: 200mg
* NOS: 160mg
A standard soda can is about 35mg caffeine.
I do not think it's a myth to claim that on average, energy drinks have a high amount of caffeine.
The comparison isn't versus Soda which are considered not caffeinated by most people but against regular coffees, commercial coffees specifically (as home-made energy drinks are relatively healthy, similar to home made coffees).
Now pull the average Starbucks coffee list, it's likely higher in average.
Pulling even their largest coffee drinks (sampling a few) they all appear to be under 200mg of caffeine (mostly in the 90-150mg range)