SOUP TECH BLOG

In my last post I discussed how and why I gave up caffeine for two months.  Now I am going to explain why I’m giving up giving up caffeine.  That’s right, I’m going back to it.

As I approached two months caffeine free  state I decided to research caffeine to see how bad it really was and how much more healthy I had probably become.  I was slightly surprised to see the number of articles that tell of the benefits of caffeine.  Here is a quick breakdown:

Daily coffee drinkers have significantly lower risk of:

• Diabetes,
• Parkinson’s,
• Colon cancer,
• Gallstones
• Alzheimers.

– Are you kidding me?!!  Well some sizeable studies have concluded this – take a look here.  It should be noted that it may not be due to caffeine, as some of these benefits were not found in tea drinkers, coffee contains lots of compounds, antioxidants that may be the cause, or may react with caffeine to produce these benefits.  Also decaf drinkers do get these benefits, but only half as well.

The studies indicate that it is the caffeine that protects against Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. So not only does caffeine stimulate the brain and central nervous system, but it appears to protect it as well.

On the bad side although caffeine doesn’t cause heart disease, it can temporarily increase your heart rate and your blood pressure. So, people who already have heart problems and who are sensitive to caffeine may want to avoid it.  Fair enough, but not me, yet.

So I’m going back to coffee and here’s my reasoning:

1)      I don’t see the point in giving something up that you enjoy if it is not really bad for you.

2)      Coffee and caffeine are naturally occurring, I tend to put quite a bit of faith in what nature provides.  She’s had a long while to kill us off if we consume the wrong stuff, so by definition that which is left is either good for us or neutral.

3)      I know I can give it up if I need to.

4)      I think coffee and caffeine was probably more habit forming than addictive for me.  I am not sure what the exact difference is, but I am a fan of habits.

5)      Dehydration may be a myth, but I am a big believe in drinking lots of water and so even if it does dehydrate in some circumstances I think I compensate with my water intake.

I am going to try and steer away from the sodas.  My gut tells me those drinks are just not healthy, even aside from the sugar.  They dissolve nails and that can’t be a good thing.

Update: Dec 2011:

I’m back on 1-2 cups of coffee per day and am probably back to a mildly addictive state with them, although have gone a few days without and been ok.  They say 90% of Americans consume caffeine every day in one form or another and half of them consuming more than 300mgs a day.  If you read the last blog post you may recall that 300mg was the level generally deemed to be safe.

I would like to thank my body for taking part in this study and please note this experiment took place in a controlled environment and you should not try this is you have exams, papers, projects or assignments due in the next few days.

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Sometimes I make decisions based on a sudden and strong thought that barges its way past other thoughts and firmly establishes itself as my decision. It makes me wonder whether the ripples of important decisions echo forward in time as memories but backwards in time as these powerful, often direction changing thoughts.  Anyhow that’s another topic, but it was one of these thoughts that hit me on August 4^th while I was drinking an 8oz Bodum Columbian coffee.  “I should give up caffeine”.  And so I did.

I was actually musing what would happen if caffeine was discovered today, the FDA classifying it as an illegal substance and the ‘Medical Caffeine’ movement fighting for Caffeine Dispensaries.  These PowerThoughts (for want of a better term) often come when I am thinking about the subject, so they are not totally random, but when it came, I recognized it all right.  I tweeted:

“Ok, I dare myself. Give up caffeine for two months. Starting in three sips time.”

Three sips later and that was it.

So that was August 4^th in the morning.  The afternoon was ok, as I make my coffee quite strong and the one cup saw me through the day.  I was not a hard core coffee or caffeine drinker but here is where I was at:

• 1 8oz cup in the morning, either filter or Bodum presse.
• 1 8oz-12oz cup after lunch, either filter or Bodum presse, which ever I didn’t have in the morning. 16oz if at a coffee shop.
• Then a caffeine soda as a little end of day pep. I started with Coke Zero (caffeine  = 34mg/12oz), then tried Mountain Dew (caffeine  = 54mg/12oz, which I didn’t like but I thought it was the highest of the  normal sodas for caffeine.  But then I found Pepsi Max, which I prefer, has more caffeine at 69mg/12oz.  Now nothing compared to the energy drinks, which are several hundred mg in a can.  Check out a summary of caffeine content here.

I should probably reinforce the point that the coffee was strong, most guests find my coffee to be too strong, even those who say, “ooh yes, I like it strong” generally struggled through it.  So I’d say the caffeine content could be around 200mg per cup when it was my home brew.  The usual amount in an 8oz coffee is 145mg, although Expresso is 77mg in a 1.5oz cup, so with my 80z press it could have been more.  Whatever, the point is it was a decent amount of caffeine.  Articles on the web seem to agree that 300mg/day is a safe amount.

So to add up let’s say each coffee was 200mg, that would be 469mg a day. Plus the odd bit of caffeine containing chocolate… but I think the point is I wasn’t one of those 2-3 bottles of Pepsi per dayers or 10-12 cups of coffee a day folk.

I didn’t start drinking coffee until 2006 and did so to keep up with some long hours I was working.  For years I considered myself a tactic coffee drinker, I’d use it to great effect to pep me up when needed.  By this year I found that without a coffee in the afternoon I’d be struggling to stay awake, the stimulant effect was decreasing in terms of its strength but also its duration – hence the addition of the soda around 4pm.

I was also more easily irritable, and looking back was more stressed out – although it can be hard to know for sure as circumstances change, but I think on balance I think those are fair charges.

So the signs of addiction were there and I refuse to be beholden to anything such as a drug, so I was determined to do battle.

I did some brief research and ended up ordering Gotu Kola and Rhodiola Rosea.  Gotu Kola was used in India for longevity and vitality while Rhodiola Rosea comes from Artic regions and promotes increased energy, physical endurance and well-being.  Basically they can fill some of the gaps that caffeine would leave and were recommended in various articles and reviews for people cutting out caffeine.  Actually I had already ordered Rhodiola as I was going to take it before I had decided to do the caffeine thing, so the good news was I had it.

• Day One was therefore ok, which doesn’t really count as it was bolstered by my morning cup, it was really afternoon  1.
• Day Two came and brought with it a very noticeable headache.  I was both irritated with the thought that my body was obviously a slave to caffeine but pleased in a perverse way to be experiencing the withdrawal at work.  I took two headache pills and my morning was not hampered.  I took the Rosea with breakfast and again at lunch.  I didn’t fall asleep in the afternoon and was amazed that in the evening I was no more tired than normal.  Now I have three kids, and the bath, books & bed routine always exhausts us and today was no exception.  The point is I was not more exhausted.  Slept ok – three month baby sleeps in our room so the sleeping was always disrupted and this night was no exception.
• Day Three – headache desperate for me to wake up and greet me.  Two pills at the ready, dulls it.  Similar experience to the previous day, not craving coffee, more amazed and buoyed up by the fact that I am not.
• Day Four – headache must have had a headache itself this morning as it was not as effective.  Still hit it with two pills.  I do miss the social side of coffee.  When I work from home it was a nice break to sit down with the wife and have a coffee while she has tea.  However during this cold trimethylxanthine phase (the chemical name for caffeine) I don’t want to take any risks.
• Day Five – Headache failed to get itself up this morning, so I was up and about feeling good.  Might be a little early but the kids do not trigger the irritation in me as quickly or as much.  Not saying I’m now a mellow guy, but the threshold has certainly come down a few levels.
• Next few weeks: In the beginning I took each day as it came.  I enjoyed the smug sense of achievement that I now ‘don’t do caffeine’ and telling co workers I haven’t had a coffee for x days.  I realized my study was not scientific or controlled but I do know for a fact I do not experience the drastic ups and downs in energy levels, I do not need a coffee after lunch to prevent crashing and I really am certain my irritation threshold has been lowered quite a bit.

I must make a couple of confessions:

1)      I had a business meeting at coffee shop and ordered a decaf coffee for the first time in my life.  I then researched it and found out that decaf still contains some caffeine, but I sure didn’t notice a caffeine high from it!

2)      I did eat a few chunks (well maybe closer to half a bar) of dark chocolate one night,  then found myself awake for hours.  I knew there was caffeine in chocolate but I didn’t feel I was violating the desire of my cold caffeine process.  I was surprise it kept me awake and thus my caffeine tolerance level must have dropped pretty quickly.  I had this chocolate about three weeks into the de-caffing.

3)      I am not giving up chocolate so I have continued to have small amount of caffeine from that source, but aside from that time above, I haven’t noticed any effects.

It is now Sept 24^th, which means 10 more days to make my two month target.  Not sure why I set 2 mths but I tweeted it so I better keep it up.  Yesterday I bought a bag of DeCaff coffee so I can enjoy the social side of coffee drinking at home.

So all seems to be going well.  What will I do when I hit the 2 month mark?  Well, I’m going back to coffee.  I’ll tell you my reasons in the next post.