I’m reading the 65-page chapter titled “Caffeine” in Michael Pollan’s book This Is Your Mind on Plants (Penguin Press, 2021). His books are always entertaining as well as informative. I’m just going to hit on the interesting points as I read along.
Here are the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal: “headache, fatigue, lethargy, difficulty concentrating, decreased motivation, irritability, intense distress, loss of confidence, and dysphoria” (p. 93). An opposite set of descriptions apply to the caffeinated brain and body: energy, concentration, motivation, focus, and so forth. The predictable result: “Something like 90 percent of humans ingest caffeine regularly …” (p. 92).
Plants produce caffeine, of course. They do so because it was an effective adaptation: caffeine wards off predatory insects while, in some cases, attracting pollinators (the bees like the buzz and come back for more). Given the attraction caffeine has for humans, caffeine addiction has been a boon for caffeine-producing plants, which are now widely cultivated. From the point of view of the plant species, caffeine has manipulated humans into spreading the plants widely. That’s evolutionary success.
Before the 17th century, when coffee was introduced to Europe, when the ale house and the tavern ruled town and village, alcohol was the drug of choice (which killed bacteria and was therefore a healthier beverage than water). After coffee arrived, which was boiled in preparation (also killing pathogens), the state of mind of much of the population changed. From alcohol-induced quiescence and brain fog, to caffeine-fueled energy and concentration. [Note: Coffee displacing alcohol means coffee promotes sobriety.] Suddenly everyone became more productive. Voltaire drank 70 cups a day (p. 112) and other scientists and intellectuals followed a similar regime, if not to such a degree. Supported by first-person reports of caffeine-fueled writing or research, the author suggests the discoveries of the Age of Science (17th century) and the Enlightenment (18th century) owe a debt to caffeine.
Seriously? Well, such speculation is to some degree supported by more recent studies as well. Pollan reports:
I found numerous studies conducted over the years reporting that caffeine improved performance on a range of cognitive measures — of memory, focus, alertness, vigilance, attention, and learning. An experiment done in the 1930s found that chess players on caffeine performed significantly better than players who abstained. In another study, caffeine users completed a variety of mental tasks more quickly, though they made more errors: as one paper put it, people on caffeine are faster, not smarter. (p. 117-18).
What about negative effects? Surely there must be some? Well, it affects sleep by binding to and therefore blocking neuroreceptors for adenosine, “a psychoactive compound that has a depressive and hypnotic (that is, sleep-inducing) effect on the brain when it binds to its receptor” (p. 131). Let’s not minimize the cost of less and poorer sleep. An English researcher concluded: “The shorter you sleep, the shorter your lifespan” (p. 134).
But for the most part, caffeine has been absolved of serious negative effects:
The current scientific consensus is more than reassuring — in fact, the research suggests that coffee and tea, far from being deleterious to our health, may offer some important benefits, as long as they aren’t consumed to excess. Regular coffee consumption is associated with a decreased risk of several cancers (including breast, prostate, colorectal, and endomerial), cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, dementia, and possibly depression and suicide. (p. 133)
So much for avoiding coffee and caffeine as part of a “law of health.” Caveat: the risk of committing suicide increases among those who drink more than 7 cups of coffee per day. That would be, what, maybe 30 Diet Cokes? Coffee, even decaf, also provides antioxidants.
Here’s where we turn to readers to get some additional first-person reports. Some of you drink a couple of cups of coffee a day. Some of you drink a few Diet Cokes a day. I drink a Coke Zero mid-morning and try to stop there, generally successfully. And some of you don’t do any caffeine.
So what is your relationship with and experience of caffeine?
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“On the Go” packets to flavor water have caffeine (60 mg per packet – a can of soda has around 37 I think) as well. I abstained from caffeine most my life (the occasional Sunkist soda excluded). My husband got diagnosed with ADHD (and we heard the stories about self-medication with caffeine) which normalized a more medical use for it. I first started with my “On the Go” caffeine habit because I needed to be able to stay up late at night to drive home from my Pathways class (I kid you not) and I found on days that I took my caffeine, my anxiety was handled in real-time better then the SSRI I was on for anxiety. Now, I am sitting in the 120-240 mg per day zone (they recommend between 100 and 400 mg of caffeine a day if you are going go that route).
As a twenty- and early-thirty-something I went back and forth between Sodas (mt. dew and dr. pepper) and energy drinks, sometimes drinking up to a half-gallon a day. When I left the church, I replaced that with coffee, at first with several cups throughout the day, and now down to one mug in the morning and no-caffeine after mid-day (thanks Sgt. Angel!). Sometimes, that mug is a large, sugary, creamy Starbucks that gives me the jitters, I think more from the sugar than the caffeine, because an equivalent amount of black coffee doesn’t do it. The rest of the time, I make coffee at home in a french press, which I’ve found doesn’t really take much more time than using a coffee-maker, doesn’t need to be de-scaled (we have very hard water), and tastes great!
I’ve also found recently that a very, very small dose of Melatonin takes care of most of my sleep problems, whether caffeine-related or otherwise. We have 1.5mg gummies and I cut off maybe an eighth of one and take it an our or two before bed. Taking any more than that makes my sleep worse, though.