Well, it's brown and it's hot. People
drink it in the morning for energy. Will coffee make you fat? Maybe not but I’m pretty
sure it helped make me fat and kinda anxious. So is coffee bad for you?
How much should you drink? In May 2017, a 16 year old Californian had a large
Mountain Dew, a Cafe Latte and chugged an energy drink within 40 minutes. He then collapsed and
died from a “caffeine induced cardiac event.” The total amount of caffeine he had was around
only 400mg, the equivalent of 4 cups of coffee. On the other hand, a 2008 study on 817 Finnish
adults found that the more coffee people drank, the longer they lived with those drinking as much
as 7 cups of coffee a day living the longest. The 16 year olds case is an incredibly rare one, but clearly caffeine can have very different
effects on different people. But why? It’s hard to predict how each person will react
to their own personalized cup of coffee because everyone metabolizes caffeine differently,
and there are tons of other compounds in coffee that change depending on everything
from how the coffee is grown and processed to how the beans are roasted to how you even
prepare each cup of coffee. For example it’s been found that french press coffee raises
cholesterol whereas filtered coffee does not. Personally, I’m always more jittery
with cheaper coffees and I usually feel better with organic coffees
- the difference is probably that non-organic coffees are doused with all kinds
of pesticides. Also I’m prone to feeling hot, nauseous and jittery with black coffee but feel
fine with coffees with milk in it or lattes. About two months ago, I posted this poll
on youtube that got 15000 votes from y’all. It’s interesting to see that 21%
of you said you felt way better after stopping drinking coffee and 12% of you
said you felt at least a little bit better.
At the end of May, I proudly posted to my Patreon
page this weaning strategy I used to get off coffee - I ended up being coffee-free for a little
over a month and I was a lot better for it. The changes were subtle and came on slowly. I usually
clench my jaw when I’m feeling tense which is why my masseter muscle is so large. Sometimes I clench
it so hard at night that I wake up with headaches and a lot of tension in the sides of my face.
Then, I noticed that when I'm not drinking coffee, I clench my jaw less and wake up with less tension
in the side of my face. I’m also less anxious throughout the day and have more stable focus
without coffee. Most surprising to me, quitting coffee drastically reduced my appetite. When I was
drinking 3 cups of coffee a day it was like the only way to get full was to physically stretch my
stomach with a huge mass of food. Once I cut out coffee it was like …my satiation hormones actually
worked again and I could eat like a regular human. But caffeine is a slippery slope. I ended
up having a couple coffee dates with friends and by July I was once again drinking
3 double shot lattes each morning. It took about 10 days to notice that
I was getting a little bit hungrier, I was in general a little bit more anxious and
my focus throughout the day was less stable. The official stance is that we should
keep our caffeine intake under 400mg, 4 cups of coffee worth a day. But, Research
has found that depending on who you are, it can take anywhere from 2.3 hours to 9.9
hours to metabolize half of your caffeine dose. Other research has found that if
you’re a slow metabolizer of caffeine, high caffeine consumption can
increase your heart disease risk, but if you’re a quick metabolizer of caffeine
then it can even lower your heart disease risk. In fact, you may even enjoy the flavor of coffee
more or less depending on how quickly you can metabolize caffeine. This study found that
people who metabolize caffeine more slowly actually perceive it as more bitter. Now you might think Nice, well if I’m
a fast metabolizer of caffeine I’ll get the benefits from coffee rather than
detriments. ”A damn fine cup of coffee." However, my DNA report shows that I
actually metabolize caffeine faster than average yet I seem to still have these
issues with coffee. "Hot coffee! You idiot!" So first, Let’s take a look caffeine and hunger.
Caffeine activates the stress axis and raises the stress hormone cortisol and cortisol
has been found to increase appetite. And while another study didn't find that
caffeine directly increases appetite, it did find that caffeine makes it harder
for cortisol levels to fall. In fact, Stephen Cherniske, author of Caffeine blues
writes that “people who consume more than 300 milligrams of caffeine per day may have elevated
serum cortisol for eighteen [hours a day.]” Also, caffeine may make it to where we perceive
and physiologically react to stressful things as if they’re even more stressful. "The fact
is, you and I are sitting here today because this will be your last week of employment at this
company." A 1974 study found that, in a group of people told that they were going to be fired from
their job, stress-related noradrenaline output was greater in those who regularly drank caffeine.
Essentially their physiological response to stress was even greater thanks to the caffeine.
These caffeine drinkers, were probably feeling specifically more anxious about losing their
job considering noradrenaline provokes anxiety. Is this enough to say that coffee was making
me fat and hungry? Well I suppose not, but higher stress levels has been linked to
higher abdominal fat and there’s evidence that people with more body fat secrete
more of the stress hormone cortisol, and again cortisol raises appetite,
making for a vicious cycle. And It has been found that increased
anxiety increases people’s appetite and the food actually relieves the anxiety. So, let's take a look at coffee and caffeine's
relationship to anxiety, because maybe, my increased appetite is simply downstream of
the increased anxiety I get from drinking coffee. Research has been done showing coffee
consumption has people with bruxism clench their jaw more. As I explained earlier, this is the case for me too and I happen to clench
my jaw when I’m anxious or tense, and it seems that I’m generally more anxious throughout
the day when I’m regularly drinking coffee. There’s multiple papers talking about
the anxiety inducing effects of caffeine and There have been cases in the
past of normal healthy people suffering from panic attacks from just
500mg of caffeine - about 5 cups of coffee. A paper looking at people with a panic disorder
found that 71% of the patients said drinking caffeine felt similar to the experience of having
a panic attack but to a lesser degree of course. Several papers describe a phenomenon called
“caffeinism” which is essentially chronic anxiety from drinking too much caffeine. As
early as 1978, it was written that there is no reliable way to tell the difference between
someone who actually has an anxiety disorder and someone who is simply sensitive to
caffeine and is drinking too much of it. In fact, in a study looking at 6
different cases of people with an anxiety disorder to the degree that they
were taking medication for their anxiety, all 6 of them had massive improvements
in their anxiety after quitting caffeine and 5 of the 6 no longer needed any anxiety
medication after stopping the caffeine. Actually, one of the people, after going
caffeine free and getting rid of his anxiety, accidentally had caffeinated coffee one day and then experienced anxiety
symptoms for the next two weeks. Many papers find that more caffeine
leads to more anxiety in normal people, and of course people with anxiety disorders
are much more sensitive to caffeine. So what if caffeine is inducing at least
some small subtle amount of anxiety in everyone and you just notice it more or less
depending on how sensitive you are to caffeine? How easy is it to tell if you’re just having a bad
day or if you’ve had a little bit too much coffee? Here’s the thing about caffeine - clearly
it’s changing something in the brain. If the caffeine just made you feel feel
good and focused and for a little while and then completely disappeared from
your system after a couple hours, then we wouldn’t have withdrawal effects if we
missed our morning cup of coffee, but we do. Caffeine works by blocking the action
of the chemical adenosine in our brains. When adenosine normally acts on an adenosine
receptor, we feel sleepy, and part of the reason caffeine has its effects is because
caffeine blocks this sleepy adenosine receptor. I think most people have heard about the cool
neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin, but people don’t talk about adenosine very
often. Adenosine receptors are in almost all organs and tissues and they’re found throughout
the brain and spinal cord. Adenosine has a lot of complicated functions. Research has found
adenosine to have anti-inflammatory properties ... adenosine regulates sleep, it lessens
the excitability of brain cells meaning it calms you down. And it also has effects
on blood vessels. In fact research has found that when you give people caffeine,
bloodflow in the brain is reduced. Research has also found it to have anti
anxiety and anti depressant effects. You don’t have to remember all that but my
point for now is that the adenosine system is very intricate and nuanced. We can’t
just say “Adenosine is the sleepy chemical. I don’t want to be sleepy. So I’ll drink plenty of caffeine and all my problems will
be solved with no side effects.” When you constantly block adenosine
receptors in the brain, the brain creates more receptors to become
more sensitive to adenosine to make balance in response to the receptors
receiving abnormally low stimulation. To get more specific, there are several types
of adenosine receptors, but the main ones are A1 and A2a, and caffeine works by blocking both of
these. Constantly blocking the receptors causes more adenosine receptors to be created.
So what happens when you have more adenosine receptors making your brain
more sensitive to adenosine? Well, consider this. Anxiety and depression
often appear together. Research has found that if you expose rodents to chronic stress,
it creates more adenosine A2a receptors. And, this increase in A2a receptors is accompanied
by an increase in depression like behavior. Another way you can increase A2a adenosine
receptors is by drinking caffeine. The brain changes you see in the brain
when you constantly drink caffeine, are similar to the brain changes you
see when constantly exposed to stress. So sure, caffeine may have actually an
anti-depressive effect temporarily because it blocks these A2a receptors. As you know,
caffeine improves your mood, but this research suggests that the brain is changed in a way
that when the caffeine starts to wear off, your overall mood is worse compared to
when you didn’t have a caffeine habit. Another thing is that activating A1
receptors has antidepressant effects. In fact, sleep deprivation oddly enough seems to
have an antidepressant like effect on people. The longer you stay awake, the more adenosine
builds up and this adenosine acts on A1 receptors and gives an anti depressant effect.
But remember, caffeine blocks these A1 receptors. This made sense to me. When I was drinking coffee, I did notice that my mood was little more
variable. I would feel especially positive and confident after I had my coffee,
but as the caffeine started to wear off, I noticed I was a little more unsure of myself and
was a little bit more pessimistic about things. Other than the adenosine receptors,
caffeine also causes physical changes to several other brain receptors very important to
mood like adrenaline receptors, GABA receptors and serotonin receptors. Adrenaline is
part of the fight or flight response, serotonin is an important
neurotransmitter for positive mood and GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter
meaning it helps you relax.
A lot of research has been done on the
importance of GABA in anxiety disorders. In fact, as this 2012 review explains,
a deficit of GABA signaling in the brain is a commonality between anxiety
disorders and major depression. And, Caffeine disrupts the normal metabolism of
GABA. Research has found that putting caffeine in mice’s drinking water decreases the amount
of GABA (and glycine) in the mice’s brains.. So does this prove that the anxiety you
experience in your life is mostly due to caffeine? No. Though at least for me specifically, I
don’t need to read all these research papers to understanding that caffeine enhances at least
a little bit, my base line level of anxiousness. At the start of the video, I explained individual
differences between people is to say that if you enjoy caffeine and you don’t consider yourself
an anxious person and are totally content with how you feel, then you probably don’t have to go
out of your way to change your morning routine. Some of you might be wondering why
tea makes you feel better than coffee. It might be because of a compound
called L-theanine, which is found in tea and not coffee. This study found that taking
250mg of L-theanine with 150mg of caffeine led to people having better reaction
times, they had less headaches, felt less fatigued and felt more alert than
just taking caffeine alone. In fact L-theanine is a popular supplement specifically for that
reason - it’s taken to reduce coffee jitters. One last thing, maybe you want to try
quitting coffee, but you want to live forever like those 7 cup a day Finnish people.
But is coffee really making them live longer? Or is it simply that people with super
robust bodies and livers who can happily process coffee without any ill effects are just
naturally more robust and therefore live longer? After all, the reason people with liver
disease don’t drink so much caffeine is probably because their weakened livers
have a really hard time processing it. So it's probably not the case that drinking
a bunch of coffee makes people live longer, but that the people that can drink
a bunch of coffee live longer. So if you’re looking for some advice, try a couple
different quality coffees until you find the one that makes you feel the best. and then if you're
not totally satisfied with how you feel, you could pair it with L-theanine. If you’re not having any
luck with that, then you could at least try seeing how you feel without coffee for a couple weeks.
Since blocking adenosine receptors has tons of downstream effects, you might notice some changes
that don’t seem like they would be caused by coffee. But make sure you pay attention. Honestly
it took me 2 cycles of quitting coffee for a month, having less appetite, starting coffee again
and then having more appetite to finally confirm for myself that yes I was gaining weight from my
coffee habit. The changes you feel will probably be very slow, and you also have to pay attention
to distinguish them from the withdrawal effects.
He lurks this sub for sure
This was great
Pretty good video. Caffeine had a different effect on my eating though. I would say that on caffeine I had higher appetite but lower satiation, and off caffeine the opposite. So now that I have been off caffeine for a while, I find I get hungrier but feel full longer. And I have actually gained a little weight.