Posted by scubakid 6 hours ago
Behaviourally, coffee drinkers exhibited greater impulsivity and emotional reactivity, whereas non-coffee drinkers demonstrated better memory performance.
Who said anything about big coffee? These guys might be a secret, anti-coffee organisation. /s
This has let me evaluate what caffeine does with fresh eyes, so to say, because I can now consume it occasionally while having many non-caffeinated days to compare to. It's a profoundly psychoactive substance and does a lot of things to cognition. I guess I have decided I don't enjoy how it feels, having previously been dependent on it.
Going caffeine-free made it much easier to lose weight as I have far less cravings for high carbs and sugar now, presumably this is related to the impulsivity impact talked about in the paper.
Going caffeine-free also made me very depressed for a while with severe anhedonia, this lasted way longer (like 3-4 months) than one would generally expect for caffeine withdrawal symptoms.
I had seemingly become so used to the increased dopamine signaling while buzzed on caffeine that my brain was a mess for a rather extended period of time as it got used to not having it.
Overall I view quitting as a positive for me, but I'd warn anyone thinking about doing it to do it carefully and closely monitor their mental health. AFAIK the impacts of quitting can be quite different for different people, so my experience may differ than that of others, but I had no idea how much of a (temporary) mental health crash quitting caffeine could cause until I experienced it.
Also positive in the long-term for me. Fewer digestive issues, less spiky dopamine sensitive or impulsiveness and performance during the day, better memory. I wish it weren't so.
But damn was the 3-6 months of anhedonia awful. I still feel pangs of it.
(But I never had any mental-health incidents, and I drink a lot of it, more than all people that I personally know.)
Edit: this is especially relevant here, as the study found similar effects in decaffeinated coffee drinkers. So the effects they observed, if real, are not related to caffeine.
I recently traveled and didn't have coffee for more than a week. No change I could feel, no craving, nothing. But one of my ex-gf was quite sensitive on many things, had frequent headaches, low blood pressure and coffee was helping with those visibly. So YMMV.
3-5 is moderate? To me, 3 is already high.
Also, sample size is pretty low and they're all Irish.
Perhaps they even use US coffee cup size, which is 118ml?
Honestly, using an unit of measurement that varies from 118ml to 250ml in a scientific paper brings the whole paper into question.
For a traditional Italian espresso, about 7g of coffee beans are extracted. For a third-wave double espresso, it's usually 18g or more.
In my opinion, 10x7g is a lot. 2x12g is more than enough for me.
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/nasa-spiders-drugs-experime...
But they did test both caffeinated and uncaffeinated coffee, and found the same effects in both, indicating that the effect is caused by something in coffee other than the caffeine
I wonder if you could find similar effects with 4g or broccoli sprouts, or garlic, or ginger, or cumin seed, shiitake mushroom, seaweed, soursop leaf, or...
https://cleanlabelproject.org/wp-content/uploads/CLP-Decaf-C...
I would probably drop coffee it was proven to have negative effects on memory.
you don't remember why, do you?