Things you don’t want to hear about coffee

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Most of us love the liquid enlightenment. It does not matter if it is Cappuccino, Espresso, a dark or a light roast. Coffee is life. Period. The smell of a fresh cup in the morning gets me going. The cosy feeling of holding your warm cup followed by being 100% sure that you could conquer the world. At least for the next three hours. After you quickly checked in at the toilet..

This was exactly my opinion four weeks ago.

But, well, I noticed that my productivity wasn’t as high over the last two years as it was in the years before. Procrastination and a short attention span were on the daily menu. I first wondered whether this was just related to ageing and actually having responsibilities. But thinking about one or two more things could not have been so detrimental to my ability to focus on a task. There had to be something else. Something that occurred in my third year in Hamburg. And, yes indeed, there was a change! My roommate bought a coffee machine.

Quitting coffee — A case report

Let’s jump four weeks back in time. On a Wednesday afternoon I was on my way home back from the gym. It wasn’t my day overall. Too little sleep, a lousy workout and Denmark decided to switch from medium temperatures to f*cking cold! Well, long story short, I crashed with my bike on an iced street and demolished my wrist..

The injury was actually that bad that I decided to go for an extended training deload. This all happened in my exam period and I felt a bit overwhelmed. On average a good training session was my way to release mental stress. And this was gone. To keep my stress levels at least somewhat lower, I decided to do the unspeakable.

I quitted coffee.

First a little disclaimer! It is not the best idea to go cold turkey in an exam period. I do not have to say that I was not wise enough to acknowledge this, do I?

How does quitting coffee feels?

I was not as nice as you might think ;). At least not for me. After speaking to various friends about this, it was clear that there are huge differences in the withdrawal symptoms. Some people do not even have any problem!

Let’s have a look at what happened to me:

• Dizziness
• Headache
• Loss of motivation
• Constant tiredness

These were the main symptoms and they lasted quite long. With quite long I mean way too long. I would still not say that I am completely free. Just a short reminder, it was four weeks ago. Anyways, overall I feel way better than in the first week. I would even go so far that the first week could be described as a mild depression. I should also mention that my appetite went through the roof for the first five days!

Relapse?

Dear reader, I just want to make sure that the following lines are highly confidential! There were some. Okay, six in total. Five of them were “planned” and one was cause I wanted it deeply. I had two coffees on my exam day. These cups were effective! My overall performance was not bad. The three others were consumed in the last week. I tracked my productivity before and after to see if it would change. I just compared how many things I could check on my to-do list. My average was two/day.

We all hope that it increased up to three or four, right?. It came out slightly different. In these three days, I could not finish a single task and still felt stressed.

I could improve my performance on some days and on other, it hit rock bottom. My conclusion was that the results are positive when I actually have only one single task and minimize all the other daily stressors. Drinking coffee combined with the stress of regular responsibilities just adds up and overwhelms me.

Let’s look at coffee Science

Coffee is one of the most consumed beverages worldwide. That implies something, right? Yes, it does.. You can find billions of studies that addressed the coffee-health relation. Too much for one article. But! There is a magic weapon to look at most of the existing evidence. An umbrella review. These authors made a lovely piece of work by pooling the results of most meta-analyses of observational studies and RCTs.

I assume that they did a good job in comparing the existing evidence. So, what are the results? (I just mention the four outcomes that interested me the most)

To keep it short:

• Cancer
• Phytochemicals alter oxidative stress and oxidative damage positively and might, therefore, inhibit the process of turning a normal cell into a malignant tumour. Coffee components can furthermore act as transcription factors that play a role in DNA repair, phase II enzymatic activity and apoptosis.
• Hormones
• High caffeine intake has been associated with increased sex hormone binding globulin and inversely associated with bioavailable testosterone.
• Mental health
• Coffee might have neuroprotective actions and play a role in the development of Parkinson’s disease.
• Potential detrimental effects
• So far there is not a lot to mention due to the lack of strong evidence. It just seems important that coffee consumption might interfere with the fetal growth during pregnancy.

How to interpret the results:

Coffee research seems to consolidate its holy status.. As always some things need to be considered. A general problem with meta-analyses is often a lack of consistency among the data (same here). Studies rarely investigate the exact same amount of exposure neither do they chose the same categories of intake. The exposure to coffee can vary a lot and still be considered the same.

What is even more interesting is the fact that genetic polymorphisms can play a huge role in terms of caffeine metabolism. The assumed health benefits can therefore not be projected on every individual. You notice that we reached the most important point. These data sound promising but context matters.

The authors overall conclude that an intake of 4–5 cups/day can have benefits on the examined health outcomes.

Taking a step back:

It is time to introduce the ignorant thoughts of the little master student.

Let’s listen to my opinion/recommendation first and see how I can justify what I am saying:

“People might be better off to use coffee sparingly, in the best case not as a fixed part of their daily routines. All possible benefits aside (not to mention the great taste), coffee can add onto existing stress and lead to anxiety, restlessness, sleep problems and overall fatigue.”

I will not dig deep into science up here. Why? Because we heard what the science said. I will just describe how I found my healthy relation to coffee consumption. The purpose of this article is to show a different perspective of coffee as the “beverage of health”.

The caffeine cascade:

Attention, opinion only. After not being used to coffee anymore, I would say that I do have a less blurred vision of what cup can actually do.

Poor sleep quality:

Having an espresso in the morning (my preferred way of drinking) could end up somewhere between 100–200 mg of caffeine. It depends on too many factors to be accurate (beans, roast, temperature, etc.) Let’s assume that I drink it at 10 am and would go to bed at 10 pm and the half-life of caffeine is 5.7h (see here). In the worst case, I would try to sleep with still having around 45 mg of caffeine in my bloodstream. That sounds like I could interfere with my night sleep, right? Well, I can even feel an increased heart rate at 10 pm on “coffee-days”.

And yes, interference seems real. Using a, probably inaccurate, sleep tracker app showed a consistent result. My sleep quality goes down by having one cup at 10 am. This outcome is reproducible most of the times. That makes you think, right?

Loss of self-control:

Back to the shorter attention span that I mentioned above. Not only am I way more likely to switch between Facebook and Instagram rather than working, I also lose the focus on my breath while training. That might not sound like a big deal at first but it actually is. Not breathing through my nose has a huge impact on my performance under the bar. Placebo or not, it is like it is. To sum it up, I do not get things done and my actual training quality suffers. That seems like a paradox, I get exactly the opposite of what I would expect.

Having a bad training session and not getting things done leads to further distress and adds on the physiologically increased cortisol levels after consuming caffeinated beverages. This accumulation sometimes makes me feel completely restless. Like I would not have the ability to think clearly for one second.

Fake enlightenments #dopamindecision:

I would consider this as an actual problem. The “coffee idea” often feels like you solved all problems of humanity at once. Maybe, you can relate to it. Have you ever joined a meeting, had a huge cup of coffee and discussed new ideas? Most times, the meetings are really successful. Everybody feels like the new method is the shit! At least for two hours. In the evening you might think this through a second time and realize that there are quite a lot of flaws or difficulties. How could you have not seen them directly?

Well, I think that this might be related to the short dopamine rush. It acts on the reward system in your brain and even has motivational properties. You start to see everything through your “Arabica-glasses”. Possible obstacles disappear, flaws are only minor and well, there is nothing you could not solve, right? But this problem is at least easy to solve. My recommendation: If it is time to make an important decision, get yourself a glass of water instead.

Skin condition:

I thought that it might be worth mentioning that my skin improved quiet drastically after switching to the boring side of life.

Coffee or no Coffee:

I feel like I already wrote enough on this topic but there is one important aspect missing. What does all of this mean for a real-life application?
Coffee is generally bad and shouldn’t be consumed. Nope, that is not the case! It’s on us to realise that we cannot expect every human to react the same way to the same exposure. We also need to notice that coffee consumption in the wrong context can have pretty negative effects on our overall well-being. It is not always a smart idea to add more and more stress to your life.

It seems fair to mention that I have not always consumed just one cup of coffee. In the time I was stressed the most I normally consumed an espresso in the morning, a double espresso pre-workout and a black tea intra workout. That is actually quite a lot of caffeine. I felt way better with just one normal espresso and the best when I just have it occasionally.

Will I drink coffee in future? Yes, for sure. I really like it! Dopamine makes happy and can make situations way nicer than others. We just need to use it wisely and, more importantly, be aware of what we are doing!

I strongly advise against coffee consumption on the go or even in a rush. Coffee and caffeine can mask how we actually feel and let us misinterpret our physical condition. So, no cold brew for the night shift and no espresso to mask fatigue! In these cases, you would only fight the symptoms and not the actual reason. Tired means sleep and hungry means food, not coffee!

Be aware of your state of mind and body before you grab a cup. There are two easy rules of thumb that helped me a lot to find my own way.

• Coffee is there to make good things great, not bad things okay.
• Never let it become part of your a daily routine

For rule two it needs to be mentioned that it is often easy to get used to main effects while not getting used to adverse effects.

Let’s end up with something optimistic. The end of a period is often thought to be the desired change. Life starts afterwards.. That is not the case! Life is like a song. It is less worth it when you forget to dance and sing while the music is playing.

Sometimes it’s necessary to grab a triple shot of espresso and make the best out of it!