I 100% agree. *Note to anyone quitting caffeine for anxiety reasons, it takes about a month to notice the benefit.

Another pet theory I have is that a confounding variable in these studies is often the amount of work someone has to do, and the type of work.

Someone drinking 4+ cups of coffee likely has a reason to be that productive. Which may result in more intellectual stimulation, a higher income, and other differences that makes the two groups very different.

I'd like to see studies where the same individual both drank 4+ cups of coffee everyday for 6 months, and then quit caffeine entirely for 6 months and measure the changes in health, and output collectively but on an individual basis.

drinking coffee for years made my anxiety levels increase significantly. i started to notice this whenever i get into scenarios where i'm most uncomfortable. it used to be more mild that when i'm nervous, my heart is just pounding but no sweating and i can still hide the fact. now, with my coffee addiction, i get more noticeably anxious, where i have involuntary muscle twitching on my face/hands, more sweating, and it makes it more obvious that i'm nervous.

to combat this, i started researching and led me to matcha tea. i just drink a lot of matcha tea now and i found it helps with my anxiety and i'm generally more calm. it still has caffeine at lower doses so it still gives that caffeine feeling so what i'm feeling might be a placebo but definitely helps.

i did not quit coffee 100% though, i still drink it from time to time but not as often. it used to be > 4 cups of coffee per day (sometimes espresso shots) and now to 1-2 cups every 5-7 days.

i have to say my coffee journey was fun though, for the last 10 years i started from starbucks, to roasting my own beans, to aeropress and drip, to a full fledge espresso machine.

Do you ever drink decaf? It sounds like coffee was a real hobby of yours. Although your health is more important, it is unfortunate to see a hobby dissipate like that.

Can someone provide more information on the 1-month recovery from caffeine induced anxiety? In my experience and from what I've read online, caffeine withdrawal typically lasts 1 or 2 weeks.

I recently quit drinking coffee hoping I could stop grinding my teeth in the night. It hasn't helped yet, but I quit only about 3 weeks ago.

An aside, grinding your teeth in the night is very problematic because it's not something you can directly resolve unless you get a mouth guard. Trying to pinpoint stressors in my life has been an arduous process.

Sometimes teeth (molar) grinding is a sign of apnea. I don't know if that is this case but something to maybe look into.

I hope you're using a mouth guard every night. Tooth material cannot be replaced.

I went to the dentist recently and they recommended I reduce stress in my life. So it's probably not that bad.

The increase in quality of sleep after abstaining for 2+ days is amazing.

Sleep is easily the cornerstone of a quality day to day life. I love coffee, the taste, the ritual, etc. But I need to stop.

Try decaf for a bit... taper your way down via half caff etc..

I haven't delved into any specific papers about caffeine but I would assume they would control for at least some of those factors you mentioned.

> I'd like to see studies where the same individual both drank 4+ cups of coffee everyday for 6 months, and then quit caffeine entirely for 6 months

Ow!

It's an interesting theory, and researchers probably need to account for that. But although it probably could explain some of the effect, there's one that I don't think it can explain.

One of the diseases that coffee helps with is gout. Gout is more or less a special form of arthritis. In most cases the root cause is genetic deficiency in how well your kidneys remove uric acid from your blood. This leads to a buildup of it, and having no place else to go, more and more of it accumulates in your joints. Then your immune system does its best to deal with a foreign substance, and sometimes this leads to runaway inflammation that causes excruciating pain.

Anyway, I can't see a connection between the kidneys' ability to filter out one specific chemical and coffee drinking behavior. Particularly since gout is usually asymptomatic for years while deposits build up in your body, and then you have episodes (attacks) where inflammation gets out of control for a while before subsiding.

The only connection that I can think of is how caffeine is a diuretic. If you're using the restroom more often, and drinking more fluids, it might result in more opportunities to filter out more uric acid or something along those lines.

I'm not a doctor though, so grain of salt

That would make sense, but paradoxically, diuretics make gout worse. It may be because the fluids aren't always replaced, and if you have less fluids in you, then the concentration of uric acid goes up. (And the accumulation of uric acid in the joints happens because blood levels reach saturation and then some of it precipitates.)

The crazy thing about coffee and gout is, since it's a diuretic, it should make gout worse, but instead it seems to make it better.

Incidentally, I'm not a doctor either. Just an interested layman. So take everything I said with a grain of salt too. Anyway, gout is super complicated since it involves metabolism AND the renal system AND the immune system AND the joints, so really nobody understands it completely.

I have a similar but more general theory: coffee is a mild stressor. People in poor health can't afford the extra stress and avoid coffee.

It's also quite a bitter taste and coffee-drinkers may have more flexible palates and diverse (generally more healthy) diets as a confounding factor.

Rather than calling their palates more 'diverse' I would just observe that many foods we know to be healthy exhibit bitter, astringent, tart, sour, earthy, etc flavors.

Also this additional stress could elicit some kind of supercompensation by the body via hormesis.

Enough people are addicted to coffee so much so that even if they are anxious while drinking it they continue to do so.

I happen to be on that camp. Despite having anxiety I haven't been able to outright quite coffee. I also have mild hypothyroid so coffee helps to overcome fatigue. However, I have reduced to about 1-2 cups/day from about 4 cups/day.

There are some benefits of coffee that don't really fit with this hypothesis, though. Like how it decreases risk of kidney stone formation, despite containing chemicals that can increase urinary calcium excretion.

Not really surprising there. It's a diuretic, that is it make you pee, and it's a fluid. Drinking lots of water and peeing a lot is known to help prevent kidney stones.

I had/have terrible anxiety and consumed massive quantities of caffeine anyhow in the past. These days, not so much. More CBD and decaf.

I think it's a legitimized/legalized stimulant in place of other stimulants to increase productivity at the expense of numerous subtle risks.

Caffeine is a stimulant as well so it can help with adult ADD.

I have another pet theory for coffee: habitual coffee drinkers are uncomfortable with the idea of it being a vice, and so they conduct study after study to highlight the benefits, thus rationalizing their consumption.

If you're down to coffee as your worst vice, you're doing very well.

seriously. Let us all be so lucky.

Having gone dry for eight months (so far), I've had the discussion of quitting coffee, to which I said definitively: "NO!"

That one I'm keeping.

Why would habitual coffee drinkers be uncomfortable with coffee being a vice? A lot of coffee drinkers freely and openly admit that that first cup is needed to kick start the day and do so shamelessly.

There might be some tiny fraction of coffee drinkers who spaz out about stuff like that, but they'd generally be the ones spazzing out about everything.

Your theory would fail spectacularly if you replace coffee by alcohol.

You can't imagine the number of studies to highlight the benefits of alcohol. Especially in big wine producing countries.

Please point me to some well-designed study on the benefits of alcohol.

I find it much easier to skip my evening glass of wine than to skip my morning cup of coffee.

Yes, and it also depends on your relationship with work. For some it's more important to clearly cut from it at the end of the day than to get into it in the morning :)

Then I see a lot of people doing both.

Not to mention, those are always drowsy dinner-time drinkers managing to do research into the beneficial properties of alcohol.

An irritated coffee drinker who has been told coffee can be harmful is going to have a whole lot more energy to produce a “counter study”.

This entire thread starting from the GP is full of anecdotal unsubstantiated and glib responses, so I think that since we are not doing the typical HN due diligence of informative substantiated discussions, my theory is that coffee gives me the ability to produce more bullshit that I usually put out and perpetuate falsehood, untruthful information on the internet to stir up the pot, to make intellectual discourse an unbearable activity and my participation leaves the world worse off than it was before. Sips more coffee.

Actually, alcohol is the second most common substance studied for its "beneficial" properties (used to be first, but it's harder to rationalize nowadays).

Would it?

https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/841108/Health-ne...

A "vice"? Why apply moral categories to something as innocuous as coffee?

Because we consider caffeine addiction (and substance dependency in general) to be a negative thing.

Even if you assume addiction (without proof, to be sure), how is it necessary to cast it in moral terms? If it is a negative thing, there have to be rational reasons for it being negative. Being judgmental about it only makes those doing the judging feel better about themselves.

Next step: breatharian?