DailyDirt: This Is Your Brain On Caffeine. Any Questions?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Fri, Aug 30th 2013 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Making the perfect cup of coffee is an experiment that's been studied for decades -- if not for hundreds of years since coffee was first brewed in the 1300s. It's not an exact science yet, but studies on coffee drinking seem to point to it being mostly beneficial. Here are just a few interesting links for coffee lovers out there.

According to one study, you're probably drinking too much coffee if you consume more than 28 cups per week. But if you're over 55, it apparently doesn't matter much to your health if you're drinking more than that amount of coffee. So if you're younger than 55 and drinking more than 4 cups every day, you just need to live a little longer and you can drink as much as you want. In fact, some other studies say coffee can lower the risk of premature death. [url]
If you think that decaffeinated coffee is free of caffeine, think again. Decaf just has lower amounts of caffeine -- 3 to 15 milligrams per cup versus 85 milligrams (or more) for regular coffee. Those milligrams can add up if you're drinking a lot of decaf coffee. [url]
Conventional wisdom says that pregnant women shouldn't drink coffee (or drink alcohol or eat sushi), but maybe the risks of doing so aren't that high? Better safe than sorry, though, right? [url]
Even though people have been drinking coffee for centuries, the effect of coffee on our health isn't really clear. Caffeine might not be the only active ingredient in coffee, and studies haven't always separated out the smokers who seem to drink a lot of coffee. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: caffeine, coffee, decaf, decaffeinated coffee, drinks, drugs, food, health, medicine, pregnant

20 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

justok (profile), 30 Aug 2013 @ 5:03pm

Coffee doesn't lower the rate of premature death, it just makes you keep moving longer after your death.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 30 Aug 2013 @ 6:53pm

To quote Freddy Kruger: "Yeah! What are you on?"

But all this does is reenforce my decision not to drink coffee.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Twitchy Yellowfingers, 30 Aug 2013 @ 7:39pm

It should also be worth mentioning the possible preventative qualities it contains against Parkinson's Disease.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20410106
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Lawrence D'Oliveiro, 30 Aug 2013 @ 7:40pm

Are Drugs Bad?
Caffeine is a drug. Ethanol is a drug. Nicotine is a drug. Cannabis is a drug.

Want a more precise term than �drug�? How about �psychoactive substance�?

Some people don�t like the thought of imbibing drugs for pleasure. A lot of these same people don�t like to see ethanol and nicotine lumped in with other drugs.

Also I�ve seen repeated studies try to find something bad about caffeine�even trying to link it with cancer. So far, none of the charges have stuck.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 31 Aug 2013 @ 8:24am
  
  Re: Are Drugs Bad?
  I would call it a chemical compound, is it bad?
  
  Could be, it depends on a lot of things, like genetic makeup of the subject exposed to it, mean of exposure(oral, nasal, injected, absorbed, etc), dose, lenght of exposure, production of the substance that may not be entirely pure and may have contaminants(e.g. Ontario Minamata disease, which used the Castner�Kellner process which is a mercury cell that despite recycling the mercury still contaminates the products and by-products of the process.
  
  Now it is a grave threat to humans?
  I don't think so, is not like caffeine is produced with dangerous chemicals that can contaminate it, and people have been using it for almost a thousand years without mass dying or severe consequences, different from heavy metals like lead that was used by VIP's in antiguity for cosmectics or mercury that a Chinese imperor drank to be immortal or something and died.
  
  But I am glad that we are almost at the point where sensors for almost everything are just around the corner, than we will be to create huge databases of information to see what is what, if governments don't screw it up, I don't know how they will do it, but I am certain someone somewhere will find a way to use this to screw others and it will be a threat to privacy, then we will need rules to guide us to how we collect and interact with such data, data that we need to keep us safe but that it can also be misused.
  
  But I digress, when I encounter a chemical, I look at what it does, its toxicity, how it is produced and how it could interact with others chemicals, this information is not easy to come by though, I would love to see a public database of all known chemical reactions where I could just type the inCh, SMILE or popular name and see what it happens.
  
  It took me months to realize that gases from burning biomass can be turned into gypsum and other useful substances so that toxic "sulfur" would be transformed into something inert, still this is just the tip of an iceberg.
  
  Imagine using Hydrogen sulfide as a precursor for another substance or substances. That smelly gas can be used to produce elemental sulfur and hydrogen or be transformed into another substance that uses hydrogen and sulfur.
  
  Can you imagine when you can take samples from your air, water and see the substances that are in it, and query a database about possible chem reactions? which can be influenced by temperature, PH, pressure and some other factors, and you can transform "toxic" elements into useful things for yourself?
  
  This is one initiative trying to sense the enviroment we live in.
  http://publiclab.org/
  
  That is the time when we transform ourselves as a group from parasites to a symbiotic relationship with our environment I believe.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
art guerrilla (profile), 31 Aug 2013 @ 4:16am

caffeine factoid...
caffeine has a lower LD50 than cocaine...
(ie is MORE 'deadly')
just sayin'...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 31 Aug 2013 @ 6:59am
  
  Re: caffeine factoid...
  You hit the chemical databases online didn't you?
  
  Here for your entertainment, see the funny named compounds that exist from Arsole to Draculin
  
  http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/sillymols.htm
  
  Check with the IUPAC, CAS number, ATC Code, PubChem, DrugBank, ChemSpider, UNII, KEGG, ChEBI or ChEMBL databases
  
  You learn more factoids about the compounds you are looking for.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 31 Aug 2013 @ 6:59am
  
  Re: caffeine factoid...
  Ummm.... That's not right at all about the caffeine LD50.
  
  So LD50 in mice for Caffeine is 192 mg/Kg(when ingested orally) in rats.(Just wait for it.) In humans LD50 is considered 150-200 mg/Kg depending on sensitivities and what not. So we take an average human(180 lbs, convert to Kilograms 180/2.2 = 81.81repeating. Take that number and multily by the mean of the LD50(I say is 175 mg/Kg) = 14.318repeating Grams is the LD50.
  
  For cocaine it is roughly guessimated(All sites never broke past 1.5G so I decided to use this number) to be 1.2-1.5 Grams for a human. So in other words cocaine is a significant figure more lethal than cocaine.
  
  So instead we'll use a different method. We can assume that a ratio of LD50s when compared to in Rats will produce a ratio that should represent the approximate ratio in humans.
  
  Therefore the LD50 of caffeine for rats is 260 mg/Kg(Injected into cavern) and for cocaine it is 92mg/Kg(Injected into cavern.) This produces an approximate ratio of cocaine being 3 times more lethal than caffeine, which is supported above.
  
  http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/health/psychoactives_ld50s.shtml
  http://emedicine.med scape.com/article/813959-overview
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Anonymous Coward, 31 Aug 2013 @ 7:14am
    
    Re: Re: caffeine factoid...
    Here some more resources for ya.
    
    Cocaine:
    https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/summary/summary.cgi?cid=5760
    https://www.chemspid er.com/Chemical-Structure.10194104
    
    Synonyms:
    methylbenzoylecgonine, benzoylmethylecgonine, ecgonine methyl ester benzoate, 2b-Carbomethoxy −3b-benzoyloxy tropane
    
    SMILES
    
    CN1[C@H]2CC[C@@H]1[C@@H](C(OC)=O)[C@@H](OC(C3=CC=CC=C3)=O)C2
    
    InChI
    
    InChI=1S/C17H21NO4/c1-18-12-8-9-13(18)15(17(20)21-2)14(10-12)22-16(19)11-6-4-3-5-7-11/h3-7,12-15H,8- 10H2,1-2H3/t12-,13+,14-,15+/m0/s1
    
    Key:ZPUCINDJVBIVPJ-LJISPDSOSA-N
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Anonymous Coward, 31 Aug 2013 @ 7:17am
      
      Re: Re: Re: caffeine factoid...
      This is to say, which one of the Cocaine compounds you are talking about, and which one is she talking about?
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Anonymous Coward, 31 Aug 2013 @ 7:30am
    
    Re: Re: caffeine factoid...
    
    7.2 Toxicity
    
    7.2.1 Human data
    
    7.2.1.1 Adults
    
    Lethal doses are estimated at 0.5 to
    1.3 grams per day by mouth; 0.05 to 5 grams
    per day by the nasal route, 0.02 grams of
    cocaine by the parenteral route (Baschard &
    Richard, 1984; Haddad & Winchester, 1990;
    Burnat & Le Brumant-Payen, 1992).
    Cocaine addicts can tolerate doses up to 5
    grams per day.
    Toxic effects can be manifest with plasma
    concentrations equal to or above 0.50 mg per
    litre; deaths have been reported with
    concentrations of 1 mg per litre (Clarke,
    1986).
    
    7.2.1.2 Children
    
    No data.
    
    7.2.2 Relevant animal data
    
    The LD50 for the rabbit is 15 mg per kilogram
    by the intravenous route, and 50 mg per kilogram by
    the nasal route; the intravenous LD50 for the rat is
    17.5 mg per kilogram (Budavari, 1989).
    
    7.2.3 Relevant in vitro data
    
    Experiments on animal heart tissue show a
    direct, reversible, depressant effect of cocaine on
    ventricular myocardium (Chokshi et al., 1989).
    Experiments on rats prove that alcohol potentiates the
    toxic effects of cocaine (Nahas et al., 1992).
    
    INCHEM: Cocaine - 7.2 Toxicity
    
    Some doctors estimate that 1.2 grams of cocaine, when used orally, and 750-800 milligrams, when used intravenously or by inhaling, is fatal. It is unknown how much cocaine is fatal when sniffed. (Source: Cocaine Vraagbaak, Federatie van Instellingen voor Alcohol en Drugs, 1986). A user sniffs 0.1-0.2 grams of cocaine, i.e., 2-4 lines a night.
    
    The average lethal dose of intravenous use of cocaine is about 500 milligrams. That doesn't mean, however that a smaller dose is safe. An estimated lethal dose when sniffing cocaine is unknown. These doses are estimates.
    
    http://web4health.info/en/answers/add-cocaine-overdose.htm
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous, 31 Aug 2013 @ 10:41am

Oh no! We're all gonna die!
Wait a minute...we ARE all gonna die!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
FM Hilton, 31 Aug 2013 @ 12:35pm

Of all the ways
To die, I'd take caffeine and cigarettes over any CII drug.

True, they're all addicting, but I've never seen anyone held up by a crazed caffeine addict saying:

"Your coffee cup or your life."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 31 Aug 2013 @ 5:03pm
  
  Re: Of all the ways
  youve never seen me in the morning
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 1 Sep 2013 @ 8:51pm
  
  Re: Of all the ways
  just wait 'til the politicians decide to outlaw coffee and nicotine in order to save us from ourselves(you see this happening already with the nicotine in certain places). then you may actually see this scenario you describe. undoubtedly that cup of coffee or pack of smokes you're being held up for would be worth multiples more in the black-market dynamic.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Magnus, 1 Sep 2013 @ 8:11am

Retina damage
Folks, drinking more than 3 cups per days increases the risk of damage to your retinas. Google it...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 1 Sep 2013 @ 8:55pm
  
  Re: Retina damage
  while you're at it, google the aspartame, saccharin, and fluoride found in various products deemed 'safe' by our all-knowing FDA. /sarc
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ninja (profile), 2 Sep 2013 @ 3:58am

Even though people have been drinking coffee for centuries, the effect of coffee on our health isn't really clear

Is there really a need to address century-old food consumption habits? Isn't the problem the overindustrialization of food to begin with? I take those studies with a ton of salt, not a grain. Really. Specially when they address food that's been around for ages.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 3 Sep 2013 @ 6:31am
  
  Re:
  We were hardwired to consume as much as we could and it was not so long ago that this abundance started, less than a hundred years so maybe is just time, we haven't had time to adapt to this new way.
  
  Which I believe is a bit suicidal, any organism that adapts itself to great amounts of resources may fail in the long run.
  
  So all those illness caused by over consumption of food like diabetes type II are not necessary a bad thing, they are a warning from our biological systems to stop munching so much and those who don't pay attention will die.
  
  I think over production is a symptom of over consumption.
  
  As the old saying goes, the poison is in the quantity.
  In this case the quantity you consume.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Jura, 4 Sep 2013 @ 3:10pm

Actually, I am glad that this post gives me a wavering thumbs up to continue with my coffee-drinking...and for those who are on a crusade to rid the world of the evils of caffeine, kindly sail away to the mythical Land of Killjoys and leave the rest of us to it :)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]