Anecdotally, this seems like pretty reckless advice, and I'm a caffeine junkie.
Don't get me wrong, it's clearly not crystal meth, but Caffeine overdoses are real and can be dangerous, especially in a situation where you are drinking a boatload of coffee. I'm sure I'm not the only person on this board that has had some minor heart palpitations during an all-nighter after one too many coffees or Coke Zeros.
Yep, I've read all about clinical definitions of caffeine intoxication, and its relative rarity isolated from any other factors.
I guess I was a little sloppy in labeling what I'm talking about a "caffeine overdose", although I think what I described happening to me (heart palpatations, dizziness) probably happens much more often than physicians are aware of, and could be classified as a minor caffeine overdose. Most people logically conclude they've had too much coffee and too little sleep, and just drink some water and go to bed like I did. They don't go to the hospital over it.
What I'm really saying is that people who consume massive amounts of coffee are usually trying to compensate for exhaustion or sleep deprivation. In fact, there's sort of a feedback loop, where massive amounts of caffeine make restful sleep much more difficult, which then leads to more caffeine consumption and possibly to a downward spiral in health. Studies have shown that a perfectly healthy person lacking in sleep is in sort of a pre-diabetic state already, so when you pile on massive amounts of stimulants at the same time, it's clearly bad for the heart. It won't lead to you being declared DOA of a caffeine overdose, but it could exacerbate heart disease, or help its onset, or even cause a heart attack.
Don't get me wrong, as I mentioned I'm a huge caffeine addict. I drink Coke Zero by the gallon. However, the picture the author is painting that massive ingestion of caffeine is consequence free is simply not accurate, and in fact dangerous.
There's overdosing (to the point where you risk it being lethal) and then there's general ill effects. Even as someone very light (OD dosage is based on your weight, unsurprisingly[1]), it would require me to take multiple caffeine pills before I'd have to potentially go to the hospital: I simply couldn't do it through coffee alone - it's just too much liquid to consume in too short a time. Even with crazy-strong coffee (250+mg/cup) I'd need to drink 30+ [2] cups.
But you can bet your bottom dollar that drinking a dozen cups of coffee by lunchtime will have some pretty interesting results. You'll feel your heart racing and probably experience something like extreme ADD. Probably headaches, nausea, crazy jitters. The severity depends on your tolerance to caffeine, of course. I get nasty headaches 6-8 hours after waking if I don't get my morning coffee, so it takes me quite a lot to get into overdose land.
Yep, clarified a bit below in my response to nickkthequick that I was talking more about my personal experiences with what I would call minor caffeine overdoses, not the clinical definition of caffeine intoxication. My main point is that the notion that massive amounts of caffeine injestion is consequence free, especially as it's usually paired with sleep deprivation, is laughable.
Nope, the author uses coffee and caffeine pretty interchangeably, and probably refers to caffeine more than coffee. It's clearly about both, although there is a brief mention of some of the purported additional health benefits of coffee that caffeine might not be responsible for.
> The past couple of years have seen findings, that, taken together, suggest that we should embrace coffee for reasons beyond the benefits of caffeine, and that we might go so far as to consider it a nutrient.
Don't get me wrong, it's clearly not crystal meth, but Caffeine overdoses are real and can be dangerous, especially in a situation where you are drinking a boatload of coffee. I'm sure I'm not the only person on this board that has had some minor heart palpitations during an all-nighter after one too many coffees or Coke Zeros.