Drinking 3-4 Cups of Coffee Is “More Likely to Benefit Health Than to Harm It” (opens in new tab)

But I’ll be honest, I haven’t looked into it too thouroghly.

Yes, or drinks with artificial sweeteners.

In terms of caffeine studies, yes- there are definitely thousands of other foods and so-forth that effect the risk of heart disease, cancer, and whatever else they're looking at. There's even things which interact with caffeine specifically to modulate or plausibly even reverse it's effects. All of these things work in egregiously complicated ways. But when I read the study and try to think what it tells me about my own situation, this doesn't matter since I can usually assume that my own exposure to these other factors will be typical compared to that of the study population- thus, I'll tend to respond similarly to caffeine as they did.

This approach is obviously has an abundance of limitations- it only tells me how I'm more likely to respond to caffeine or whatever else, but doesn't give any guarantees. And for someone who is different than the study population- a black woman living in Uganda versus a study done on white male freshmen at Yale, say- the results rapidly become less meaningful. But they do work.

Even if a model actually succeeds in properly balancing the controls so that as well as controlling for basic demographics it also ensures its non coffee drinkers don't drink a commensurately larger portion of other caffeinated drinks or unhealthy alternative drinks or substitute for the caffeine hit with stronger drugs, and don't have a health reason for cutting caffeine or a cultural/social reason linked to other behaviours or diets, you've then got the problem that people with different genes and physical health likely metabolise coffee in very different ways, and to recommend more or less coffee to a particular individual, you've probably got to untangle all that too...

When you think about the air you breathe, to the variety of things you ate (plus the additional microbiomes that inhabit the food, your skin, your gut, etc) it seems like we are just barely really understanding what the intakes to the body are.

Edit: here's a great point to start to think about it: https://youtu.be/bYOIhmZ0Osg?t=41m49s -watch for 10m

It took almost a year before my cravings went away but after I never felt so good.

Another anecdote: having even a little bourbon makes me feel completely terrible, however I feel fine after drinking any other spirit. It's just my bodies adverse reaction to some chemical component. Perhaps similar with you and coffee.

There were periods when there was really good tea at the office, and I would drink that, or mineral water.

Anyhow, believe you but can't relate as I and many others don't have issues with coffee drinking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coffee_chemicals

More than a thousand chemical compounds in coffee, area of active research. Does this imply that we don't know much about coffee yet?

And more anecdotally, what I find weird is that when I switch from coffee drinking to tea and soft drinks, there seems to be no amount of caffeine intake that make the withdrawal symptoms go away. For me, there certainly is something in coffee besides caffeine that hooks me.

Not for everyone - there are people who drink coffee black with no sugar (especially espresso drinkers).

I think your ice cream experience might have an entirely different cause - you were used to stimulation from particular flavors, so when you quit consuming sweet food/drinks. your perception of ice cream was like a bombshell for your tastebuds.

Now, it's entirely possible that artificial sweeteners have detrimental effects on your gut biome or causes a reward response, which create cravings but I'm skeptical until more literature is published on the subject.

250ml is 8.5 ounces. Some places in Europe standardized on this.

A cup of anything else is 8 ounces.

A "cup of coffee" (the actual unit) is 6 ounces, and this is the standard everywhere where 250ml isn't, and we're not in Japan; but even though the US follows the 6 ounce standard, the USDA considers a cup 8 ounces on their nutrition table.

Japan has standardized on 200ml (or about 6.7 oz).

What SHOULD be measured is not liquid volume, but bean weight (measured in grams; even Ameicans measure it in grams when they're the type to weigh it instead of just throwing ambiguously heaped tablespoons in); and then shifted according to that blend's particular caffeine content (outside of specialty products with high-caffeine bean variants, caffeine content can vary about +/- 50% depending on the origin of the beans (roasting does not effect caffeine content meaningfully, although the myth lives on)).

During those months, I experienced anxiety attacks for the first time in my life. I did not realize at first that long term (for me, 3 months) coffee consumption slowly helped drive myself towards constantly doing more than I realistically had the energy to do, somehow triggering these very anxietic episodes couple of times, where I was feeling like I was in danger, it was hard to breath, and I was panicking, I really didn't know what was happening.

Later I realized coffee did this. There are studies of coffee putting the body into a state of fight-or-flee constantly, rising the heart rate and making people very jumpy, so that might explain why this happened.

Also, I've been noticing that drinking coffee tends to over focus my focus on one task and not see to whole picture, so it is very easy to go in one direction too far with a project for example, and just start fine tuning whatever little details come at me, when more better would be to see the big picture again and change directions.

I can hardly see how coffee is a good thing on a global scale, except for the work force who want to do stuff that is not otherwise interesting.

If you'd drink one week a month decaf (assuming you can enjoy the taste. I dislike it) you get caffeine withdrawal the first day, and the other days you don't. But as soon as you start consuming coffee again, you also get withdrawal symptoms because the half time is ~4 hours.

The way I deal with it which is the correct way is limit coffee intake to 2-3 cups a day in the morning/afternoon. None in the evening because it will cause sleep deprivation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine

I have to be careful with caffeine personally because I haven't needed to have it for the last few months, so when I do have it, it usually seriously upsets my (unbounded) sleep cycle if I don't take care to go to sleep at a regimented hour.

In the kitchen I have a joke with the guy from accounts as well as have a really positive buy-in for the new 'aggregated accounts' plan. I have some chat with the cleaning lady, she smiles, I smile. Someone else gets doors for me, I say please and thank-you. Finally beverages get served by me to my colleagues. Everyone is happy.

On the way to and from the kitchen I have got the blood circulating, not a very big walk, certainly not a gym workout, but all moving is good in the sedentary office world. Yes, it does take a lot of muscles to smile, and just with the light convo needed to get to the kettle and sink I have had a little workout. Unlike press-ups I can put my heart into a smile.

So what happens if I am in a mood and can't be bothered to make tea for the rest of the team? I sneak into the kitchen and make a coffee just for myself. Or if it is the weekend and I am home alone, with no interaction with people during the consumption of coffee.

On aggregate I do make coffee and it be a social thing rather than a loner thing. We are social animals and the act of sharing coffee is probably better for our well being than whatever is in the coffee. I don't think it is possible to do studies without the bigger social picture.

So could claims that 'coffee is good for you' stack up, even with the above?

In my anecdata there is also the girl I sit next to that is not in the 'tea round system'. She makes her own drink, and will tend to have a jogger style water bottle at hand at all times. She will also make her own infusions - ginger tea etc, but not a round for everybody. Because she just serves herself then she is not in the kitchen for as long as me, not needing to converse to complete the task (no tray). Furthermore, she does not get to greet everyone in the team, or to have that special thought for them, e.g. mug colour preference, tea/coffee strength etc.

So, anecdata, but, if coffee and the sharing of coffee is important, then the claims that 'coffee is good for you' could stack up but it not be causation/correlation on the caffeine, even if that appears to be the case.

Just for more info, I've been experimenting with 200 mg of L-theanine combined with one cup of coffee. Not something I would take in long periods, but definitely useful for those stints where you just have to get something done and need the stimulants.

L-theanine is good also for relaxation alone, and calming the nerves down, I sometimes take it by itself if I feel too anxious also.

On the other hand if coffee drinking causes strokes you could live for years with severe impairment.

Disclaimer: I consume ~4 cups of coffee per day between 8am and 3pm and get ~8 hours of sleep per night.