A Day Without Coffee is No Day at All

Question:

Which is the most common psychoactive, addictive drug in the World?

Answer:

Caffeine

Both tea and coffee contain caffeine, but today, it’s all about coffee.

I drink a lot of coffee by Indian standards. At least 2-3 single espresso shots, one cappuccino and 1-2 pour-overs per day. I am quite particular about my coffee. I get my coffee beans and pour-over grind from BlueTokai. I use the freshly roasted beans for the espressos in my Gaggia machine and I make the pour-overs in my Hario V70.

But I don’t drink any coffee or tea after 5.30 PM, 4 hours before my bedtime.

Caffeine is a stimulant. It binds to the adenosine receptors in the brain. Increasing adenosine levels during the day cause drowsiness and by blocking adenosine, in the short term, caffeine increases focus and concentration.

Many people, including the author Michael Pollan, whose new book “This is Your Mind on Plants” devotes a third of its pages to caffeine, believe that caffeine was responsible for jump-starting the Industrial Revolution by increasing the workers’ focus and concentration.

The challenge is that in today’s world where we want to pack in as much as we can in a 24-hours day, the extra time we need is usually borrowed from our sleep time. Then, if we sleep less, we are groggy during the day, which we try to offset with caffeine, which in turn affects our sleep adversely, which then sets up a vicious Catch-22 where we drink coffee to remain alert because we are sleeping badly because we are over-caffeinated. Since the average half-life of caffeine is 2 1/2 to 5 hours, one of the things that helps with good sleep is to have the last caffeinated beverage not later than 4-6 hours prior to bedtime, come what may.

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So, what are the downsides of coffee?

1. Sleep issues

2. Addiction

I have thrice in my life stopped caffeine, each time when I was doing a Jain “athai”. The first time, I had not prepared for the fast and landed up with severe withdrawal symptoms on days 2 and 3 including headache, loss of focus and lack of energy. However, from day 5 onwards, unlike the experience Michael Pollan had when he stopped caffeine and became listless with a shroud enveloping his mind, I developed razor-sharp focus from days 6-8, likely because the “fasting” overcame the effects of the lack of caffeine. For the next two athais, I prepared in advance by gradually reducing my coffee intake over 10 days and the withdrawal symptoms, if at all, were very mild.

There are really no other downsides, which is why culturally, of all the psychotropic drugs available, caffeine has become the most socially acceptable drug, unlike say opium which became taboo in the early 20th century, or marijuana, which is now slowly coming back into public life, though ayahuasca and psilocybin are still banned in most parts of the world. Nicotine is a survivor and while cigarettes are on their way out, nicotine will likely continue in non-cigarette forms. And as I wrote and spoke about a few weeks ago, alcohol has no real health upside except for making us feel good about ourselves.

Are there benefits to drinking coffee over and above the increased focus and concentration and the “feel-good” factor?

A review article by Dr. Rob van Dam and his colleagues in the New England Journal of Medicine published in July 2020 [1] concludes that coffee does not increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer, but in fact, the consumption of 3-5 standard cups daily is associated with a reduced risk of several chronic diseases. The reason is not known, though it has been shown that coffee contains polyphenols and lignans among other substances, which as we saw last week do reduce cardiovascular risk and cognition loss. Coffee’s ergogenic effect also makes it a popular, acceptable, performance enhancing drug, which is often used by both, athletes and non-athletes [2].

So what is your matka here? If you are a coffee drinker and dependent on caffeine, fine. Coffee has been around now for more than 300-400 years and has no real ill-effect, apart from sleep disturbances, so do try and have your last drink not later than 4, preferably 6 hours prior to your bedtime. If however, you are not addicted to caffeine in any of its forms (coffee, tea, aerated beverages, etc), you don’t need to start.

Footnotes

1. van Dam RM, Hu FB, Willett WC. Coffee, Caffeine, and Health. Campion EW, editor. N Engl J Med. 2020 Jul 23;383(4):369–78.

2. Pickering C, Grgic J. Caffeine and Exercise: What Next? Sports Medicine 2019;49:1007