The Two Sides Of Caffeine

We asked you for your health-related opinions on caffeine itself, not necessarily the coffee, tea, energy drinks, etc that might contain it.

We have, by the way previously written about the health effects of coffee and tea specifically:

• The Bitter Truth About Coffee (or is it?)
• Health-Hack Your Coffee
• Which Tea Is Best, By Science?

As for our question about caffeine itself, though, we got the above-depicted, below-described, set of results:

• About 59% said “caffeine is a safe stimulant and cognitive enhancer”
• About 31% said “caffeine is a moderately safe recreational drug”
• About 8% said “caffeine’s addictive properties make it de facto bad”
• One (1) person said “caffeine will leave you a trembling exhausted wreck”

But what does the science say?

Caffeine is addictive: True or False?

True, though one will find occasional academics quibbling the definition. Most of the studies into the mechanisms of caffeine addiction have been conducted on rats, but human studies exist too and caffeine is generally considered addictive for humans, for example:

Caffeine addiction and determinants of caffeine consumption among health care providers: a descriptive national study

See also:

The caffeine dilemma: unraveling the intricate relationship between caffeine use disorder, caffeine withdrawal symptoms and mental well-being in adults

Notwithstanding its addictive status, caffeine is otherwise safe: True or False?

True-ish, for most people. Some people with heart conditions or a hypersensitivity to caffeine may find it is not safe for them at all, and for the rest of us, the dose makes the poison. For example:

❝Can too much caffeine kill you? Although quite rare, caffeine can be fatal in cases of overdose; such circumstances are generally not applicable to healthy individuals who typically consume caffeine via beverages such as tea or coffee.❞

~ Dr. Jose Antonio et al.

Read more: Common questions and misconceptions about caffeine supplementation: what does the scientific evidence really show?

this paper, by the way, also includes a good example of academics quibbling the definition of addiction!

Caffeine is a cognitive enhancer: True or False?

True, but only in the case of occasional use. If you are using it all the time, your physiology will normalize it and you will require caffeine in order to function at your normal level. To attain higher than that, once addicted to caffeine, would now require something else.

Read more: Caffeine: benefits and drawbacks for technical performance

Caffeine will leave you a trembling exhausted wreck: True or False?

True or False depending on usage:

• The famously moderate 3–5 cups per day will not, for most people, cause any such problems.
• Using/abusing it to make up for lost sleep (or some other source of fatigue, such as physical exhaustion from exertion), however, is much more likely to run into problems.

In the latter case, caffeine really is the “payday loan” of energy! It’ll give you an adrenal boost now (in return, you must suffer the adrenal dumping later, along with lost energy expended in the adrenaline surge), and also, the tiredness that you thought was gone, was just caffeine’s adenosine-blocking activities temporarily preventing you from being able to perceive the tiredness. So you’ll have to pay that back later, with interest, because of the extra time/exertion too.

Want to make caffeine a little more gentle on your system?

Taking l-theanine alongside caffeine can ameliorate some of caffeine’s less wonderful effects—and as a bonus, l-theanine has some nifty benefits of its own, too:

L-Theanine: What’s The Tea?

Enjoy!

What’s The Real Deal With The Paleo Diet?

The Paleo diet is popular, and has some compelling arguments for it.

Detractors, meanwhile, have derided Paleo’s inclusion of modern innovations, and have also claimed it’s bad for the heart.

But where does the science stand?

First: what is it?

The Paleo diet looks to recreate the diet of the Paleolithic era—in terms of nutrients, anyway. So for example, you’re perfectly welcome to use modern cooking techniques and enjoy foods that aren’t from your immediate locale. Just, not foods that weren’t a thing yet. To give a general idea:

Paleo includes:

• Meat and animal fats
• Eggs
• Fruits and vegetables
• Nuts and seeds
• Herbs and spices

Paleo excludes:

• Processed foods
• Dairy products
• Refined sugar
• Grains of any kind
• Legumes, including any beans or peas

Enjoyers of the Mediterranean Diet or the DASH heart-healthy diet, or those with a keen interest in nutritional science in general, may notice they went off a bit with those last couple of items at the end there, by excluding things that scientific consensus holds should be making up a substantial portion of our daily diet.

But let’s break it down…

First thing: is it accurate?

Well, aside from the modern cooking techniques, the global market of goods, and the fact it does include food that didn’t exist yet (most fruits and vegetables in their modern form are the result of agricultural engineering a mere few thousand years ago, especially in the Americas)…

…no, no it isn’t. Best current scientific consensus is that in the Paleolithic we ate mostly plants, with about 3% of our diet coming from animal-based foods. Much like most modern apes.

Ok, so it’s not historically accurate. No biggie, we’re pragmatists. Is it healthy, though?

Well, health involves a lot of factors, so that depends on what you have in mind. But for example, it can be good for weight loss, almost certainly because of cutting out refined sugar and, by virtue of cutting out all grains, that means having cut out refined flour products, too:

Diet Review: Paleo Diet for Weight Loss

Measured head-to-head with the Mediterranean diet for all-cause mortality and specific mortality, it performed better than the control (Standard American Diet, or “SAD”), probably for the same reasons we just mentioned. However, it was outperformed by the Mediterranean Diet:

Paleolithic and Mediterranean Diet Pattern Scores Are Inversely Associated with All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality in Adults

So in lay terms: the Paleo is definitely better than just eating lots of refined foods and sugar and stuff, but it’s still not as good as the Mediterranean Diet.

What about some of the health risk claims? Are they true or false?

A common knee-jerk criticism of the paleo-diet is that it’s heart-unhealthy. So much red meat, saturated fat, and no grains and legumes.

The science agrees.

For example, a recent study on long-term adherence to the Paleo diet concluded:

❝Results indicate long-term adherence is associated with different gut microbiota and increased serum trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO), a gut-derived metabolite associated with cardiovascular disease. A variety of fiber components, including whole grain sources may be required to maintain gut and cardiovascular health.❞

~ Genoni et al, 2020

Bottom line:

The Paleo Diet is an interesting concept, and certainly can be good for short-term weight loss. In the long-term, however (and: especially for our heart health) we need less meat and more grains and legumes.