effect of coffee?

R

Rita

Registered Member
This is a serious question. I have discovered I can have a very bad reaction to coffee. In the past after drinking coffee for awhile and missing a day or two, I would become violently ill. We might assume the illness is the result of addition. However, yesterday and today have been very days for me and I have been drinking coffee. Like I didn't stop drinking it until the symptoms were noticable.

I had quit drinking coffee all together until a month or two ago. Then I read it is helpful in preventing diabetic problems, so I started cheating and drinking a cup or two a day. At first the coffee gave me a wonderful lift. It actually made feel very happy. Of course when I started drinking it everyday, I stopped getting that happy feeling, but it still gave me an energy boost.

Now it is like I have to pay back for all that stolen energy. Yesterday I had to fight to stay awake long enough for my daughter in law to pick up my granddaughter at 2 PM. Today, I spent most the day in bed. Vertigo is part of the symptom. I have told doctors this and they don't believe me, but vertigo is the first sign of thing going wrong. I will notice it when I lie down at night, and when I wake in the morning, I will feel dizzy and a little sick. I stopped drinking the coffee when the symptoms became noticable, but boy, what I am going through is like what I heard heroine withdrawal is like.

Since the doctors do not seem to take what I am saying seriously, I wonder if any of you have information about this strangeness? I googled for information, but no one links vertigo to drinking coffee. Because I experience a link I am very curious.
 
I read it is helpful in preventing diabetic problems,
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This is surprising, since we've been told by our doctor to avoid caffeine as much as possible, even tea and chocolate.

The two possibilities that come to mind are allergy or drug interaction. I've heard that coffee may cause problems in conjunctions with several drugs, notably Talwin, as well as some foods, such as cheese.
 
Thank you, the term "caffeine intoxication" lead to a search of information that paid off. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine There is a connection between metabolizing caffeine and pregnancy or using birth control pills. My problem started after having a hysterectomy. Caffeine can accumulate in the body, and that explains why I can cheat and then get sick. It also prevents absorption of vitamin D and leads to Osteoporosis which I have. Not good. It can do come good things like reduce risk of some cancers and diabetes, but may be the down side is worse for me. But darn, I want the energy lift.
 
Try a little square of dark chocolate, once or twice a day, carefully spaced. It's slower to metabolize than liquid form and may be more completely used up.
 
Rita said:
Vertigo is part of the symptom. I have told doctors this and they don't believe me, but vertigo is the first sign of thing going wrong. I will notice it when I lie down at night, and when I wake in the morning, I will feel dizzy and a little sick.
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You're right, there is a link between vertigo, dizziness and drinking a lot of coffee. Caffeine may prevent the absorption of vital elements in the body, such as iron. And a lack of iron in the body causes an iron deficiency anemia. Vertigo is a symptom of anemia.
Maybe it would be useful a blood test, to check your level of iron.
 
Jeeves said:
Try a little square of dark chocolate, once or twice a day, carefully spaced. It's slower to metabolize than liquid form and may be more completely used up.
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Wow, I have no problem with this! Perfect. I will use the square of chocolate to reward myself for not drinking coffee, and for my afternoon pick me up.
 
Really? Why in heck would my doctor just tell me to use motion sickness pills and not check my blood? I used to trust doctors, but not any more. That is why when I have a problem I turn to the internet and discuss it with people in science forums. My life has greatly improved with information I have gotten this way.
 
No doctor knows everything about every disease, injury, infection, condition and syndrome - it would be unreasonable to expect them to. I've generally found my GP good at looking up or consulting a colleague about anything he didn't know, but most doctors simply don't have the time. Some don't listen as well as they should, either, or care as much, or take the patient seriously enough. It's a good idea to inform yourself in any case, if only so that you can ask the appropriate questions.
A conscientious, attentive family doctor may be hard to find, but if you do, hang on for dear life - since that's what may well be at stake.
 
I like your point that we need to know something, so we can ask good questions. And find writing about things here, not only gets me good answers, but keeps me aware, so I think things better.

I just realized it was 4 PM when I had to have chocolate. That is normally when I had my coffee, but have decided to replace coffee with chocolate, right. I walked my dog to the store and bought large bars of chocolate. I wanted to eat it all at once, but was able to control myself, and once the small amount of chocolate got into my system, I was satisfied.

I vaguely remember something about body rhythm and 4 PM. Do you recall what that might be? When I was a smoker, if I tried to cut back on smoking, I would be okay until 4 PM and than I had to have a cigarette! I am retired, and at this moment, I am thinking if I get in tune with my body rhythms I might realized an advantage. Even if that is as little as control of urges, eating a few bites of chocolate instead of the whole bar, that will be plus.
 
Forget dark chocolate and eat cocoa powder instead. It's the rawer and better form of it. Dark chocolate is just cooked cocoa with milk and sugar. It's just an excuse for people to eat chocolate, forget it. Note the lucrative chocolate industry and think of why it's dark chocolate the research is always using and not cocoa... it's a good example/lesson of how today's "science" works.

Went to the shop and bought a large bar of chocolate for health reasons: don't be ridiculous.

Regarding the topic, I highly recommend a book (you might be able to find some pdf file somewhere *cough*...) called "Caffeine and Activation Theory". It discusses a lot of the literature and research so far, is pretty good and appears unbiased to me.
 
I used to get vertigo sometimes, and I was a big regular coffee drinker. Then I suddenly developed a sensitivity to caffeine and a half cup of coffee felt like 5-10 cups, like I had to go and lie down because I felt like I was going to pass out. Now I only drink decaf. I'm sometimes tempted by chocolate, but even just small piece will mess me up sometimes. I think decaf has all or most of the benefits of regular coffee. Even some kinds of decaf coffee or tea still have too much caffeine for me.
 
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typical animal said:
Forget dark chocolate and eat cocoa powder instead. It's the rawer and better form of it.
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You must be joking. That's like telling a person who likes hamburgers to just munch on a slab of raw beef.

Dark chocolate is just cooked cocoa with milk and sugar. It's just an excuse for people to eat chocolate, forget it. Note the lucrative chocolate industry and think of why it's dark chocolate the research is always using and not cocoa...
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My wife is a chocolatiere. Although the Aztecs had managed to brew something vaguely like cocoa with their Bronze Age technology and the Europeans were happy to drink it, chocolate as we know it is an artifact of the Industrial Era. The chocolate we eat simply could not be made by hand. And it's not what it's mixed with that makes the big difference (although it does make it more palatable to civilized tastes), it's the texture which it develops in the processing that's important. She buys big blocks of it--in the past she had to get it from European companies via importers, but now American chocolatiers like See's and Scharffenberger are rendering their own chocolate, as well as the South Americans.

You can munch on the big block if you want--it is sweetened to be palatable and has a certain percentage of milk depending on what you ordered. But what you usually want is candy, not a block of pure dark or light chocolate, and for God's sake, not unsweetened raw cocoa powder--yucch! So she puts it in her chocolate tempering machine, which heats it to the point that it's viscous, and then slowly stirs it into a thick paste as it cools back down. When it's finished, she can pour it into molds, use it for enrobing, or mix it with liqueurs and spoon it out as truffles.

Regarding the topic, I highly recommend a book (you might be able to find some pdf file somewhere *cough*...) called "Caffeine and Activation Theory". It discusses a lot of the literature and research so far, is pretty good and appears unbiased to me.
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I'm a lifelong recovering caffeine addict. Back in my day (the 1940s and 50s) they had already started addicting children to cola when we were nine or ten. And our parents started letting us drink tea a couple of years later. Although I never knew any kids who drank coffee until we went off to college. It's an acquired taste that I never acquired; I'm still a tea drinker.

As sensitive as I am, the caffeine in chocolate does virtually nothing for me or to me. You have to eat something like half a pound of extra-dark (80%) chocolate to get the caffeine content of one cup of coffee. Not that I would have any trouble doing that, mind you. ;)

it's a good example/lesson of how today's "science" works.
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This isn't science. It's business. People want something considerably tastier than what the Aztecs had, and industrial technology delivered it to them. The Bronze Age is, mercifully, behind us. We have better calendars than the Aztecs and the Mayans too. :)
 
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By high school I was smoking and drinking coffee. My mother did both and I don't think she paid attention to science. I remember being proud of the fact that I drank like an adult, and not Coke like a child.
 
The Johns Hopkins study began a year ago when graduate student Samuel Gilbert, working in Kern's laboratory, noted that a test Kern had developed to detect p53 activity had never been used to identify DNA-damaging substances in food. For the study, published online February 8 in Food and Chemical Toxicology, Kern and his team sought advice from scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture about food products and flavorings. "To do this study well, we had to think like food chemists to extract chemicals from food and dilute food products to levels that occur in a normal diet," he says. Using Kern's test for p53 activity, which makes a fluorescent compound that "glows" when p53 is activated, the scientists mixed dilutions of the food products and flavorings with human cells and grew them in laboratory dishes for 18 hours. Measuring and comparing p53 activity with baseline levels, the scientists found that liquid smoke flavoring, black and green teas and coffee showed up to nearly 30-fold increases in p53 activity, which was on par with their tests of p53 activity caused by a chemotherapy drug called etoposide. Previous studies have shown that liquid smoke flavoring damages DNA in animal models, so Kern's team analyzed p53 activity triggered by the chemicals found in liquid smoke. Postdoctoral fellow Zulfiquer Hossain tracked down the chemicals responsible for the p53 activity. The strongest p53 activity was found in two chemicals: pyrogallol and gallic acid. Pyrogallol, commonly found in smoked foods, is also found in cigarette smoke, hair dye, tea, coffee, bread crust, roasted malt and cocoa powder, according to Kern. Gallic acid, a variant of pyrogallol, is found in teas and coffee
 
I vaguely remember something about body rhythm and 4 PM. Do you recall what that might be? When I was a smoker, if I tried to cut back on smoking, I would be okay until 4 PM and than I had to have a cigarette!
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Mine was 3 pm - the time of afternoon coffee breaks when i was working: 30 years of coffee and a cigarette at the same time of day is a hard to get over. One thing you can do is substitute a healthier activity for the time-slot. A walk with the dog is good. Or some brisk indoor exercise. Saving little treats for those critical moments is all right - but remember, the operative word is little. I give myself a beer with the Star Trek rerun some afternoons, or guacamole, or hummus with crackers (or, not and) I still drink one coffee in the morning; if we have company later in the day, i make decaf.

My partner is diabetic, so we can't have too many sweets around the place (It would be cruel!) and neither of us needs the temptation to gain weight. We did experiment for a while with cocoa powder: melt high quality baking cocoa with water and a little butter, mix in artificial sweetener and a drop or two of vanilla, press into a baking tin, cool and cut into single servings. Needs refrigeration. It was quite good, but too much trouble. The 100g bars of 72% chocolate are far more convenient - as long as we limit consumption to one row a day. Sometimes you can vary the treat with some wholesome alternative like almonds or dried cranberries.

Yes, learning your rhythm is very good idea. Try keeping a log of activities, cravings and moods throughout the day, so that you'll anticipate the temptations and hazards. This will also help you develop a habit of mindfulness.
 
arauca said:
The Johns Hopkins study began a year ago when graduate student Samuel Gilbert, working in Kern's laboratory, noted that a test Kern had developed to detect p53 activity had never been used to identify DNA-damaging substances in food. For the study, published online February 8 in Food and Chemical Toxicology, Kern and his team sought advice from scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture about food products and flavorings. "To do this study well, we had to think like food chemists to extract chemicals from food and dilute food products to levels that occur in a normal diet," he says. Using Kern's test for p53 activity, which makes a fluorescent compound that "glows" when p53 is activated, the scientists mixed dilutions of the food products and flavorings with human cells and grew them in laboratory dishes for 18 hours. Measuring and comparing p53 activity with baseline levels, the scientists found that liquid smoke flavoring, black and green teas and coffee showed up to nearly 30-fold increases in p53 activity, which was on par with their tests of p53 activity caused by a chemotherapy drug called etoposide. Previous studies have shown that liquid smoke flavoring damages DNA in animal models, so Kern's team analyzed p53 activity triggered by the chemicals found in liquid smoke. Postdoctoral fellow Zulfiquer Hossain tracked down the chemicals responsible for the p53 activity. The strongest p53 activity was found in two chemicals: pyrogallol and gallic acid. Pyrogallol, commonly found in smoked foods, is also found in cigarette smoke, hair dye, tea, coffee, bread crust, roasted malt and cocoa powder, according to Kern. Gallic acid, a variant of pyrogallol, is found in teas and coffee
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I had to google P53 to know what is being said.
p53 (also known as protein 53 or tumor protein 53), is a tumor suppressor protein that in humans is encoded by the TP53 gene.[2][3][4][5] p53 is crucial in multicellular organisms, where it regulates the cell cycle and, thus, functions as a tumor suppressor that is involved in preventing cancer. As such, p53 has been described as "the guardian of the genome" because of its role in conserving stability by preventing genome mutation.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P53
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Is decaffeinated coffee as good as caffeinated coffee and tea for pyrogallol? I have bone loose and caffeine blocks absorption of vitamin D needed for bones. Might the timing of consumption of coffee and something like vitamin D make a difference? Say don't take vitamin D and have a cup of coffee or tea at the same time? I waiting 1/2 hour after consuming a pill for bone density before eating anything. The problem being it is good to have the coffee or tea but how much, and when does a good thing become a bad thing?

When I was raising children, I attempted to study nutrition and gave up because it is so complex. When we are young we can afford to eat as we please, but in our later years, it becomes a challenge to keep everything balanced and functioning well.

Jeeves, in the winter I walked the dog at 4, to get home before dark, and in the summer I like to wait until the day cools off, but that leaves much of the year to walk at 4. A little chocolate and a walk at 4 sounds like a good routine and God knows I need help sticking with a routine. That is why he makes the sun go down early in the winter, to help me develop a routine, right?
 
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Next to your link is this one saying tea is helpful, and I am sure coffee is also said to be helpful, because that is why I started drinking more of it. I swear a person could go mad, trying figure want to consume and want to avoid.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090728172604.htm

I found the answer to question about decaf being any better and the problem is not caffeine but tannins. Tannins is in a lot of food, berries, coffee and tea, and is used in processing wine and beer. It is good for making leather, and treating burns and stopping diarrhea, but is not so good on the liver and can lead to dehydration.

http://www.herbs2000.com/h_menu/tannins.htm
 
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Caffeine in coffee and theophylline in tea (both from the same family of methyxanthines) are known weak suppressors of tumor activity
 
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