koala logs

If anything might cause headaches, like quitting coffee (it's a well known effect), skipping meals, etc, women are more likely to experience it or have worse symptoms.

One of the reasons I stopped taking coffee is due to work, overtimes, graveyard shifts, etc. You'd think that coffee would be a big help getting through a long and busy day and night at work. I thought so too. But I ended up drinking more and more coffee as I develop increasing resistance to the effects of caffeine.

1 cup of coffee used to be enough for the whole day, eventually, I'd take two to get the same effect. At its peak, I'm drinking up to 7 cups of coffee per day! It's an insidious reinforcing feedback of dependency! Nowadays, I can't afford caffeine addiction anymore so I had to quit. I'd say it has its advantages like having a more constant instead of spiky "energy reserve" throughout the day.

PeteHski

I drink coffee because a) I like the taste and smell and b) because it's a well known performance stimulant. It's pretty much mandatory for pro cyclists.

I once read an article comparing coffee and commercial fruit smoothies (a few years ago when coffee was considered "bad" and "healthy" smoothies were all the rage). The latter turned out to be far worse for your health (basically just sugar) despite the healthy marketing buzz.

Carbonfiberboy 

Well . . . we buy from our local organic food coop, founding members decades ago. Don't have one? It's totally doable, start one. We're weird out here on the left coast. Lotsa grown-up hippies, etc. My wife's father was a US Army supply officer. She's really good at procurement, only shops once every 2 weeks, etc. I'd be so F'd without her. She also stokes. Neither of us have any idea what we pay for it. Does it matter? Sort of, we're fixed income mostly, but some things we just buy because it's the right thing to do.

Starbucks coffee is pretty good. Similarly, when my Aeropress stuff hits, I know it.

genejockey 

Yet...

genejockey 

Interesting. When I was diagnosed with hypertension some years back, I was told I might have to give up coffee. I didn't. But last fall I was doing an extended check of my BP on a daily basis, and I became interested in the effect of caffeine on my blood pressure. So I tested it before, and then 20 minutes and an hour after drinking a big cup (or more) of strong coffee. Results: no change in BP. Slightly higher HR.

(Turns out the biggest difference in BP was waiting 5 minutes after sitting down in the morning before taking BP. It dropped from 140+/80 to 130-ish.)

koala logs

I think it will take at least one week of no caffeine to see any changes. But beware of withdrawal effects if you attempt to fully quit on coffee.

One way you can reduce or eliminate withdrawal effect is slowly taper your consumption of caffeine. Lesser dosage each day. Avoid decaf coffee. IMO, decaf coffee can still stimulate caffeine receptors in the body. In fact, I went with decaf coffee for several months and still suffered withdrawal effects when I quit decaf coffee.

I've been coffee-free for many months now both caffeine and decaf. I've been diagnosed with hypertension as well. It's mostly due to daily stress. Harder cardio workouts and quitting coffee and my BP is back to teenage levels despite dealing with the same levels of stress or even worse. I just had to make for the lack of coffee with harder intervals in training. Hold harder efforts for longer until adrenaline kicks in.

genejockey 

Ah, well, you see my hypertension is more genetic. In my 20s and 30s, I'd routinely have BP of 110/70. Late 40s it manifested itself . I told my doc I wanted to try lifestyle changes, and she said go ahead. I rode a lot of miles, ate bushels of salad, cut back on carbs, ate a lot of lean meat. Result? No change in the numbers. So we went with drugs.

koala logs

We have about the same. But my hypertension came earlier, in my late 30's which can be attributed to lack of exercise, too much cholesterol in my diet, and tons of stress.

Lifestyle changes I did was get on leaner diet, exercise with cycling. Additionally, I also started mixing garlic on all my meals. Garlic helps lower BP. Ofc, quitting coffee. But I have other reasons for quitting coffee. My main reason for quitting coffee is dependency and headaches. Like drug addiction, I needed more and more dosage of caffeine. If I miss even just one cup in a day, I'll get a headache for the rest of the day.

Now my BP is back to teen days without drugs but can still reach 130/85 during high levels of stress. I can usually take it down if it starts to affect me by taking two cloves of fresh garlic. I hate taking drugs but mostly because I find them too expensive to be taking regularly so I'd rather suffer on the bike or trainer (few half hour HIIT sessions per week with recovery in between is good cure enough).

greatbasin

I was addicted to coffee, but couldn't see it or would deny it or that it mattered. I could see it in other people, and I don't just mean the people that make facetious remarks about their ravenous need for coffee. I saw it in people's behavior. I recognized some of those same behaviors in myself. So I quit. The actual caffeine withdrawals take only a couple days to overcome, and I had been through that many times before when I quit only incidentally. I haven't had coffee or significant amounts of caffeine in more than 7 years. My health and BP have always been excellent and low, so I'm not making any claims about that. I will say that I feel mentally better without caffeine.

greatbasin

I agree that decaf coffee often has too much caffeine for someone who wants to practically eliminate it from their intake. Some decafs have as much as 7mg per 8oz cup, but there are some Swiss water process coffees with as less than 2mg. Don't take that as a recommendation, just information.

I don't drink any decaf coffee, but I will drink decaf tea or hot cocoa, either of which might have up to 2mg of caffeine in a cup. I also eat dark chocolate which has some. But I don't drink or eat any of those things habitually the way I drank coffee before. If I had a habit of drinking two cups of decaf a day, my monthly intake could be more than 420 mg (or 120 mg with swiss-water decaf). Non-habitual decaf tea or chocolate consumption results in something closer to 24 mg per month. I drank herbal teas habitually when I was changing my behavior away from a coffee consumption habit. I still drink them occasionally, but not on a daily basis like I did for a while. I do a lot of outdoor stuff and live in a cold climate so hot drinks are useful for staving-off hypothermia.

To anyone who consumes caffeine and other stimulants (guarana, taurine, and L-carnitine) habitually, I recommend quitting for a year and seeing what you notice about your mental and physical health and well-being. You can argue that's there's nothing wrong with it, or that it's healthy, or that there's no proof, or whatever. I don't care. It's not my gospel. On your part, you will certainly save money that you would otherwise spend on overpriced beverages with those chemicals that you don't actually need. What's more, you will prove to yourself through your own experience whether it makes any difference to you or not. Just don't quit for a couple of days or a month or two and think that you've figured it out. A year is a short time to go without those stimulants, but enough time away from them that you can make a sound decision about whether to return to them or not.

holytrousers

Every addiction sums up basically to one thing: running away from the problem instead of dealing with.
Thus perpetuating a machine-like way of living.
It's more like being afraid to live, and get by with the illusion of feeling alive.

koala logs

I haven't noticed about the behavior part when I quit coffee but then I don't spend much time with other people. The only other person I socialize with who has quit coffee is my mom who quit after her stroke.

Her behavior definitely improved but not sure it's the stroke or coffee. As for me, not much has changed, I think events in my life have far greater influence in my behavior than caffeine.

One thing I can say has improved is my "energy" levels is more balanced. No longer going up and going down between coffee drinks. I also can't say coffee improved my cycling performance. I was still on coffee when I started riding. But what really improved my performance isn't coffee but simply better training.

rsbob 

I have a self-inflicted smoothy every morning for the last 3 weeks. The ingredients are blue berries, spinach and power greens, yogurt, hemp hearts, flax seed, beet powder and oat milk. Don’t want to know the total calories, but it sounds healthier than eggs, bacon, hash browns and toast. That is after my 2 cups of coffee.

PeteHski

That sounds like a proper healthy home-made smoothie. The article I was reading was referring to commercial smoothies loaded with sugar. My breakfast tends to consist of granola with blueberries, raspberries, flax seed, oat milk and a decent coffee. Sounds quite similar. We do have a smoothie maker too, but I use it mainly at weekends. Coffee is part and parcel of pro-peloton racing so must be okay otherwise the likes of Team Ineos would have banned it years ago!

rsbob 

My fave current granola is Trader Joe’s Grainless Granola. Loaded with nuts and low on fats and carbs. I do have a bowl now and then.

Yup our morning diet sounds similar. Guilty confession, I do watch a few GCN vids and they are real coffee devotees. Just bought SIS energy and caffeine and will be giving that a go. Too funny about Ineos.

koala logs

I did exactly the opposite of GCN's stance on coffee and alcohol. The alcohol part is real geniune gem of info. On actual road rides, the effects of coffee is debatable. If you've been drinking coffee all your life then skipping or reducing dosage on coffee would actually deteriorate your performance. But performance between being a coffee drinker vs long timer no caffeine seems identical. This is comparing myself to other roadies I ride with who drinks coffee and also myself to the time I was drinking coffee. My performance have actually improved over my coffee days, including COVID infection, etc. Although it could also be the result of better quality training.

The only significant difference I can see is the quality of fueling when looking at one's ability to hold power like in a long climb.

Since most, if not, the vast majority of adults drink coffee. It makes sense for them that maintaining their dosage caffeine would be critical to their performance but compared to someone who hasn't had any coffee nor caffeine for more than 1 year, they don't seem to perform any better or worse than regular coffee drinkers.. How you fuel up and pace the ride still matters far more.

PeteHski

Pro riders who drink coffee (which is nearly all of them from what I've read) sometimes stop drinking it for a few weeks before a key event and then dose up again during the event. Geraint Thomas explains this on his GTCC podcast and I've read of other pros doing the same. They feel that the caffeine gives them more of a boost when they've laid off it for a while.

My take as an average rider is that a moderate amount of coffee can't be bad for your performance otherwise none of these elite pros would be touching it. Alcohol is different. None of the top pros touch it during the race season or any serious phase of training.

wolfchild

Coffee is good and so is alcohol..I drink two large cups of strong coffee every morning, one before breakfast and the other one after breakfast....I also like doing fasted rides early in the morning on just one cup of coffee...In the evening after dinner I have 3 beers everyday.

koala logs

That will work

But drinking the same amount of coffee everyday won't make any difference vs some who had quit coffee for a long time. I've been there and ride with coffee drinkers on long alpine rides.

If you drink coffee everyday, you'll have to increase caffeine dosage before an event or a big ride to get a little boost. But some doctors I've talked to in the past did not look positively to such habit as it can cause heart problems.

This article shows that too much caffeine is bad for the heart (as everything else, too much of anything is bad). But the effect is amplified for people who are quite physically active such as athletes. The article mentions caffeine in the last topic, all the way to the bottom of the article if you wish to skip to the caffeine part. Still a great read if you wish to read the entire article. Pros have the luxury of dealing with caffeine to the limits with their comprehensive heart monitoring and medical support.

https://www.menshealth.com/health/a2...ses-treatment/

koala logs

GCN would strongly advice *against* beer (edited, forgot to include that word!). They even did tests with the presenters, one drinking a big mug of beer before bed, after dinner and the results are significantly worse for the beer!

I drink beer too but only in small amounts like 1/5th of a mug and mix it with other beverage like chocolate or sometimes with root beer (1/5th regular alcoholic beer + 4/5 root beer) up to 3x a day. Best tasting beer for me and looks like German lager!

79pmooney

I used to take vacations every 18 months or so and go back east to spend a week or two with family. Last cup of coffee was before takeoff. Withdrawal got kinda lost in the jet-lag fuzz. Come home to a reset caffeine requirement. In my racing days, I ate really clean. No white powders - sugar, flour or salt. No caffeine, Now, if I bonked on a ride 50 miles from home, one cup of coffee with two cubes of sugar worked! I'd be home before the drugs wore off.

wolfchild

I don't really care about opinions of GCN experts and other internet experts, I just do whatever works for me

GhostRider62

Hinault said to drink red wine.

GCN used a flawed protocol.

MinnMan

to each their own, but,,,,,YUCK

ZHVelo

But is it the caffeine or the coffee bean?