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Comment by joekrill | Hacker News Reader

I guess it depends what you define as "not ok". I mean, why is smoking 4-5 times a week not ok? Why is shooting up heroin 4-5 times a week not ok?

In the end, we're simply willfully poisoning ourselves. For some reason we, as a society, have decided that it's OK to poison ourselves with certain substances (caffeine, cigarette smoke) but not others (heroin, methamphetamines). We've made this socially acceptable. So if by "ok" you mean socially acceptable, thensure, it's ok.

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I don't know enough about smoking or heroin to know whether they produce actual damage to your health, if done in small enough dosages. I guess 5 cigarettes per week (one per day) might not be that bad? But maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, smoking bothers others too (unlike drinking), and heroin is much more addictive (I suspect 5 doses a week would definitely end up hurting you).

By "not ok" I mean "actually harmful to your health". I don't buy the argument that "there is no safe dosage of alcohol", I've seen the claim but not actual evidence. AFAIK the liver is perfectly able to deal with small quantities of alcohol.

Specialists are making that claim: the dangers start at the first glass. It's not a conspiracy theory. Google a bit and you can find a few decent studies.

I'd also add that alcohol definitely bothers people, maybe not just you.

I did google, all I found were journalists making that claim, and no convincing data. See e.g. my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18824502 - about one of the papers that's cited here to make this claim.

> caffeine

There's little evidence that drinking coffee or tea is bad for you overall. In contrast, anything beyond very moderate alcohol consumption is almost certainly bad for you.

Ingesting too large amounts of caffeine is almost certainly bad for you. It's a stimulant that increases your blood pressure and heart rate. You don't want to overdo that. It's also diuretic, if you substitute water for coffee (which some people do) it can actually lead to dehydration.

But yes, I agree to your larger point that coffee is less dangerous than alcohol.

>It's a stimulant that increases your blood pressure and heart rate.

Does it do that to a significant extent to regular users, though? I thought the stimulant effects mostly went away once you build up a tolerance.

Similarly, there is little diuretic effect for regular coffee drinkers:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140402-are-coffee-and-tea-...

Interesting, I didn't know that.

As to stimulation effect for regular users... I guess it might depend, but for me, I do notice when I drink too much coffee. And I am a "regular user" - I'd say I drink around 4 espresso a day (which is not a problem, but if say I bump that up to 10, I definitely feel it)

The same would be said for those who drink regularly over years. More is required for the same effects which introduces more risk.

Of course too much of anything is bad. People also die from drinking too much water. But the reality is that billions of people a day use caffeine and there are not widespread problems.

Isn’t that duretic problem a myth? The water in coffee more than compensates for it. It is actually funny to see atricles about the coffee. One week it’s how it is bad for you, another week how it’s good. There is a song by one old Lithuanian band “Doctors”, basically lamenting how this and that is bad for you, acorrding to doctors. And it has the line “but if you think about it, the most harmul thing is the living itself”.

Good point, caffeine was not a good example. Cigarettes (or smoking in general, whatever it is) and alcohol are really the primary "legal poisons" we allow, I guess. At least in most of the world. With alcohol actually almost encouraged in most parts.

> The available evidence suggests that the main legitimate concern regarding caffeine and energy drink use is the potential negative impact on sleep but that, otherwise, there is no cause for concern regarding caffeine use in the general population.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4264529/

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