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Comment by aantix | Hacker News Reader

If you're a slow metabolizer of caffeine like I am, stay away from caffeine.

CYP1A2

https://www.geneticlifehacks.com/liver-detox-genes-cyp1a2/

The difference in sleep quality is dramatic.

If I have caffeine, even a small 20mg at 7am, I'm up 4-6 times the next night, going to the bathroom, superficial sleep.

Without caffeine, I'm in a deep sleep. So much so that I don't change positions at all, and my body slightly aches from being in the same position so long. My bladder nearly feels like it's going to burst, because I've slept so long.

There was a study I saw while back that said eating cruciferous vegetables speeds up caffeine metabolism. I've tried that, but that didn't seem to help. The caffeine still seemed to disturb my sleep. I tried BrocoMax, a broccoli supplement, that didn't seem to help either.

Exercise helps a little bit. But it's still not the quality of sleep I receive with zero caffeine.

I think much faster when I drink caffeine. Recently I revisited this issue and tried micro-dosing 5-Hour Energy (2mL). At first it seemed promising. But then it seems to slowly build up in my system. Sleep quality deteriorates slower. But the deterioration is there. I prematurely posted this status.

https://twitter.com/aantix/status/1706020516060971399

Sadly, it doesn't appear that I can drink caffeine and have quality sleep.

I hate that I have to choose.

View on HN

I have the same issue, it's truly unfortunate. What's odd is I forget about what caffeine does to my sleep and after a few weeks/months of drinking it, I'm wondering why I'm so stressed, tired and can't get ANY sleep.

I stop drinking coffee and BAM, I sleep like a baby. It doesn't MATTER when I drink it, I can drink it at 6AM and I will not have a good deep sleep. I am unsure if this is coincidence, but I also notice I remember way less dreams when I am on caffeine than not. I also find it's a compounding effect which is why it's slightly annoying.

If I drink 1 cup, in 2 weeks, my sleep will be fine so I will think, okay, it's not the caffeine. Then I will continue drinking it for weeks and suddenly I haven't had a good nights rest in weeks and I'm wondering what is going on. Not having deep sleep for weeks really has a big impact on your stress levels, memory, emotional well being and general energy levels.

The annoying part is coffee is so good for productivity so I go through cycles (also you start to think it's the stress not the caffeine that's causing the sleep issue!)

Weeks of stressful work - drink more caffeine to get all the work done - bad sleep, bad mood, bad energy levels, aka all the negative affects from not having enough deep sleep.

Weeks of less stressful work, no caffeine, great sleep, great mood/energy levels, etc.

I've always convinced myself that not drinking caffeine for deep sleep is just placebo, but I've tested it so many times that it just can't be.

Is there a way to test if you're a slower metabolizer? I know my partner can drink 3 cups and she is totally fine, lucky her! I'm 100% convinced I am, but it would be cool to test by some sort of blood/urine test?

You'll have to do a genetic test. Nebula, 23andme, etc.

Then look at CYP1A2, see if you have the C/C genotype.

Definitely read the Genetic Life Hacks article that I linked to above.

So if C/C then slow metabolizer?

Correct. C/C is the genotype.

Marker rs762551, as another poster noted above.

For 23andme customers: https://you.23andme.com/tools/data/?query=rs762551

Thank you for sharing your link.

Groan, I'm A/C!!

That's great - this all came in time for me to run it by my doc today during an annual physical.

CYP1A2 is the whole gene- you need to look at marker rs762551 within CYP1A2. Both the C/C and A/C genotype are slow caffeine metabolizers. The most common genotype is A/A, which is a fast metabolizer.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/snp/rs762551

Do you have a link to one that shows A/C? I'm only seeing C/C (I'm A/C so curious). Thanks!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2014233/

This seems to be the original paper. I don't find this paper particularly meaningful, but the effects they did observe showed A/C and C/C to be about the same, and both different than A/A.

This is based on a 5 hour after caffeine ingestion blood test in smokers. They found no differences in the non-smokers, but those were urine tests taken at variable times (whenever they peed), which seems sketchy to me.

Based on this study, subsequent studies (e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16522833/) seem to group A/C and C/C together, and not look at them independently. C/C is rare enough that studies have trouble getting many individuals from that group.

Stay away from 23andme if you have any privacy concerns. I've worked with providers of DNA insights and advice that don't build their revenue model on selling your data. For example DNAPal.me

They do not sell your data; Facebook and Google also don't sell your data.

Your DNA is worthless[0] and impossible to hide. If someone did want your DNA there is nothing you could do to stop them. You leave it everywhere you go.

[0] except to your children you don't know you have

Yeah, but why not support companies doing "the right thing" and nudge the trend towards companies that respect and preserve the privacy interests of their customers.

They do respect it. You have to sign up for research and fill out a thousand surveys before any of that data is used for… research.

So why's everyone making such a fuss about 23&me this week?

Journalists are kind of bad at understanding how things actually work.

I really wish there were more outlets like how for the legal/news junkie circuit we have things like MeidasTouch or whatever its called and the other YouTuber journalists (they deserve that umofficial title because what they do is top shelf journalism or at least investigative YouTubing.

did you forget /s

They sell it to GlaxoSmithKline and others:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23andMe

not to mention the recent data breach

Fascinating. What are your deep sleep totals on and off caffeine?

This sounds like the same cycle I go through, especially the forgetting part. I've found that cycling caffeine through the week (taking a break on weekends) and just not having too much even during the week can help maintain the productivity, but it also means spending my weekends in a tired daze. I think I just need to commit to not having any caffeine, or if I do, only taking it temporarily before stopping again.

So if I can fall asleep after moderate amounts (like, right away after intake), this prolly doesn't affect me, no?

For anyone reading this and wanting to get off caffeine, but finding it difficult because of withdrawal symptoms like headaches, here’s a trick that makes it easier.

If you’re drinking a morning coffee you’ll be getting 100-200mg of caffeine. But even a small amount of caffeine will take almost all the edge off withdrawal and prevent headaches. A 75g dark chocolate bar at 70% will give you 20-25mg of caffeine. Costco sells boxes of Lindt chocolate bars that meet this criteria. Eat one in the morning instead of coffee (the sugar and theobromine seems to help as well). Once you’ve done this for a week it’s easy to just stop because most people won’t get withdrawal symptoms from 20mg.

Cold turkey. I do it all the time. Not hard but yes I get a headache. I don't understand people who have to ease their way off a substance.

There was a joke like that, it went something like: "Quitting smoking is so easy, I've done it so many times already!"

Joke works if the plan is to quit permanently. I like my substances, but its still good to take breaks.

I typically weigh my coffee, either for making espresso (20g) or for pourovers (25g). Last time I quit, went like this: a) move from two espressos -> one espresso for a few days. Once steady on a single 20g espresso... b) move from 20g espresso to 20g pouroer. c) each day take a few grams off the pour over. The last time I made one I used 5 mg beans, and then quit pretty easily the next day.

This taper method made it totally doable for me, no headaches. The hardest part was going from 2 espressos to 1, mostly because of the habit. I substituted in herbal tea for my second cup....

Why americans drink 20g espressos is beyond me. Thats a triple espresso in european standards. A single espresso is 7 grams. Having double espresso in america would basically translate to 6 espressos in europe. I moved from Europe to New York City a few years ago and I always ask the baristas how many grams is their espresso and they dont know. I ask them if the single espresso drink they have is essentially dopio espresso and they have no clue what i am talking about. And on top of that it costs 4$ for an espresso + taxes which equals to around 4.50$. Coffee culture in NYC is subpar to any major european city, and I am afraid to even find out hows it like in other cities in the US! Even the shit third world european country I come from (in the balkans) has better coffee culture than NYC! Then they're wondering why nobody can sleep here!

20g yield or dry?

In Australia, the convention I've seen is broadly 10-12g dry with a 2:1 ratio. I normally go a bit higher if pulling a ristretto.

I don't believe my portafilter would perform very well with 7g.

Dry. 7 gram ground beans. Although now its moving more to the side of 9 grams but the smallest portafilter pot is the espresso solo.

I just put my smaller portafilter on my espresso machine and made a 9g pour. (I'm on a taper right now anyway, so this was a good move).

20g dry. I was 18, but I have a bigger basket.

Yeah, good point. I didn't even realize that they make e61 baskets as small as 6g (I just googled).

I don't know, though, about size. I get espressos in europe a lot. Last time I was in Paris, most my espressos seemed like american size ones. Maybe because I was drinking mostly third-wave coffee shops?

When I was in Italy awhile ago, the espressos were definitely small 7-10g singles that cost 1€.

Traditional cafes serve espressos that are 7 grams and its 1eur, 1.50 eur perhaps. I assume some would do 14 grams that are more modern as you say third wave, but 20 grams is a lot of caffeine in there I dont think its common in europe for an espresso. Take it this way, if you order a cappuccino or a fredo espresso, they need to put double espresso in there with the foam, and in a place where they serve 14 gram or 18 gram espressos that means you're getting 28 gram or 36 gram total in there, and thats a heck of a lot of caffeine. Once I tried just a normal american drip diner coffee with my bagel in nyc and besides that it tasted horrible as if i was drinking just pure mud water i somehow got so much caffeine from it that I got jittery, and I am a coffee drinker with usually have 1-2 espressos a day. I think everyone in the US is overdoing coffee to be totally honest with you. Not to mention the starbucks large iced coffees, they're like straight adrenaline in a cup basically you might as well inject it at that point.

Yeup, agreed on the overdosing caffeine. When you start talking about those Venti starbucks (and large Dunks), those have upwards of 300mg of caffeine [1], which is probably equivalent to the five shots you have. We don't sleep enough and have to work too hard here. :(

However, if you're comparing drinking crappy NYC diner coffee to coffee culture, there's a ton of great coffee places and third-wave coffee in NYC.

[1] https://www.caffeineinformer.com/the-complete-guide-to-starb...

NYC has nice cafes for sure for their coffee, just to name a few, Devocion, Afficionado, Everyman Espresso, Blue bottle, and there's some other ones that I haven't tried yet. But in all the places I've been so far an espresso was upwards of 3.75$ without tax, and not once it was an actual solo 7-9 gram shot, it was a dopio basically. There were some baristas that knew what I was talking about and told me they can make a solo but it would cost the same amount. In addition, the cafes are filled to the brim with people working on laptops, theres barely any coffee culture in NYC in the european sense, and most have big drinks so they can sip it over hours just typing on their keyboards. One other small fact is that you cannot choose what kind of beans you want in your espresso, except for Devocion which has a blend and a single origin but they're not that different since all their beans are colombian. Quite a few specialty coffee places in Europe have a few bean varieties from different regions and you can choose which one you want. In addition, european coffee culture means sitting outside under the sun sipping an espresso and talking to a friend or reading a book or just enjoying life, not typing away on a laptop and working. I really miss that. Another thing is affogatos are not popular but its an amazing drink.

> "75g dark chocolate bar at 70%"

> "Eat one in the morning"

That's like ~ 35gr. of fat in the morning of which ~ 20gr. saturated fat. Ouch...

That's a great time for fats. Definitely better than the usual breakfast approach of giving yourself an insulin spike.

You could try decaf plus tyrosine/phenylalanine supplements as well.

Theobromine is another stimulant, so I'm not sure it helps.

decaf does not mean caffeine-free (usually < 5%, but not always)

I found switching to green tea easy. Got infusion jug and still have morning routine to do it, it's actually much more convenient to have it at the desk to refill. You can also control how intense you want it - with water temperature and quantity - as even very light version is great to sip through the day.

FWIW... in my 30s, caffeine withdrawal yielded headaches, but beginning in my 50s (IIRC) it no longer did.

It took me far too long to realize caffeine was the cause of my restless sleep issues. Even just 80mg at 10am. I thought it was stress. There’s definitely millions of other people that don’t realize caffeine is killing them slowly due to lack of good sleep, and just continue the cycle.

This was also a good lesson that if I continued to listen to the pop science, the general consensus was that coffee was a net positive.

And that was my stance for a long time.

I didn't realize that there could be such a distinction in one's reaction to caffeine intake.

"The genetics of caffeine sensitivity also have implications for cardiovascular health.

In a 2006 study of more than 4,000 people, researchers found that for slow metabolizers, consuming more cups of coffee per day was associated with an increased risk of a heart attack. Fast metabolizers had no such increased risks."

How do you know what kind you are?

I have zero response to caffeine up to a certain point, and then past that I get shaky and anxious. One cup of tea, no response. Two is too much. Coffee is often on the edge. But no effect on alertness no matter how much or little I take.

You'll have to do a genetic test like Nebula, 23andme, etc. Then look at CYP1A2, marker rs762551, to see if you have the C/C genotype.

If you have a 23andme account:

https://you.23andme.com/tools/data/?query=rs762551

Or not.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/hackers-advertise-sale-23...

Similarly, it was wild for me to learn recently that the standard deviation for how many calories our body utilizes for a given calorie intake was WAY bigger than I thought.

Everyone intuitively knows that if 100 people each consume 100 calories, there will be some variation in how much of those 100 calories is "used" by each individual. But I had no idea the distribution is on the scale of 330%!

Meaning in this example, some people would only get 30 usable calories, and some would get the full 100! That was way larger of a spread than I thought.

Do you have your source? This doesn't make much sense from an evolutionary perspective, for natural selection to be indifferent to inefficient energy intake. Unless it's the increased efficiency that is new, like adult lactose tolerance.

I, too, would like a source here, as most consensus is that, for a hundred people of equal physical activity, eating habits, height and weight, the necessary caloric intake for a day is only +-75 or so.

So that persons numbers make very little sense.

Would love to see the source of this study - genuinely curious.

> small 20mg

And if you're someone like me - beware that 'decaf' really isn't. Even as little as *5 mg* of caffeine causes me everything from sleeplessness to migraines (verified with a double blind study administered by my wife!)

Nitpick: assuming your wife knew which sample was decaf and which was regular coffee, it would be a single-blind experiment.

Correct, which is why I said it was double-blind.

Could you describe the steps you took to perform this experiment? I'm curious and would love to do that myself.

It's definitely easier with a 3rd party, but here's what we did. Note that before this experiment I hadn't had any caffeine at all for several years because I was pretty sure it affected me badly.

(1) Experimenter dissolved measured weight caffeine powder in water, and divided it into various measured portions, and labeled them with unique numbers. Then made identical measured portions of pure water, also labeled. She sealed the number assignments in an envelope.

(2) On experiment days, I chose a water portion, recording the day and number in secret - she could not see which portion I chose or what number it was. I then poured the water into whatever (zero caffeine!) drink (or whatever else I could mix it in with) I was having. I used drinks and food with strong enough flavors that I definitely could not taste the possible caffeine addition.

So now neither of us knows whether I took one of the caffeine ones.

(3) I recorded the day's results.

How did you account for the placebo effect?

Decaf coffee tastes about the same as regular coffee (some people claim to tell the difference, but I can’t except that when I get decaf it’s the cheap mass produced stuff and for regular coffee I like to support local roasters). Maybe the taste was triggering the same effects?

See my comment here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38101401

Apologies for the lazy comment (I know I could do the research, but I'm busy atm).

I 100% agree this is an affect of caffeine, but I'm also interested in what research on the following shows:

1. How does caffeine compare to other factors (stress, exercise, diet) in affecting sleep? 2. Does caffeine have a placebo affect on sleep quality?

I ask these questions, as I've found that caffeine does affect my sleep quality, but at the same time stress levels are probably a better predictor of how well I sleep.

It's very interesting how different reactions to caffeine are. I can take a 200 mg caffeine pill 5 hours before sleep and have no trouble sleeping. My Samsung smartwatch doesn't indicate any loss of deep sleep either (1-2 hours usually).

I do have a high tolerance though, but I don't weight much either.

I find being in caffeine withdrawal definitely makes falling sleep easier. But in steady state being on or off caffeine seems to be about the same?

It's hard to say though! Sleep onset is one of those things that's very strongly affected by placebo/nocebo effects (i.e. the person in this thread who says drinking caffeine /permanently/ worsened his sleep even after discontinuation .. )

For those of you in this thread who know you're slow metabolizers... is the effect on sleep obvious in a way that's distinguishable from nocebo? Or is it pretty subtle?

You know, I've been saying something similar to what you wrote for a long time: if I have a coffee at 7am I struggle to sleep and everyone around me has been always looking at me like I'm crazy. It's a relief to know that there are more people having the same issue. It's a shame, because I do love the taste of coffee but I cannot cope with this specific side effect.

https://www.mygenefood.com/blog/why-coffee-is-bad-for-me-but...

"Because it’s not just the half life, caffeine has a quarter life, meaning it’s still has its hooks in my patient long after that morning sip. According to sleep scientist Matthew Walker, author of Why We Sleep, caffeine’s quarter life is about double its half life. This means that slow metabolizers like my patient may still be feeling the effects of their morning coffee well into the night. No wonder caffeine has been shown to be so disruptive of sleep. 4 After all, it binds to and blocks our adenosine receptors, the signaling pathways the body uses to fall asleep each night."

> caffeine’s quarter life is about double its half life

1/2 = 2 * 1/4

Isn't that by definition?

The error in your reasoning is that you're replacing "quarter life" and "half life" with "1/4" and "1/2" (scalars), when the definition is actually about the number of hours the caffeine stays in your system. You are also putting the (2 *) on the wrong side. It should instead be:

half_life_hrs * 2 = quarter_life_hrs

Think of it this way: if caffeine's half life is 6 hours, and you drink 100mg, it means that after 6 hours you still have 50mg in your system. Given that, you could try to extrapolate and say that after another 6 hours, you would have 0mg left in your system.

However, since "caffeine's quarter life is about double its half life", that means that:

6hrs * 2 = quarter_life_hrs

Therefore, after 12 hours (6hrs * 2), you would still have 25mg (a quarter of 100mg) of caffeine in your system.

Interesting! I am the exact opposite - I can drink coffee any time, and it doesn't affect my sleep at all. The reverse side of it it that it doesn't wake me up at all either. If I'm sleepy, giving me a cup of coffee is useless. I like the taste of it, but if I want to boost my alertness, I will need something else. I used to drink a lot of caffeinated drinks in my youth, so maybe I developed a tolerance - or maybe it's just my genes.

How long have you been off of caffiene?

I’d think in the first few months of quitting you’d be overtired from withdraw and might sleep better.

I'm an A/C, neither AA nor CC. Not a lot out there on that, some say "slow" is dominant, but that leaves me confused because I have none of the problems you've described and I drink 200-400mg of caffeine a day (monster energy + 3x 12oz soda).

A/C is still considered a slow metabolizer. This is just one allele that affects caffeine metabolism... there is still probably a ton of variability from person to person within the same allele here. I am A/C and have all of the problems described here.

same here - I can still feel the effects of a cup of coffee at midnight that I drank at 10am

You make it sound dark-side / light-side. Might I interest you in a pleasing shade of gray?

Hemodialysis.

Join the 'penumbra-side'.

More seriously, sorry you have that issue. Unfortunately, I can't think of anything useful I'm familiar with. You could look into 'inducers'. Wikipedia has a small list.

At least, though, it's good to know about the trade-offs - knowing that caffeine specifically comes at that kind of cost. Some suffer for years before determining what the actual root cause of some difficulty has been. With awareness, at least there is the possibility of volition / decision.

I find this interesting..

So the idea would be do consume caffeine in the morning, then perform hemodialysis in the evening to rid your blood stream of the circulating effects?

It's interesting because this was me. I couldn't drink coffee, even in the morning, without getting pretty strong jitters AND not being able to sleep at night. I didn't know it could be because of slow metabolizing.

But I've been forcing myself to drink coffee for some of its benefits (heart and focus) and now I can drink coffee at 3pm, no jitters, no effect to sleep. I'm actually wondering if I sleep better by drinking coffee because I'm more active during the day and much more tired when I hit the bed now.

I don't know how people put up with waking up to pee. Is it really worth it to eat/drink within a few hours of bedtime if it's going to wake you up at 3am?

On the flip side, I typically drink 16-32 oz of water before sleeping and never wake up needing to pee.

If I drink past 2pm I'm up...weird but only started after I was 40 really. I'm starting to think my sleep just sucks so my mind is more aware that I have to go and not that something has changed with my bladder

I believe that may be an indicator of an enlarged prostate, if you have one.

It's a circadian rhythm thing. You get into a habit of peeing at specific times, and that can include in the middle of the night.

You can fix the habit by waiting a half hour longer to pee each night until you can make it to the morning, but this does involve lying awake in bed for a while, which is much worse for your sleep than just getting up quickly to pee.

I've fixed this a few times in my life by just going to bed thirsty until I break the nightly habit.

Interesting, I've been working on my sleep and read this from the article you posted: Curcumin is an inhibitor of CYP1A2.

I sleep really well with a 200-400mg of Ibuprofen but it's not something I want to take often or at all for sleep. Curcumin/turmeric is also anti-inflammatory. I'm starting to think that cutting out all caffeine (cup of black tea in the morning) and taking some curcumin might be the way to better sleep.

Definitely be careful with Ibuprofen. Real risk of messing up your stomach if you take it too regularly.

Hey man, I’m in the same boat and i’ve had to eliminate caffeine.

As a replacement, I do Yoga(Sun Salutations) for either 4 or 12 minutes depending on how my body feels in the morning (or if i need energy in the afternoon). It provides much cleaner energy than caffeine: no crash. Just thought i’d share :D

Yours and all of the child comments are fascinating to me. I can drink a cup of coffee right before bed and it doesn’t seem to affect my sleep noticeably (e.g. I feel just as refreshed the next day as when I don’t).

I have even tried to give it up multiple times and have lasted well over a month before deciding that I was still more tired (and irritable) than when summoning it.

Thanks for pointing this out! I'm a slow caffeine metabolizer also, and it took a long time to notice what is happening in my body, and not listen to other people that say things like "just stop drinking coffee before 5pm" or "limit to 4 cups a day" that totally don't work for me.

I also hate that I have to choose. I purchased 10mg caffeine gummies and was optimistic, but, like you, even if I have two at 7am I feel the effects at 11pm when trying to sleep.

I wish I could alter the amount or intake mechanism and be fine, but it’s fundamentally what happens once it’s in my bloodstream.

Is there a place where I can get a whole genome sequencing and where they don't sell my data?

I used Dante Labs and asked them to delete my data under the GDPR after downloading it

They give you all the data – raw reads and a whole aligned genome for a fairly reasonable price

Nebula Genomics has a pretty good privacy policy.

https://nebula.org/ownership-of-your-genetic-data/

Selling data is the credit card and ad tech industry, not genetics. Your 23AndMe data has approximately no value unless you take the research surveys, since there's nothing to associate it with.

why do people say stuff like this?

for example, they sell it to GlaxoSmithKline

not to mention the recent data breach

They don't because it isn't worth anything. You are misunderstanding what happens.

For those with impacted sleep due to caffeine -

Have you found any supplements or alternatives that increase focus but did not impact your sleep quality?

Sadly, I have no alternative recommendations. Everything that claims to increase "focus", also appears to impact my sleep.

If you have ADD or ADHD, Ritalin might help. I have severe ADHD that I refused to treat for decades, but I recently gave in.

I am _hugely_ sensitive to caffeine and feel a buzz even from decaf. It ruins my sleep in a similar way to what a couple people in this thread describe.

I take 10mg of instant-release Ritalin at 7AM each day, and it allows me to focus and deliver. It wears off by around 2-3PM, and I sleep like a rock most nights.

There are downsides as well: once it wears off, it leaves you mentally drained until you've slept. Also, there's a potential for building a tolerance, as well as potential for addiction. I've been lucky in both cases so far, but ymmv.

Creatine, phenylpiracetam, tyrosine, 7 minute workout.

Low dose nicotine gum does help, but it’s pretty habit forming. I’m not convinced it’s worse than taking daily ADHD medication or caffeine though.

Aerobic exercise (preferably outdoors) is the one thing that works with mostly positive side effects.

The metabolite of nicotine has a long half-life and probably degrades sleep quality.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9443078/

L-theanine

Seriously.

I panic if I run out

I do recommend switching to tea. Anecdotally I do feel better on tea than coffee, but coffee has a long-lasting addictive pull. I guess it's a good time to quit coffee again.

Kava. It's calming unlike caffeine, but also seems to help concentration. It seems to flush out of my system very quickly, so that I haven't noticed it affecting sleep either way.

> I hate that I have to choose.

FWIW There are sleep aids a doctor can prescribe that will put you into a deep sleep. Would be worth trying to see if you can get the best of both worlds.

>My bladder nearly feels like it's going to burst, because I've slept so long.

I don't think having to pee has anything to do with the type of sleep you get. I've heard, if anything, it's a symptom of sleep apnea.

I had no idea it could be metabolized so slowly... thanks!

Did you ever experiment with tea? Your message is clear on caffeine overall but I am curious if you tried tea in the process of figuring this out.

Have you tried limiting it to 1 coffee per week? Wondering how that would play out

Any way to boost CYP1A2 or any other gene involved in coffee metabolism?

Nothing that I have found.

Eating cruciferous vegetables, sleep, nothing has seemed to help much.

I tried taking BroccoMax for its Sulforaphane content. As suggested in the article below. Even when taking BroccoMax, ingesting a cup of coffee, my sleep still suffered.

Fast Caffeine Metabolism for Better Sleep with Sulforaphane

https://burtonator.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/fast-caffeine-me...

The linked article mentions cruciferous vegetables

For some people, the effects of caffeine seem to be permanent. I am one.

Can you expand on this?

Not a lot.

The alertness and anxiety just stacks with every cup and never wears off. The next day, it's even higher with that day's caffeine. The next day, moreso. Eventually, you reach, and then surpass, supernatural levels of mental overdrive, like cheesing INT in Morrowind, and you never come back down. With every sip, you know nothing will ever be the same.

He's just referring to the sleep part. He hasn't slept since 2004.

Sort of, but not exactly. More like quitting it doesn’t change me back to prior me. I will just be current me but without the addiction. I’ll still long for her just the same. Once you start drinking it black, you never go back.

Actually I envy you. I can drink one expresso or two one hour before sleep and will sleep the same. It is kind of annoying because sometimes I wanted to pull an all-nighter and coffee doesn't have the effect in me that I wanted and I end up sleeping anyway.

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