fristechill

It's the headaches I'm talking about.

I've 'quit' tea and coffee for long periods. It only takes a small daily quantity of caffeine to eliminate the withdrawal headaches. One 'Pro Plus' pill per day is probably sufficient (50mg anhydrous caffeine), reduced to half a pill per day after a week, then nothing after two weeks. Pills don't trigger the addictive yearning as much as the full coffee experience does. There's still sleepiness to contend with, however.

It's not so much 'superior genes' as an absence of deleterious mutations. The brain requires the cooperation of the greatest number of genes (compared with other organs) in order in the develop in embryo.

Since the industrial revolution infant death has thankfully dropped but it seems likely this improvement has had the side-effect of increasing the number of deleterious mutations and therefore also of decreasing the average IQ in Western populations.