Dr David Posen -Stress Management Keynote Speaker and Author

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Caffeine: A surprisingly subtle stressor

Guess what is the one suggestion or intervention from which I've gotten the biggest pay-off in all my years of stress counseling? I was even surprised by the answer.

My first tip-off came while seeing a patient years ago who had a long list of problems. We'd been systematically working through his issues when, early one morning, he showed up for his appointment with a big mug of industrial-strength coffee. I casually asked him how many cups he drank in a day and was shocked when he said, "Oh, I don't know ... eight or ten."

Given that the average person can only tolerate one or two cups of coffee a day, I told him that he was drinking toxic amounts of caffeine and suggested that he cut back. When he next returned, none of the issues in his life had changed substantially, but he was feeling more calm and relaxed and we both realized that the caffeine had been a big contributor to his stress.

A simple intervention had had a profound impact.

Caffeine is such a socially sanctioned substance (try saying that quickly five times!) that we forget that it's a drug. It's a stimulant, actually a strong stimulant. It stimulates adrenaline release and also blocks a brain chemical called adenosine (which inhibits or neutralizes excitatory activity). The net result is that it jazzes up your body and produces a stress reaction. I now think of coffee as "stress in a cup." Caffeine gets into your system within minutes, peaks at about an hour, but stays in your system six to ten hours. (And longer as you get older - one more thing to look forward to!) And, it accumulates. So, the coffee you have at lunch adds to the caffeine from your mid-morning coffee and the cup you had at breakfast. A study at Duke University showed that people who had two or three cups of coffee in a four-hour morning period had an adrenaline level 37% higher than the non-coffee drinking control group. That's a lot of adrenaline chasing around your body for no particular benefit.

For years I've asked all my new patients to try an experiment. I ask them to go off caffeine long enough to see if they notice a difference. The period I pick is three weeks. If they feel better without it, they can choose to stay off it; if they don't notice a difference they can go back to it.

The results have been dramatic. At least 75-80% of my patients feel better without it and many of them feel dramatically better. I hear testimonials such as: "I can't believe the difference." "This is incredible." "Why didn't someone tell me about this earlier?" And most of them stay off it after that, except for perhaps one cup in the morning.

As for the 20-25% who said they didn't notice any difference, when they go back to it, many of them feel the rush and the buzz that they hadn't noticed before. This is why the caffeine effect is so subtle. They get used to it. A colleague told me an interesting story. This guy's a microsurgeon (which doesn't mean he's a tiny surgeon, by the way--it means he operates under a microscope). What he noticed is that, after two cups of coffee, he could see his hand shaking slightly under the microscope but not with his naked eye. That's how subtle it can be.

Caffeine is found in coffee, tea, cola drinks (like Coke and Pepsi) and chocolate. It is also found in some other soft drinks (e.g. Barq's Root Beer) and some medications, so you have to read labels. Even decaffeinated coffee has a little caffeine in it so, for the sake of the experiment, I suggest staying off decaf as well. However, there is one huge caution to observe. Don't stop abruptly or you'll get bad, migraine-type withdrawal headaches. The best plan is to wean yourself off gradually by decreasing your caffeine intake by one drink a day until you are off totally. If you get a headache along the way, just stay at the same level for a few days until the headaches go away, and then start decreasing again.

By the way, as much as I have read that caffeine is an addictive substance, I have never met anyone who couldn't give it up within a week or two.

The benefits people notice include feeling more calm and relaxed, sleeping better, having more energy, less heartburn and less muscle ache. Even participants in my seminars come back to tell me how much better they feel without caffeine.

So, if you want to get some major stress relief, join the thousands who have benefited from this simple lifestyle change. Incidentally, if you plan to continue consuming caffeine, limit yourself to one or two cups a day and don't drink any after lunchtime - because it also messes up your sleep. If you're a caffeine drinker, try the experiment and let me know how you make out. You may be surprised to realize that you, too, have been drinking stress out of a cup through much of your adult life.