Follow-up question that comes to mind: what happens to the fats and sugars when they don't get "accumulated"? Do they hang around in the blood, temporarily raising blood sugar and triglycerides? If so, how bad is that, if you do it frequently?
IIUC, obesity is bad partly because it's a sign of excess caloric nutrients in the body and therefore chronically high blood sugar and triglycerides (and partly for other reasons, like inflammatory signalling by fat tissues). I don't know the relative significance of these different factors, but I have to wonder if this effect of caffeine is hiding one obvious sign of problems while exacerbating the problems themselves.
ETA: it looks like they found that caffeine also had blood-triglyceride-reducing effects, partly by reducing lipogenesis. I would think this would shift all of the burden to blood sugar. I don't see anything about blood sugar levels.
ETA: I did some further research. Caffeine does acutely raise blood sugar levels[1], but caffeine intake is inversely-correlated with T2D[2]. The reason doesn't seem to be known yet, and I don't know if anyone's ruled out the obvious confounder that people who drink more coffee drink less Coke.
re ETA2: if it acutely raises blood sugar levels by pulling it out of storage cells, then it makes sense that the baseline chronic sugar levels would be lower, by mass balance; and the development of T2D is more dependent on chronic blood sugar levels, not acute swings. Not saying this is the mechanism, it is just that the correlation should not be suprising.
It may as well be noted that plenty of people who drink coffee (or mate) get fat.
But this is not a refutation. Nutrition is confusing because we’re not used to looking at lots of tiny effects adding up to something large. (Eg. High saturated fat intake causes about a 20% increase in heart disease mortality.)
Just like many other effects, this one is small and requires statistics to prove.
> Nutrition is confusing because we’re not used to looking at lots of tiny effects adding up to something large.
This. I think is always more complicated than we think.
And one thing that many times is left out of the discussion is that some foods may have different effects on one individual than others. I was once looking for videos that talk about this and after watching too many, the only one found was :
If you consume more calories than you use, you gain weight. Fat accumulation or loss is simple physics. Caffeine may have some small impact as do other stimulants, but often you see people consuming caffeine with large amounts of sugar or carbohydrates and rarely do you see those same people immediately jumping rope for 3 hours to burn off the equivalent excess calories.
> If you consume more calories than you use, you gain weight.
People throw around this idea as if it was simple.
Just the concept of calorie, which is bound to water temperature changes, is at most a vague second or third order approximation of a body’s energy intake. Petrol would be of super high calorie for instance, but it makes no sense for the body.
We have no clear idea of what any food gives as energy to a body, nor how each body reacts differently to any food, nor how much of that goes out, when that potentially stored energy is used in what amount (would CO2 production measurement help in this regard ? even if so but then it might be get rid of in unexpected ways)
So while the in/out idea may not be completely wrong, it’s effectively useless to anyone seriously thinking about diets.
I'm mostly agreeing with you, but I think you may be going slightly too far.
If you absorb more calories than your metabolism burns, then you gain weight. Variables are:
- Calorie content of food.
- Ability of your body to absorb those calories. This includes what form the calories are in (petrol, obviously, doesn't work), but also may include your gut biome, and perhaps other person-specific issues.
- Your activity level (not just exercise, but non-exercise physical movement as well).
- What your food does to your metabolism.
Sure, if you eat too much of the wrong things, it hurts. If you exercise, it helps. But it's much more complicated than that.
No, it isn't. The biochemistry controlling nutrient uptake or release by different tissues is incredibly complex and nowhere near fully understood, which is part of the reason that studies like this one are interesting. We don't really know how any given calorie surplus or deficit maps to subcutaneous fat vs. visceral fat vs. thermogenesis vs. muscle vs. fatty liver. We don't really know why some people develop T2D at a normal weight, some people only develop it if they're obese, and some people never develop it despite being morbidly obese.
Pretending that this is a simple and solved problem doesn't really help anybody except authors of diet books.
Well not quite, it's never really as simple as that.
People with bowel issues for example might actually consume vastly more calories than their peers but not gain as much weight due to their body being less efficient in converting caloric intake into fat. People with a fast metabolism might burn more calories per day at rest than others as well, and some of the complex interactions could involve interactions with caffeine.
If people are gaining weight rapidly it's always a good idea to look at the whole picture rather than just caloric intake because that can mask the true underlying causes.
Well, caffeine isn’t a “free” or “magical” solution to weight loss and it’s obvious that most stimulants prevent weight gain because they activate the fight-or-flight response by stimulating the SNS, which depresses the feed-and-breed response that is activated with the SNS is calm. Thus, you can lose weight with stimulants (nicotine, caffeine, ephedra and so on), but you’ll be stressed, have higher blood pressure, heart rate and cortisol levels and not be thinking as clearly. Fasting or putting the fork down sooner maybe a better strategy than looking for a “magic” ligand to let people eat as much as they want. T
So we're finally ok caffeine? I feel it is now almost as unavoidable as sugar in commercial food products (in that many products use it as a secondary 'enhancer' of some kind).
As unavoidable as sugar? Not even close, at least in my experience. I run across it in chocolate and soda (don't have much of either), and in the occasional dessert like tiramisu. Other than that, it's really easy to avoid, at least for me. Where do you run across it?
It's a common nootropic and enhances brain function. It's only the withdrawal effects that make it undesirable. Personally, I get a hell of a more useful effect from an -afinil.
Caffeine and modafinil have very different effects. Modafinil just makes me alert and wanting to be in action. I don't feel tired, but I can sleep if I want to.
Caffeine is much harsher, and too much makes me nervous. And after a while, I'm tired, yet still too buzzed to sleep.
It's also not super great for your heart (not saying it's TERRIBLE, but it will raise your BP/pulse rate a bit), and it's diuretic effects can indirectly dehydrate you, as well, which will increase blood sugar.
I wish I could gain a tolerance for caffeine. Getting a coffee at a cafe is such a nice experience but I end up getting panic attacks from too much of caffeine.
The worst part about caffeine induced panic attacks for me is the unpredictability. I can drink a Coke/Pepsi or two occasionally with no problems, but I had a sweet tea this afternoon and am now completely jittery.
I'm not sure what this entails. You just tell your psychiatrist you have alertness issues and they prescribe modafinil? That doesn't seem like how it works
Adderall is the real stuff. I'd operate on that all the time if it weren't for tolerance and addiction potential. The effect is stronger, there are XR pills readily available, and most importantly I don't have the histamine reactions.
The -afinils I have to space out or combine with an anti-histamine and dose very carefully. When I didn't, I got very itchy skin like an allergy (and I've never had those before, though there is family history).
Never tried Ritalin or Mydayis, though some of my friends swear by it.
> When I didn't, I got very itchy skin like an allergy
Any kind of skin reaction to -afinils would scare me off using them entirely, due to the link with Steven-Johnsons syndrome (warning: do not google, or use a text-only browser to do so)
Yeah, obviously I panicked with that reaction, but it's a rare condition. And I obviously ran to my doctor with the whole story as soon as it happened anyway. Fortunately, I feel quite comfy talking to the docs about my drug use, so I'm well monitored.
And you know how it is, you can get SJS from Ibuprofen and Naproxen. You can't live in fear of low probability occurrences. But you're right in that it's worth making that decision in an informed manner, and keeping my doctors informed of what I intend is part of that.
What about caffeine and cortisol? Aren't stimulants a proxy for a stress-esque response from the body? Wouldn't that trigger weight gain? Or at least inhibit weight loss?
Cortisol is a catabolic hormone - it helps the body break down tissue for easier access to energy. It just also provokes the hunger impulse, and if you're not paying attention to it, you can overeat in response. If you don't alter your intake, on the net, increased cortisol should increase weight loss. Additionally, caffeine itself is an appetite suppressant, and is slightly thermogenic, for even more fat burning power.
It's an example of a basic mainstream word in a lang (French) not being well-known in another (English)
It would be useful to find a website that aggregate words with such property because heuristically if one word is well known in one language, it's probably a useful one, and the fact that your language hasn't yet assimilated it is contingent.
speaking of the French, I bet the effects for nicotine are similar if not amplified. Say what you will about premature aging, but those coffee-and-cigarettes types cut a lean profile.
I’m guessing one factor in that is the appetite suppression effects of both. I heard a story (though perhaps apocryphal) about tobacco use increasing during the Great Depression specifically because of that side effect.
This is a bit of a rant, so apologies in advance, but I just... don't care. After nearly 40 years on Earth I've learned that, if you consumer in moderation and mostly avoid the bad stuff (simple sugars/carbs) you'll be fine.
I'm not saying we shouldn't study this stuff. I'm not saying it isn't valuable. I understand why it's a difficult field to experiment in.
But I still don't care. I ignore health news like the plague. I'm 36, fit, Lowe body far, can lift a fair bit of weight. Moderation and a little common sense really does work here.
Does anyone have opinions on this? And why wouldn’t they test with coffee or regular black tea because there’s a lot more people drinking that I assume?
They also tested with synthetic caffeine and coffee-extracted caffeine, but didn't find much difference. Page 6 of the study has a graph, and this excerpt:
> 3.2. Caffeine, independently of its origin, abrogated lipid accumulation via regulation of lipogenic genes in vitro
> Mate tea and fractionated caffeine and decaffeinated samples were assayed for their anti-adipogenic potential in 3T3-L1 adipocytes (Fig. 3). Synthetic caffeine (SC) and caffeine extracted (CO2 super-critical extraction) from coffee (CC) were also evaluated. All samples but DM [decaffeinated mate] significantly (p < 0.05) reduced lipid accumulation (from 20.6 to 40.7%) (Fig. 3A).
We already knew caffeine had various effects on fat metabolism, so the most interesting part of the study is probably the "but not other phytochemicals in mate tea" part.
Keep in mind that if researchers only investigated things that were the most popular, then the scientific community would have a massive blind-spot for the looong tail of substances and experiences.
Anyone in a social group that all take nootropics, but each one of you benefit more from different compounds? I’m curious how 1 herb/molecule is really effective on one persons mood/focus but has almost 0 effect on the next guy
One issue I have with this is that the CO2 extraction is not only going to pull caffeine out, but many other potential compounds. Their decaff mate probably doesn't have caffeine, but is most likely missing many other organic compounds.
determines whats left in your bloodstream then lots of complex biological processes determine what to do with that and many other chemicals in your body. Some of which are removed naturally.
False. Caffeine increases calories out, without increasing calories in. Macronutrient ratios, feeding schedules, and compounds such as caffeine affect metabolism, which determines calories out.
I take a half teaspoon of sugar plus about a tenth of a cup of milk in my coffee. That's 2 grams of sugar, for the sugar, plus 1.3g of sugar in the milk, so 3.3g of sugar for my coffee.
A 12oz can of coke, on the other hand, has 39 grams of sugar. A cup's worth of orange juice has 21 grams.
To get to a sugar value for my coffee that exceeds a soda, I would need:
- 10 teaspoons of sugar
or
- 3 cups worth of milk
or let's go 50/50
- 5 teaspoons of sugar with a cup and a half of milk.
Even flipping the milk to coffee creamer, which has 5 grams of sugar per serving, still requires a significant amount to be added to even near the sugar in a soda.
So let's keep it in perspective just how bad soda is compared to essentially everything else on offer. Hell you could drink about 8 750ml bottles of red wine before you hit the same sugar content as a can of coke.
Soda served in 6-8 oz portions for the same approximate price as wine or beer is ok (how it’s served in Germany). None of those things are good for you, but one or two on occasion won’t kill you.
Soda served in 20 oz bottles that are treated as single servings or as bottomless refills is horrifying. Watching my relatives constantly having a soda in hand is hard; watching my 6 year old nephew get given a medium-sized fast food cup of soda to go with his hamburger just about every day is soul-crushing, as is watching my little pre-verbal niece who is eager to eat blueberries and raw spinach leaves instead be fed the same crap her picky brother is willing to eat until she stops asking for more.
I can relate. I've family friend's who've completely acquiesced to the demands of their children for fast food, or heavily processed ready meals, soda and unfettered access to junk digital entertainment. It's an utter tragedy to witness knowing the cost it will bear on them in many regards as they grow up.
Conservation of energy determines the minimum number of a calories one must ingest to stay alive, work, etc. There is no maximum, since the body can often burn off excess as heat or simply excrete some things. There is also no law that says that we all have the same metabolic behavior.
Metabolism is an incredibly complex process influenced by innumerable variables. "Calories in, calories out" is a good maxim for combating fad dieters...but it's not actually true.
Variance in metabolism at the extremes is less than the energy in a Snickers bar. It matters, but worrying about your metabolism without first sorting your overall intake is a classic case of premature optimization.
No doubt, but "I have a fast/slow metabolism" is cited as an excuse by a lot of people in regards to weight changes (or lack thereof), and it's an excuse that is more or less irrelevant compared to intake management.
IIUC, obesity is bad partly because it's a sign of excess caloric nutrients in the body and therefore chronically high blood sugar and triglycerides (and partly for other reasons, like inflammatory signalling by fat tissues). I don't know the relative significance of these different factors, but I have to wonder if this effect of caffeine is hiding one obvious sign of problems while exacerbating the problems themselves.
ETA: it looks like they found that caffeine also had blood-triglyceride-reducing effects, partly by reducing lipogenesis. I would think this would shift all of the burden to blood sugar. I don't see anything about blood sugar levels.
ETA: I did some further research. Caffeine does acutely raise blood sugar levels[1], but caffeine intake is inversely-correlated with T2D[2]. The reason doesn't seem to be known yet, and I don't know if anyone's ruled out the obvious confounder that people who drink more coffee drink less Coke.
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067366...
2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15998896