How To Manage Caffeine Withdrawal Symptoms
7 tips to reduce and manage caffeine withdrawal symptoms
What are caffeine withdrawal symptoms?
Caffeine is one of the most popular performance-enhancing substances: it gives us energy and reduces the perception of fatigue, improves endurance, strength, and power, improves concentration, increases motivation and eagerness, suppresses appetite, and increases fat burning.
But despite all the benefits that coffee and caffeine have, it’s also important to take breaks and cut down the intake every once in a while.
Caffeine binds to the adenosine receptors in the brain which signal tiredness, fatigue, and sleep rhythm. Caffeine takes the role of adenosine and in this way tells us that we’re not tired, that we have energy and it’s not time to sleep yet.
But our brain is smart: in response to caffeine intake, the brain will create more of these adenosine receptors and thus balance things out. We develop tolerance and we need more caffeine than before for the same effect.
But when we cut down on caffeine, suddenly there are so many of these adenosine receptors and they all signal the brain about tiredness and fatigue: that’s why we feel so tired, fatigued, and sluggish when we cut down on caffeine or take a pause off of it.
Caffeine withdrawal symptoms
Depending on your caffeine sensitivity and tolerance you’ve built to it, the negative symptoms can range from none to being very severe and negatively affecting our lives.
Most common caffeine withdrawal symptoms are:
- Headaches
- Tiredness and Fatigue
- Brain fog and difficulty concentrating
- Nausea
- Muscle pain
- Irritability
I’m very sensitive to caffeine: I digest and process it very quickly which means that I feel its effects very much. Because of this, I feel the caffeine withdrawal symptoms so much more. I can date it since my teenage years: almost every time I skipped or cut down on caffeine, I felt extreme fatigue, inability to focus, extreme dip in energy levels, strong headaches and even migraines at times, irritability, and sometimes even melancholy or mild depression.
But over the years, I’ve learned how to manage these caffeine withdrawal symptoms and make the transition to zero caffeine more easy.
How to manage caffeine withdrawal symptoms
Here are some tips that help me limit the caffeine withdrawal symptoms and help me when I decide to transition to a decaf period — whether that’s a day, a couple of days, a week, etc.
1.Slowly lower the dose
While quitting cold turkey might seem the best and most efficient way, it’s also usually the most painful. If you have the willpower or don’t feel the caffeine withdrawal symptoms, you can totally quit cold turkey. Otherwise, I advise lowering the caffeine slowly, over the course of a few days.
Start by cutting your caffeine intake by half; then by ¾ and then to zero.
In practice, this would look like this:
Let’s say you normally drink 2 cups of coffee (two double espressos) a day: on the first day allow yourself to have a cup (one double espresso), on the second day half a cup (or one espresso) and then on Day 3 no caffeine.
During this kind of transition will make the withdrawal symptoms less pronounced and give the body less of a shock and more room to adapt.
2.Switch coffee for tea
When you decide to cut caffeine from drinking coffee, it can be beneficial to switch from coffee to tea.
Tea has much lower caffeine intake in comparison with coffee (around 20–60mg compared to 60–120mg) which makes the transition to zero caffeine easier.
Some teas — like green tea — also contain aminoacid l-theanine which takes the edge off of caffeine, lowers its negative side effects, and promotes relaxation.
After the first few days of switching coffee for tea that contains caffeine — black, green, and white teas — switch to teas that don’t contain caffeine — fruit teas, herbal teas, etc — to finalize the transition to zero caffeine.
3.Make sure you’re hydrated
When we cut down and quit coffee, the body has a chance to reset. After we eliminate caffeine, a detoxification process occurs where our body can detox and let go of toxins and things that it doesn’t need. Doing that process, we should drink more water to flush out of our system all the toxins and waste products, that’s why we have to make sure we’re hydrated sufficiently.
Because of the change in caffeine intake, our thirst level might also change. Coffee and caffeine are a diuretic and make us lose water and liquid: so when we cut them out or quit them, we might not feel as thirsty as before: we might end up not drinking enough fluids and end up dehydrated, which might exacerbate the side effects of cutting or quitting caffeine.
Keep your water bottle with you at all times: that’s the best way to drink enough fluids — especially water — and stay hydrated.
4.Use painkillers only when you really need them
Although caffeine withdrawal symptoms can at times get very strong at times, you should limit the number of painkillers you use to deal with the pain and fatigue.
Most painkillers that are used to treat pain and lower inflammation in the body contain a lot of chemicals and toxins and are very hard on the liver. During the detoxification and reset process that occurs when we cut down or quit caffeine, the use of painkillers is counterproductive: we want to give our body a chance to detoxify, not give it more toxins to work on.
When the caffeine withdrawal symptoms get too much to handle, you can use this next strategy.
5.Take a nap
Napping is a great energy booster: some studies have shown that the use of naps is more effective than caffeine alone in cognitive functions, alertness, and attention. A 2008 study found that the use of naps was more effective than the use of high doses of caffeine in cognitive and motor skills (source).
Naps also have regeneration and healing benefits. With naps, we can bring our body into a state of deep relaxation where the body heals, regenerates, and recovers. According to Emily Fletcher, a teacher of mindfulness and meditation and author of the book meditation Stress Less Accomplish More, deep meditation is “a state of deep relaxation in which the brain is renewed and refreshed and the body regenerates and heals.”
Naps can thus be very helpful when symptoms of caffeine withdrawals — headaches, brain fog, fatigue, etc — are more pronounced and severe.
If you find it hard to nap, you can try binaural beats for relaxation or use power nap videos on YouTube: these below are my personal favorites.
6.L-tyrosine
Tyrosine is one of the 22 amino acids and it’s found mostly in high protein foods (meat, eggs, dairy products, some seeds, and nuts). Tyrosine is involved in the production of neurotransmitters adrenaline, norepinephrine, and dopamine which promote focus and motivation, as well as well-being and energy.
Many people — myself included — find that supplementing with l-tyrosine helps lower the caffeine withdrawal symptoms and helps make the transition to zero caffeine easier and less painful.
If you suffer from the caffeine withdrawal symptoms described above, take 1–2g of l-tyrosine twice a day — in the morning and in the afternoon.
7.Cycle caffeine and take regular breaks
When cycling your caffeine intake and taking a regular break when you don’t use it and drink it, you limit the intensity of the caffeine withdrawals symptoms — the longer you go without reducing it or taking a break, the stronger and bigger tolerance you’ll develop, the harder it will be for you to quit it and the stronger the withdrawal symptoms will be.
Before my recent break with caffeine, I maybe didn’t drink coffee and caffeine once every 2 or 3 weeks and I’ve fallen into what I call the “caffeine trap”. Because I’ve drunk too much caffeine for too long without breaks, I’ve built a strong tolerance and I “needed” caffeine to function properly. I ended up depleting all of my energy stores and I ended up burned out I was forced to cut down or even quit caffeine which brought withdrawal symptoms with extreme feelings of fatigue and inability to do anything.
Now after my week without caffeine, it’s much easier to take regular breaks from caffeine because:
- The withdrawal symptoms are not that extreme,
- I know that I can do it and manage the negative symptoms.
That’s why I recommend that you cycle caffeine and take regular breaks: not only it’ll be easier to handle caffeine withdrawals, but you’ll also take advantage of the benefits that cutting down caffeine brings — better recovery, better sleep, reset of adenosine receptors, etc — on a regular basis.
Pick something that works for you. Maybe that’s caffeine cycling where you cycle through lower, higher and zero caffeine days on a weekly basis. Or maybe that’s regular caffeine free days once or twice a week. You can also do a longer caffeine break: a week a few times throughout the year.
What about you? Do you cut or quit caffeine? If you do, do you experience any negative withdrawal symptoms? How do you handle them?
Let me know in the comments below!
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