Caffeine, How Much Is Too Much?

Wired and Tired (HUH)

David Lee

Published in

Life Hack: Your Story, Experience, etc

6 min readJan 30, 2017

Part 3 of 5 — Understanding The
“5 Keys to unlocking the gates of wisdom for sustainable health and fitness”

Bit of a contradiction wouldn’t you say? How can you be wired AND tired at the same time? Very good question. For thousands of people across the globe, attempting to stay awake for more then 8 hours seems like a trek for the fellowship of the ring

It’s common to drink 4–6 cups of coffee (at least in the states) or perhaps you’ve replaced two of those cups with a commercial energy drink or two. Either way if you’ve found yourself crashing after your first “Feel Good Caffeine” routine, perhaps it’s time you looked at HOW caffeine works through your body and the long term affects of drinking too much of it.

Let me state this first to give you (the reader) a fair opportunity to continue reading this post or to go about your day. It’s the least I can do!

First, thank you for reading! First Sub A — this isn’t going to be me preaching to the choir about how to live more of a holistic lifestyle (i’m a holistic health coach).

Second I will share with you with resources to make your own informed decision about the effects of long term caffeine intake over time.

Now that’s out of the way let’s get going! Well for the 1 or 2 of you who stuck around that is…

How Long Caffeine ACTUALLY Lasts

When caffeine enters into your bloodstream it lasts up to 12 hours, meaning caffeine has a half life of about 6 hours in your system. If you imagine a cup of coffee typically contains 300mg of caffeine that means 6 hours after that cup you still have 150mg of caffeine available — fantastic! Time to go for a run, lift some heavy weights or play soccer with the lads right?

Oh but it’s only 9AM, you still have your 11AM cup, 12:30 Latte, 1:30 Espresso, 3:00 cup and maybe a pre-workout or energy drink before you hit the gym yeah?

You don’t have to be a math major to figure how much caffeine is floating around your system to sum up that it’s A LOT.

So what’s the big deal then? You go to sleep just fine, you don’t have bouts of mood shifts throughout the day so leisurely drinking multiple amounts of caffeine isn’t bad for you right?

Perhaps, or are you simply saying that because you’re already on your 6th cup and have enough fireworks in your SNS (Sympathetic Nervous System) to light up Disneyland?

What’s a SNS you ask? Well, hopefully you asked it…

Your SNS is a member of two branches that make up your Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). Your ANS controls hormonal release and orchestrates autonomous functions for your body. Such functions include:

Assimilation, Digestion, Elimination
Immunity
Stress and Anabolic hormone release

You have another branch which is your Parasympathetic Nervous System or PNS. Both your SNS and PNS work in conjunction with one another to keep homeostasis (physiological balance). What’s that got to do with caffeine intake?

Well, the more caffeine you feed into your body the more your SNS is activated. The function of your SNS is to promote the primal fight/flight response in your body, in moderns terms that’s basically your automatic response to waking up in the morning, walking, physically moving from one meeting room to another etc.

Now imagine your body as a car. It requires gasoline in order to provide combustion to your motor, that helps to fire the pistons and all other kinds of good stuff. Your engine also needs its own engine oil as well as transmission fluid. There’s only so much fuel and gas to go around before it’s completely depleted and when that happens you need to re-fuel.

The re-fueling functions of your body come into play only when your PNS is stimulated and optimal nutrition is introduced. Failure to stimulate your PNS stresses your adrenals, digestive organs and your bodies natural ability to provide immunity against foreign substances (infections, bacteria, viruses).

What’s the punch line you ask?

Too much caffeine puts your SNS into overdrive and your foot is smashed against the floor. Eventually you’ll either run out of gas or you’ll crash into something — either way it’s not pretty.

“Wait but i’m 55 years and strong as an ox! I drink 4 cups of coffee a day and i’m fine, clearly what you’re saying is not true”

There are always exceptions, outliers and diamonds in the rough. Why do you think there are only a handful of Michael Jordans, Lebron James, Tom Bradys and Albert Einsteins? You may be one of those “gifted” individuals who are simply wired different than others. That doesn’t mean you ought to dismiss human physiology and the natural biorhythms we have inherited.

Take Away

What I invite you to take away is to begin looking at your health as a long term project (Life Project). You don’t need multiple sources of caffeine each day to “stay awake”, you simply don’t.

The obvious response now is, “How do I do it?”. Most people, including myself, would offer the following:

get 6–8 hours of uninterrupted sleep
Replace additional cups of coffee with tea
Substitute commercial energy drinks for Yerbe Matte
Quit cold turkey

Honestly those are all tried and tested methods that work (erm minus the cold turkey part), but how many of you will actually give any effort toward change?

You won’t, unless you truly value your health. Understand that your health isn’t a fiscal measurement that is predicated on what some investors are looking for. THIS IS YOUR HEALTH, I can’t put it any more simpler.

It’s a life long project that you will be working on daily, you must work on it daily you have no other choice. That isn’t hyperbole, it’s your life here friend. You have ONE, don’t let uninformed and uneducated decisions leave you with a syndrome, symptom or dis-ease. Too many people are fighting life long disruptions to their life daily.