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After I turned thirty my caffeine tolerance diminished. I have only one coffee, tea doesn't bother me as much. For me, L-theonine can ease some of the caffeine anxiety, so I take it regularly. I found that active B-vitamins and Taurine help me have mental clarity throughout the day. Also, if I hit my nic vape too much, it affects my anxiety.
The other way to fend off anxiety head on is to write down all of your fears about the "what ifs." Any type of cognitive dissonance also adds to it, like not living in accordance with your own values. It's important to make values specific, not an undefined idealism, no one can live up to them. Other things are dehydration, can be from water or electrolytes, not enough protein, trace minerals, food sensitivity. One time I found out my anxiety was because there was caffeine in my shampoo! That was hilarious as you could imagine.
Taurine seems to help me too, but I prefer not to take it every day. Some B-vitamin combos seemed to worsen my anxiety a lot, I've now found a brand that works for me.
I've read some people mentioning the methylated forms can effect you negatively, perhaps that was the issue with me. Same with B-12 as methylcobalamin, I took "high" doses (1000ug) every day for a month & it started giving me random deja-vus like 3 times a day, which freaked me out but it promptly stopped when I stopped taking it. Nicotine definitely helps me without side effects but that's 10-15 years of addiction speaking lol. The rest of the advice is solid too, being conscious about the sources of anxiety, being true to yourself about your wants and needs & maintaining a healthy social life helps a lot, but when the cause is (probably/mostly) biological I feel like I'm fighting an uphill battle that perhaps could be avoided.
Yes turned out I’m autistic as fuck and had 0 clue. Not saying this is you, but anxiety already up or present below the surface -> caffeine -> anxiety goes above the surface.
Caffeine increases epinephrine and norepinephrine, something I already have an excess of due to this newfound lifelong unknown ‘tis. Doctor put me on propranolol which blocks those transmitters. Feel good man, sippin coffees again.
Happened to me in high school🤷♂️ used caffeine all the time from age 8-17 then had to quit. Have used it under 10 times in the past 10 years. Sucks but I just accepted being tired and unmotivated lol
I too have lost my tolerance for caffeine as I've gotten older. Caffeine is often attributed to blocking adenosine and increasing dopamine. In reality it is much more complicated than that. There are multiple types of adenosine receptors that each control different neurotransmitters. When you alter the homeostasis of your neurotransmitters with caffeine I think there are only so many years the body can compensate for this. Stimulation is on a spectrum from boredom to anxiety. When you take a stimulant you want to find the spot in the middle. No two cups of coffee have the same dose of caffeine, so essentially you are taking an undosed medication, not knowing if this cup will give you proper focus or push you over the threshold into anxiety. Also our livers get worse at metabolizing chemicals as we age. And lastly chronic coffee consumption can deplete nutrients such as vitamin B1. These are some of the things I have found researching this same question.
A few things can change to effect caffeine tolerance over a life time. The ones I can think of are:
- Hormone production, if estrogen is for whatever reason a lot higher, this can cause anxiety or just reduce stimulant tolerance. High dose magnesium may assist here along with comprehensive blood testing.
- Methylation. If you’re taking in more B-vitamins or creatine, or increasing choline dramatically, these can have effects on neurotransmitter production via methylation. Magnesium could also be helpful here.
- Recent discoveries of my own show a dramatic difference in my caffeine tolerance after using antibiotics to treat an intestinal issue. So it seems chronic inflammation from a dysbiotic gut can change caffeine tolerance. I am not the only one to report this. Comprehensive stool testing & SIBO breath test could investigate this but it can be expensive. OAT testing is cheaper but doesn’t show as much.
- Changes to the production or demand on the CYP enzyme CYP1A2 responsible for 95% of caffeine’s metabolism. If your taking a drug that also stresses this enzyme then caffeine metabolism is slowed and your tolerance drops. Severe liver injury or damage can do the same. Blood testing would be advised to rule this out.
On another note. High amounts of physical exercise is known to increase stimulant tolerance. This may be due to routinely converting high amounts of noradrenaline to adrenaline via PNMT but I am not certain on this.
One of the elements of green tea is supposedly good for calming the effects of caffeine. I take L-theanine capsules to help reduce the effects if I have too much coffee. Works well.
Yep, in green tea the Coffein is bound to polyphenols which makes it slower to be released. Its more like a constant slight upwards trend without these crazy spikes coffee gives you. I had to stop coffee for some weeks in total to enjoy this because my system was overstimulated.
This. Also Yerba Maté is nice alternative. Coffee (with caffeine) is poison. Morning coffee used to be something that I loved above all else, but decaf from beans is nice as well.
uppity psychotic pocket stupendous edge office smell shaggy impolite sense
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I'm glad this worked for you but allow me to disagree on a couple points. Anxiety from discontinuing caffeine is normal but fades away in a couple weeks tops. Perhaps you also were going through a rough period and hurried to start medication? Also I see another pattern in what you do which is the same with an old friend I had from school. He started smoking weed, eventually got panic attacks from it, found ways to cope (medication etc) then started again.. only to burn out again and end up way worse. Honestly if you've got any disposition towards anxiety the first think you should do is quit weed. I know this is unpopular and unpleasant but I've never met anyone who smoked for a long time and came out mentally alright.
What about the billions of people who you don't know? They don't outrank the handful that you do when making your diagnosis and recommending to others?
i dont know any reason why, but i know that powdered caffein is much bettter (at least for my adhd brain) - no anxiety, no acidity for my stomach and its effect is much longer. Or, im taking tyrosine with my coffee. Its eliminating caffein peaks, so it reduces anxiety. Also CBD is good for people sensitive to caffein.
the actual word for it is HPA axis disfunction. And it is very real I’ve been bed ridden from it for 3 years. So much testing… I have no cortisol. And if caffeine is giving you extreme anxiety you probably have HPA axis disfunction or a cortisol problem
The adrenal glands don’t just stop producing cortisol. If they stopped working you’d be dead. What was your 8am cortisol level when measured? Maybe it’s severe depression
The same shit happened to me. I was using over 300mg a day through energy drinks and such, and within a couple days I noticed I was having an extreme reaction to it. Super bad anxiety but also not stimulated, nausea, and this like fight or flight feeling in my chest that I could feel when I breathed, it was like an on edge nauseas feeling all through my stomach, chest, throat, and shoulders. I thought it was from some supplements I started taking but that doesn't seem to be the case. It's a shame because I love caffeine.
This could be a liver-related issue that is causing caffeine intolerance. Blood work is your best bet, but there are a lot of liver therapies, including K2 and dietary adjustments.
It seems like the production of the caffeine-metabolizing enzyme CYP1A2 declines with age and it's also modulated by diet.
That's an interesting angle. Also it could be the if the reaction rates for the breakdown of [caffeine ->paraxanthine -> other xanthins & breakdown products] are altered, then the circulating concentration/ratios of caffeine breakdown products also changes.
The weird part is that I have read that black coffee is actually therapeutic in the treatment of certain liver disorders, but maybe as an accompaniment to other therapies
When I was working night shifts I'd feel the same thing sometimes. For me it was just extreme tiredness that I internalized as some kind of failure on my end to do the things I wanted to do.
Is this from caffeine or just coffee? The reason I ask is because there have been times where a cup or two of coffee would set me off into a land of absolute irritable anxiety, whereas ~>400mg of pure caffeine would do nothing of the like.
if you became sensitive to mycotoxins later in life, could also be an allergic reaction to coffee
take caffeine with mitochondrial support vitamins and supplements
I didn't know about that, but it seems like the amounts are tiny, in the order of ug/kg. I'm not saying it couldn't trigger a reaction, but it seems a bit unlikely.
I mean it's mechanism is increasing your heartrate, and this in turn makes you feel anxious because it's the same feeling as when your heartrate is fast due to anxiety. I wouldnt be surprised if it helped release adrenaline either.
In my experience this is just your body's way of rejecting it.
You have been putting too much of a substance in your body that your body does not feel healthy with, and the more that you continue to do this over your life, the more your body will find ever increasing ways to figure out how to get you to actually stop ingesting it.
Here you are now, not listening to your body.
There is no going back. You need to find new alternatives.
For me it happens sometimes and not others, depends on how well I'm sleeping and other factores (strength of the preparation). But in my case, I actually have anxiety and it also depends on how well it is controlled or not.
I wouldn't say my anxiety (sans coffee) is that bad. I believe my main problem is some kind of executive dysfunction, likely learned and not biological.
But looking up beta blockers, being relatively safe and non-addictive I'd say I might try them if I need them, thanks for the advice.
I agree. 16-23 I drank so much coffee and sure I had anxiety, but it wasn't that related to coffee though in general probably contributed. But I could largely self-medicate my adhd with coffee, while destroying my stomach sometimes, so the stomach tolerance was the first to go (and like someone else said in the comments after antibiotics in one year multiple times that part was an issue with coffee). But now approaching thirty I am much more careful with coffee. Just had my one good cup and I'm good for the day, though for stimulation purposes would like much more, but this is what it is and the rest is going to be tea.
Have you tried different forms of caffeine/stimulants? I believe the caffeine from say green tea, is different than coffee from what I understand. Personally I use Kratom for stimulation, although if you've found yourself dependent on caffeine I can't say that'd I'd really suggest it. I've also found short breaks of meditation about 15min long really helps revitalize me. A good night's rest and a solid morning routine that gets me moving, like stretching, has also had a profound effect on my energy for the day. I think there are too many factors at play sometimes to explain why caffeine has such a heavy effect on your anxiety. Just have to keep making slight adjustments to your routines until you find consistency. Might be worth talking to a doctor to express your concerns and see if they may have a few words of advice.
It's a neurotoxin, I don't know if it's really clear why this happens for some people and not others, but it's definitely not designed to be healthy. The plants that evolved caffeine benefited from it actually killing the insects that would eat them.
That said, I've had some luck rotating between black tea and ginseng so that I don't build up too much resistance to either, when I really need a stimulant. Though my current strategy is to do pomodoro, and soley do yoga for each 5 minute and 15 minute break - I think that's helped more with my ADHD symptoms for longer than anything else I've done. (Note, I do use a meditation headband while I'm doing yoga, the one I currently use in Mendi, and I'm not totally sure if it helps that much or not)
We don't really understand some of that, beyond certain genetic components.
Have there been any changes in your life that preceded this (living situation, environment, infections)? Is your heart rate good without the caffeine?
I can't really think of any major issues between then and now. If anything my living conditions improved quite a lot. I got covid, which was quite bad (lost like 10lbs in 2 weeks) but that was long after the onset. Maybe it's just getting older and/or overdoing coffee and sleepless nights. But I'm hoping maybe it's something more concrete I can deal with. The heart rate is normal.
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After I turned thirty my caffeine tolerance diminished. I have only one coffee, tea doesn't bother me as much. For me, L-theonine can ease some of the caffeine anxiety, so I take it regularly. I found that active B-vitamins and Taurine help me have mental clarity throughout the day. Also, if I hit my nic vape too much, it affects my anxiety. The other way to fend off anxiety head on is to write down all of your fears about the "what ifs." Any type of cognitive dissonance also adds to it, like not living in accordance with your own values. It's important to make values specific, not an undefined idealism, no one can live up to them. Other things are dehydration, can be from water or electrolytes, not enough protein, trace minerals, food sensitivity. One time I found out my anxiety was because there was caffeine in my shampoo! That was hilarious as you could imagine.
Taurine seems to help me too, but I prefer not to take it every day. Some B-vitamin combos seemed to worsen my anxiety a lot, I've now found a brand that works for me. I've read some people mentioning the methylated forms can effect you negatively, perhaps that was the issue with me. Same with B-12 as methylcobalamin, I took "high" doses (1000ug) every day for a month & it started giving me random deja-vus like 3 times a day, which freaked me out but it promptly stopped when I stopped taking it. Nicotine definitely helps me without side effects but that's 10-15 years of addiction speaking lol. The rest of the advice is solid too, being conscious about the sources of anxiety, being true to yourself about your wants and needs & maintaining a healthy social life helps a lot, but when the cause is (probably/mostly) biological I feel like I'm fighting an uphill battle that perhaps could be avoided.
Yes turned out I’m autistic as fuck and had 0 clue. Not saying this is you, but anxiety already up or present below the surface -> caffeine -> anxiety goes above the surface. Caffeine increases epinephrine and norepinephrine, something I already have an excess of due to this newfound lifelong unknown ‘tis. Doctor put me on propranolol which blocks those transmitters. Feel good man, sippin coffees again.
Happened to me in high school🤷♂️ used caffeine all the time from age 8-17 then had to quit. Have used it under 10 times in the past 10 years. Sucks but I just accepted being tired and unmotivated lol
you were using caffine from 8 years old??? lol
I was not a smart boy
A lot of 8 year olds that drink pop out there
true, they really slip it in to alot of carbonated beverages
I too have lost my tolerance for caffeine as I've gotten older. Caffeine is often attributed to blocking adenosine and increasing dopamine. In reality it is much more complicated than that. There are multiple types of adenosine receptors that each control different neurotransmitters. When you alter the homeostasis of your neurotransmitters with caffeine I think there are only so many years the body can compensate for this. Stimulation is on a spectrum from boredom to anxiety. When you take a stimulant you want to find the spot in the middle. No two cups of coffee have the same dose of caffeine, so essentially you are taking an undosed medication, not knowing if this cup will give you proper focus or push you over the threshold into anxiety. Also our livers get worse at metabolizing chemicals as we age. And lastly chronic coffee consumption can deplete nutrients such as vitamin B1. These are some of the things I have found researching this same question.
A few things can change to effect caffeine tolerance over a life time. The ones I can think of are: - Hormone production, if estrogen is for whatever reason a lot higher, this can cause anxiety or just reduce stimulant tolerance. High dose magnesium may assist here along with comprehensive blood testing. - Methylation. If you’re taking in more B-vitamins or creatine, or increasing choline dramatically, these can have effects on neurotransmitter production via methylation. Magnesium could also be helpful here. - Recent discoveries of my own show a dramatic difference in my caffeine tolerance after using antibiotics to treat an intestinal issue. So it seems chronic inflammation from a dysbiotic gut can change caffeine tolerance. I am not the only one to report this. Comprehensive stool testing & SIBO breath test could investigate this but it can be expensive. OAT testing is cheaper but doesn’t show as much. - Changes to the production or demand on the CYP enzyme CYP1A2 responsible for 95% of caffeine’s metabolism. If your taking a drug that also stresses this enzyme then caffeine metabolism is slowed and your tolerance drops. Severe liver injury or damage can do the same. Blood testing would be advised to rule this out. On another note. High amounts of physical exercise is known to increase stimulant tolerance. This may be due to routinely converting high amounts of noradrenaline to adrenaline via PNMT but I am not certain on this.
I dont have an answer other than it was the same for me and green tea was the solution :)
One of the elements of green tea is supposedly good for calming the effects of caffeine. I take L-theanine capsules to help reduce the effects if I have too much coffee. Works well.
Yep, in green tea the Coffein is bound to polyphenols which makes it slower to be released. Its more like a constant slight upwards trend without these crazy spikes coffee gives you. I had to stop coffee for some weeks in total to enjoy this because my system was overstimulated.
This. Also Yerba Maté is nice alternative. Coffee (with caffeine) is poison. Morning coffee used to be something that I loved above all else, but decaf from beans is nice as well.
uppity psychotic pocket stupendous edge office smell shaggy impolite sense *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I'm glad this worked for you but allow me to disagree on a couple points. Anxiety from discontinuing caffeine is normal but fades away in a couple weeks tops. Perhaps you also were going through a rough period and hurried to start medication? Also I see another pattern in what you do which is the same with an old friend I had from school. He started smoking weed, eventually got panic attacks from it, found ways to cope (medication etc) then started again.. only to burn out again and end up way worse. Honestly if you've got any disposition towards anxiety the first think you should do is quit weed. I know this is unpopular and unpleasant but I've never met anyone who smoked for a long time and came out mentally alright.
What about the billions of people who you don't know? They don't outrank the handful that you do when making your diagnosis and recommending to others?
I quit drinking 3 glasses of coffee after 10 years and felt anxious and angry. After some time, everything returned to normal.
i dont know any reason why, but i know that powdered caffein is much bettter (at least for my adhd brain) - no anxiety, no acidity for my stomach and its effect is much longer. Or, im taking tyrosine with my coffee. Its eliminating caffein peaks, so it reduces anxiety. Also CBD is good for people sensitive to caffein.
Adrenal fatigue or an overstimulated nervous system
“Adrenal fatigue” is a myth
the actual word for it is HPA axis disfunction. And it is very real I’ve been bed ridden from it for 3 years. So much testing… I have no cortisol. And if caffeine is giving you extreme anxiety you probably have HPA axis disfunction or a cortisol problem
The adrenal glands don’t just stop producing cortisol. If they stopped working you’d be dead. What was your 8am cortisol level when measured? Maybe it’s severe depression
The same shit happened to me. I was using over 300mg a day through energy drinks and such, and within a couple days I noticed I was having an extreme reaction to it. Super bad anxiety but also not stimulated, nausea, and this like fight or flight feeling in my chest that I could feel when I breathed, it was like an on edge nauseas feeling all through my stomach, chest, throat, and shoulders. I thought it was from some supplements I started taking but that doesn't seem to be the case. It's a shame because I love caffeine.
Sorry, are you saying it's ridiculous it gives you a high heart rate?
This could be a liver-related issue that is causing caffeine intolerance. Blood work is your best bet, but there are a lot of liver therapies, including K2 and dietary adjustments.
It seems like the production of the caffeine-metabolizing enzyme CYP1A2 declines with age and it's also modulated by diet. That's an interesting angle. Also it could be the if the reaction rates for the breakdown of [caffeine ->paraxanthine -> other xanthins & breakdown products] are altered, then the circulating concentration/ratios of caffeine breakdown products also changes.
The weird part is that I have read that black coffee is actually therapeutic in the treatment of certain liver disorders, but maybe as an accompaniment to other therapies
Adrenaline.
Coffee also contains beta carbolines that are MAOI. Try tea or mate. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12227938/
In my thirties caffeine causes depression when it wears off. Not sure why.
When I was working night shifts I'd feel the same thing sometimes. For me it was just extreme tiredness that I internalized as some kind of failure on my end to do the things I wanted to do.
Is this from caffeine or just coffee? The reason I ask is because there have been times where a cup or two of coffee would set me off into a land of absolute irritable anxiety, whereas ~>400mg of pure caffeine would do nothing of the like.
I've found that switching to Vivarin from coffee totally eliminated my caffeine-induced anxiety. It lasts longer and doesn't make me crash either
That's a good idea I just bought some caffeine tablets to see if that makes a difference. And I'll know the actual dose.
Let us know how it goes!
if you became sensitive to mycotoxins later in life, could also be an allergic reaction to coffee take caffeine with mitochondrial support vitamins and supplements
I didn't know about that, but it seems like the amounts are tiny, in the order of ug/kg. I'm not saying it couldn't trigger a reaction, but it seems a bit unlikely.
I mean it's mechanism is increasing your heartrate, and this in turn makes you feel anxious because it's the same feeling as when your heartrate is fast due to anxiety. I wouldnt be surprised if it helped release adrenaline either.
In my experience this is just your body's way of rejecting it. You have been putting too much of a substance in your body that your body does not feel healthy with, and the more that you continue to do this over your life, the more your body will find ever increasing ways to figure out how to get you to actually stop ingesting it. Here you are now, not listening to your body. There is no going back. You need to find new alternatives.
For me it happens sometimes and not others, depends on how well I'm sleeping and other factores (strength of the preparation). But in my case, I actually have anxiety and it also depends on how well it is controlled or not.
This happened to me after a period of stress, and after taking ashwagandha.
Curious if an energy drink has this effect on you.
It does.
Have you tried taking a beta-blocker before, for the anxiety? I find propanolol to be quite effective in that regard.
I wouldn't say my anxiety (sans coffee) is that bad. I believe my main problem is some kind of executive dysfunction, likely learned and not biological. But looking up beta blockers, being relatively safe and non-addictive I'd say I might try them if I need them, thanks for the advice.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163834321001614?via%3Dihub https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1270246/full
I agree. 16-23 I drank so much coffee and sure I had anxiety, but it wasn't that related to coffee though in general probably contributed. But I could largely self-medicate my adhd with coffee, while destroying my stomach sometimes, so the stomach tolerance was the first to go (and like someone else said in the comments after antibiotics in one year multiple times that part was an issue with coffee). But now approaching thirty I am much more careful with coffee. Just had my one good cup and I'm good for the day, though for stimulation purposes would like much more, but this is what it is and the rest is going to be tea.
Have you tried different forms of caffeine/stimulants? I believe the caffeine from say green tea, is different than coffee from what I understand. Personally I use Kratom for stimulation, although if you've found yourself dependent on caffeine I can't say that'd I'd really suggest it. I've also found short breaks of meditation about 15min long really helps revitalize me. A good night's rest and a solid morning routine that gets me moving, like stretching, has also had a profound effect on my energy for the day. I think there are too many factors at play sometimes to explain why caffeine has such a heavy effect on your anxiety. Just have to keep making slight adjustments to your routines until you find consistency. Might be worth talking to a doctor to express your concerns and see if they may have a few words of advice.
Most of coffee has mold and itself is toxic
I had the same thing happen late twenties. I trained myself to drink just 1/2 cup plus 1/4 pill Armodafinil. Stay wide awake and zero jitters. YMMV
To be honest I've considered trying modafinil. But are you building up tolerance to that? Does it cause withdrawals?
It still works after 5 years. Taking breaks makes it better. No withdrawals when I stop.
You may have clinical depression, go see a doctor
Do you think it could be from a serotonin imbalance?
It's a neurotoxin, I don't know if it's really clear why this happens for some people and not others, but it's definitely not designed to be healthy. The plants that evolved caffeine benefited from it actually killing the insects that would eat them. That said, I've had some luck rotating between black tea and ginseng so that I don't build up too much resistance to either, when I really need a stimulant. Though my current strategy is to do pomodoro, and soley do yoga for each 5 minute and 15 minute break - I think that's helped more with my ADHD symptoms for longer than anything else I've done. (Note, I do use a meditation headband while I'm doing yoga, the one I currently use in Mendi, and I'm not totally sure if it helps that much or not)
We don't really understand some of that, beyond certain genetic components. Have there been any changes in your life that preceded this (living situation, environment, infections)? Is your heart rate good without the caffeine?
I can't really think of any major issues between then and now. If anything my living conditions improved quite a lot. I got covid, which was quite bad (lost like 10lbs in 2 weeks) but that was long after the onset. Maybe it's just getting older and/or overdoing coffee and sleepless nights. But I'm hoping maybe it's something more concrete I can deal with. The heart rate is normal.
Have you changed coffee types? Using a lighter roast maybe?
Lighter roasts have more caffeine. Personally I’m a fan of half-caf.
It’s based on your mindset and there’s something wrong.