Many of us enjoy a daily coffee or tea in the morning to begin the day. Caffeine is used by about 85% of adults in the United States. The average intake is about 135 mg of caffeine a day, equaling a 12-ounce cup of coffee.
While delicious, the caffeine in coffee and tea is a legal psychoactive drug, so it does have an impact on your body. Because it’s so normalized in our culture, it’s easy to think nothing of a cup of coffee on the regular. But do you know how caffeine is impacting your body? Let’s take a deeper look at what it does.
How Caffeine Impacts Your Body
Caffeine is a stimulant—so it makes everything move a little faster, including your heartbeat, brain, and central nervous system.
When you’re drinking a cup of coffee, your stomach absorbs the caffeine and sends it out, pushing it into your bloodstream, liver, and kidneys. Because caffeine impacts your kidneys, it is considered a diuretic. This can multiply the impacts of dehydration and potentially cause constipation. It can also relax the LES and cause heartburn in some people.
If you drink too much caffeine, you are putting yourself at risk for a variety of unpleasant symptoms:
• Dehydration
• Constipation
• Heartburn
• Loose stools
• Bloating
• Nausea
• Restlessness
• Rapid heartbeat
• Heart palpitations
• Anxiety
Generally, it’s best to stay under 200 mg a day, although you can exceed this. However, the US Food and Drug Administration states that up to 400 mg is not generally dangerous.
When you’re a regular coffee drinker, you can get accustomed to the daily intake, which lowers its impact on you. Your body starts to rely on the daily intake of this stimulant, and if you don’t have it, you can feel withdrawal effects. You also don’t get the benefits if your body builds up that tolerance!
The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA Network) recently published a video exploring caffeine’s impacts on your body.
So, Should I Stop Drinking Caffeine?
We’ve had patients show a lot of improvement by decreasing or eliminating caffeine when experiencing GERD, loose stools, heartburn, bloating, and more. If you are experiencing any of these adverse side effects, it is a good idea to lower your intake and see if your symptoms improve.
Every patient is different. Keeping a journal around your symptoms and paying attention to your caffeine intake that day will help inform you if caffeine is amplifying your negative symptoms.
We know it’s a big ask to eliminate caffeine entirely! If you’re one of the people that have built up a tolerance to caffeine, you may experience unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. Luckily, these aren’t dangerous, but they can be pretty uncomfortable! If you stop cold turkey, you may experience sluggishness, headaches, fatigue, a low mood, and even flu-like symptoms. These are most noticeable the first two days of quitting and will decrease significantly after that.
If you want to lower your intake without experiencing all of that for a few days, you can slowly decrease your intake over time. For example, if you drink a coffee every morning, pour a smaller cup each day. You can supplement with decaf if you still enjoy the warm feeling coffee brings! You can also replace a cup of coffee with a less caffeinated drink, such as black tea.
Again, according to your unique needs, you may not need to eliminate it completely—a decrease in consumption can significantly impact your symptoms. It’s a great idea to pay attention to how your body responds. But remember: you need to give it a few days to get past those unpleasant withdrawal symptoms and start feeling the benefits of less caffeine!