caffeine will make up for lost sleep
[Music]
caffeine detoxes your body oh please no
caffeine is addictive
this is a good one
hi my name is dr sophie balzoura i'm a
gastroenterologist at nyu grossman
school of medicine hi my name is dr ugor
roku i'm a gastroenterologist at mount
sinai hospital and today we'll be
debunking myths about caffeine caffeine
is bad for you
caffeine is not bad for you so there was
a time where i must admit i had bought
the hype that caffeine was bad for you
but when you do the research you find
out that a lot of the concerns really
don't hold up the concerns about
caffeine causing osteoporosis but when
you look at it the amount of milligrams
that they need to consume to cause that
are excessive of 700 milligrams a day
the amount of caffeine that's being
consumed daily is usually on the order
of less than 300 milligrams a day and so
a lot of these concerns really don't
apply at those levels there's actually a
lot of benefit to caffeine and coffee so
there have been studies showing you know
decreasing cancers like colon cancer
head and neck cancers breast cancer
chronic liver disease a lot of other
kind of inflammatory conditions that we
worry about so chemicals that are able
to act upon that and reduce inflammatory
processes and caffeine is one of those
compounds that can do that three cups of
coffee is seen to lower your risk of
stroke in certain studies tea can do the
same by lowering the risk by 20
and also dark chocolate and then those
few instances where your specials may
tell you to cut down on caffeine whether
it's your cardiologist or your
gastroenterologist those are isolated
cases so speak to your doctor but in
general myth caffeine is not in general
bad for you
caffeine will make up for lost sleep
[Music]
that's a myth because there is nothing
that could make up for lost sleep other
than adequate restful replenishing sleep
all caffeine dead is increase your
alertness and make you feel like you're
more energetic but it doesn't actually
give you more energy nature has created
an important molecule called adenosine
and that's this molecule over here and
essentially adenosine tells your brain
it's time to go to bed what caffeine
does is to block adenosine message and
keep you thinking that you should be
awake but when the effect of caffeine
wears off the adenosine's still there
and your body will still crash and go to
bed if a person does choose to neglect
their sleep and try to replace that with
caffeine they're going to find that
their sleep pattern is just continually
affected they'll have lower levels of
rem sleep and if you drink too close to
bedtime they'll actually have a
decreased amount of sleep as well
ultimately the brain needs sleep and
you're not going to get that from
consuming extra amounts of caffeine this
is a good one decaf coffee doesn't have
caffeine i've been waiting to do this
decaf may sound like they completely
deed the calf but it does not mean that
it just means it's reduced i think by
the fda formal recommendations are that
they should be 95 of the caffeine taken
away from a content before it can be
called a decaf but sometimes there can
be variation from cup to cup to cup you
might see it somewhere on the order of
15 or so milligrams a cup and again this
is as compared to 80 to like 160
milligrams depending on the exact type
of coffee you're drinking as a
gastroenterologist if i'm talking to a
person who has a lot of acid reflux
sometimes what we want to do is to
reduce the amount of caffeine that the
person takes not down to zero the
reduced amount sometimes does help that
person get over their reflux symptoms a
little better it's not zero but it's a
lot less caffeine than typically you
would find in that cup drinking coffee
will stunt your growth
so thankfully drinking coffee uh
drinking caffeine all those things do
not stunt your growth most of our growth
happens during our childhood and
adolescence of course ultimately once
bone growth is complete then there's no
stunting of growth that occurs when you
look at the amount of caffeine
consumption in teenagers it usually
typically maxes out at about 80
milligrams a day and any kind of risk to
your bones with calcium or magnesium
loss again usually occurs above 700
milligrams a day so the kids will be
fine they're not consuming in general
enough caffeine to really warrant any
concern about calcium lost from their
bones 700 800 grams a day that's like at
least like eight plus cups of coffee
that's so it's a lot of that that's a
that's a huge amount so i mean the
things that affect bone growth the most
would be the health status of the kid
chronic illnesses or something that
causes malnutrition for instance
genetics so how tall are your parents
how tall your siblings those are the
types of things that really impact
growth it's not really going to be
caffeine consumption what she said
caffeine and soda is much less than
caffeine and coffee
i'm going to say that that's a myth i
think that what's important to know and
i think what people don't really realize
is that it really depends on the
beverage there are some sodas that have
tons of caffeine right significantly
higher amounts than what we consider in
an average cup of coffee you really got
to look at that label to see what the
caffeine content is so as you can see
here soda has 40 milligrams in that can
of cola and that's a greater than your
shot of espresso which only has 27
milligrams at the same time it's also
less than your black tea which has 45
milligrams
less than your instant coffee at 82
milligrams and less than your brewed
coffee at 95 milligrams these are
averages but it just goes to show that
soda can just have have more
caffeine than some drinks and less than
others caffeine detoxes your body oh
please no
one of the more common conversations
i'll have with my patients is about this
concept of detoxification they may see
something on the internet which promises
that no matter what you eat or consume
that if you take this detoxification
product
it just takes out all the bad items and
leaves you feeling healthy unfortunately
it's not that easy it's better to watch
what you're putting your body before you
put it in there than to try to edit it
after it's already been incorporated and
so this concept of caffeine as a
detoxifying agent is one of them because
it can lead to people using it as an
enema so that means when they insert
fluid into the rectum up to their colon
but it's not safe it has not been proven
and it could lead to a lot of injury in
the colon burning perforation even that
is what the kidneys for that is what the
liver is for
that is what your intestines are for
really is to get rid of waste if there's
one detoxifying agent it's just water
you just want to make sure you're
drinking enough water so that your
bowels are moving your kidneys are happy
the urine is flowing the body will take
care of the rest caffeine dehydrates you
this is one of those tricky ones that's
not completely true caffeine is a mild
diuretic if you consume about 300
milligrams of caffeine
it might slightly increase your urine
output by about four fluid ounces but
that's not a large amount especially if
you think about the fact that a lot of
the ways we consume caffeine are filled
with water themselves so i'm going to
call this
myth
i could not agree more ugo
i think that's a huge myth i think that
people can get thirsty after drinking
caffeine especially if you're adding
things to the caffeine right or if
there's a lot of extra sugar in that
caffeine then that can make you thirsty
and so it's not really the caffeine
itself that is causing that sensation of
thirst but perhaps the additives to the
drink um as a whole the other thing is
that everyone gets thirsty and so you
probably just aren't drinking enough
fluids so a cup of coffee is not going
to do it make sure you're drinking a lot
of fluid throughout the day
caffeine is addictive
this is a good one
caffeine is not considered an addicting
substance there is a need to use it
oftentimes routinely to maintain
alertness especially in the morning
right upon rising but at the end of the
day it's considered that your physical
dependence on caffeine as a substance is
not so severe to truly call it an
addiction if you were to go cold turkey
with your coffee intake as much as that
scares you you'd feel horrible for about
a day or two
lasting for an additional week you'd
feel off but then you'd find yourself
back to a new normal and so no caffeine
is not necessarily an addictive
substance caffeine is short acting
there's no danger in going you know
completely cold turkey from drinking
caffeine every day you know multiple
cups just stopping having more than one
cup of coffee a day is bad for you
i'd say that's definitely a myth
the general thought is that if you're
consuming 400 milligrams or less of
caffeine in a day that's a very safe
amount for you to consume now what you
have to remember is what's in a cup may
differ depending on exactly how big that
cup is and exactly what type of caffeine
preparation you're drinking so you want
to define what a cup is typically it's
eight fluid ounces you can have many of
those before you run into that 400 level
which is considered a nice low level
that you can reach every day not all
things are equal it applies to different
people so if you're pregnant for
instance if you may have certain heart
conditions or gastrointestinal
conditions then those kind of rules may
vary and you may have a recommendation
from your physician that you may be
drinking much less than that if at all
so all my patients who are about to show
me this video stop this applies to you
for different reasons you can't have
that fourth cup but maybe when you're
feeling better we'll talk about it
you won't be able to sleep if you have
caffeine at night i'm gonna say this is
a myth
so when i drink coffee at night nothing
happens the way that caffeine affects
you and your brain really varies from
person to person so we can't have this
blanket statement saying you know you
can't drink caffeine or coffee before
bedtime so part of the reason why people
can drink caffeine at different hours of
the day has a lot to do with how you
metabolize it in your body and that is
in large part due to genetics it's good
to note that a caffeine as a molecule
has a half-life of five hours what does
that mean it means that five hours after
you consume it you'll just have about 50
of that cup of coffee left in your body
the one thing we will say is that
drinking a lot of caffeine especially
close to bedtime will probably affect
your sleep health you might find that
you have a less amount of sleep per
night
or less amount of hours getting that
good deep refreshing rem sleep but again
everyone metabolizes things slightly
differently it's not consumed in a
vacuum right there's so many other
things going on in our day-to-day that
affect how tired we are how alert we
need to be so if you've been up all day
and you've exerted a lot of energy and
you're just tired and fatigued you will
still crash and go to bed caffeine can
mess with your heart rhythm i am going
to say myth to this this is actually an
issue that has been studied extensively
there was a recently performed study
where they looked at a community-based
cohort of over 30 000 people and what
they found was that caffeine intake in
moderate levels did not increase risk of
arrhythmias in fact they found that for
every additional cup you had you had a
three percent decrease in your
likelihood of having an arrhythmia
sometimes people can get heart
palpitations or feel like their heart is
racing which we call tachycardia right
and that can happen with caffeine and
there can also even be a transient
increase in your blood pressure but
these things are not long lasting these
things aren't dangerous and what's even
more good news is that for habitual
coffee drinkers or caffeine consumers
that effect eventually wears away so
when we think about abnormal heart
rhythms or dangers to the heart we
actually see that caffeine is protective
talk to your cardiologist but thus far
myth oh this is a hard one tea is
healthier than coffee i'm gonna call it
a myth and the reason why i call it a
myth is that you cannot say tea is
healthier than coffee as a blanket
statement and it always holds true if
you dump tons of sugar in your tea you
cannot still say that that's a healthy
beverage and then to balance that coffee
can be very healthy as well coffee again
is a major source of antioxidants for
americans we don't perhaps eat enough
fruits and vegetables and so we end up
getting a lot of things that we should
be getting from fruits and vegetables
believe it or not from our coffee plant
what we also need to understand is that
i think there's a lot of more robust
data for coffee and it's been studied a
little bit more and we can make more
kind of concrete statements about its
benefits so it's not to say that tea
benefits aren't there or that we know
for a fact that tea is healthier than
coffee because we don't but right now
you know we have to say this is a myth
if you're trying to drink one over
another for health benefits and it's
about the caffeine you know i think it's
comparable i think that there's this
misconception that there's not as much
caffeine in tea which is quite false and
it all depends on exactly what tea and
what coffee you're talking about we're
trying to use generic terms for very
different substances you have teas like
real boys teas and teas that are green
teas and earl teas they're all very
different with different components in
general they tend to represent a good
healthy source of caffeine and other
substances but so do coffees too the way
you prepare your coffee doesn't matter
myth there's so many different ways to
prepare coffee and it does matter in
terms of how much caffeine results in
that cup so if you look at this little
graphic it shows you a number of things
that might affect the amount of caffeine
that's in your beverage what's the
particle size
what's the brew time how hot is the
water you're using for your brewing and
then also how much are you diluting your
actual caffeine in your content you tend
to have a fairly high quantity of
caffeine in your coffee pods because
it's ground really finely the
temperature used to brew it is very hot
and so a lot of caffeine can be
extracted up to 75 to 150 milligrams per
cup for your french press although there
is a prolonged brewing time oftentimes
the actual size of the grinding is very
coarse and so that limits the amount of
caffeine that you'll find in your fresh
press and also where it comes from too i
think where the bean actually originates
can affect how much caffeine is present
so at the end of the day i think what we
learned is that caffeine actually can be
very good for you despite all the myths
that we've heard all our lives i think
that some people have guilt around
drinking caffeine and coffee but there's
so many benefits very few risks of
course it's important to talk to your
doctor about what's best for you but
ultimately we don't want to deprive
people of something that they love
because the benefits are abound and you
know what it really tastes great
[Laughter]