Author Topic: Caffeine withdrawal  (Read 6235 times)

Re: Caffeine withdrawal
« Reply #50 on: 18 May, 2018, 12:02:15 pm »
To pick up Ben T's point that he sleeps just fine anyway even when drinking coffee- so do I.  But I can sleep even better with no coffee

Exactly. To me it's roughly equivalent to"I used to run just fine when I smoked. But I now run a lot better now that I haven't smoked for ages." although the timescales are a lot more stretched out for smoking.

(Not wishing to sidetrack this to smoking, there are plenty of other threads for that. This is about caffeine.)

The point is you'll never know what your baseline of "fine" really is until you try giving up, you may well end up resetting your expectation of "fine".

It's easy to see how you can run 'better', i.e. faster, but slightly harder to imagine how you can sleep better if you already remain asleep for as much time as you intended to.
Not saying it isn't possible, but I would have to see it to believe it, I guess I will have to evaluate it emprically.


Quality of sleep definitely is a thing.
The better sleep you get, the better you'll feel when you're awake.
When I cottoned on to my sleep apnoea in September/October last year, I was sleeping the same number of hours each night but my sleep was much more effective so I started feeling much better, which enabled me to cut down on my caffeine. Instead of building up a sleep debt with around 7 hours sleep each night, I was catching up with my losses.
You also get used to feeling tired. I thought I felt good in January. I felt a whole lot better than I did in the Autumn but it was only when I stopped that I found out how tired I still was and it probably took me about 2 months to get back to normal. So you may think that you feel good but that's only relative to how you usually are and if you're not getting good sleep, being below par will be normal.
Caffeine isn't the only factor either. There is such a thing as sleep hygiene.

Ben T

Re: Caffeine withdrawal
« Reply #51 on: 18 May, 2018, 02:36:21 pm »
Quality of sleep definitely is a thing.
The better sleep you get, the better you'll feel when you're awake.
When I cottoned on to my sleep apnoea in September/October last year, I was sleeping the same number of hours each night but my sleep was much more effective so I started feeling much better, which enabled me to cut down on my caffeine. Instead of building up a sleep debt with around 7 hours sleep each night, I was catching up with my losses.
You also get used to feeling tired. I thought I felt good in January. I felt a whole lot better than I did in the Autumn but it was only when I stopped that I found out how tired I still was and it probably took me about 2 months to get back to normal. So you may think that you feel good but that's only relative to how you usually are and if you're not getting good sleep, being below par will be normal.
Caffeine isn't the only factor either. There is such a thing as sleep hygiene.

Interesting.

My brother claims to have an app on his phone that measures the amount of time spent within REM sleep. I think it can only be limited accuracy however as it apparently works off a smartwatch, so it probably assumes that you are moving slightly when not in REM sleep.

Re: Caffeine withdrawal
« Reply #52 on: 19 May, 2018, 08:41:21 am »
My brother claims to have an app on his phone that measures the amount of time spent within REM sleep. I think it can only be limited accuracy however as it apparently works off a smartwatch, so it probably assumes that you are moving slightly when not in REM sleep.

I would say it's beyond "limited accuracy". As in awful.

My Garmin (Forerunner 935) does sleep monitoring through movement. If you wake up and lie still it thinks you're still asleep. It only really decides you've woken up if there's a lot of movement, even reaching for a book and reading for a while isn't enough to make it think you're awake.

One recent night (after an evening out involving an espresso martini[1]) I was awake for about 2 hours in the middle of the night. The watch/app says I was asleep for the whole time including some REM sleep (because my movement was almost zero).

Pretty much useless.

1. Just say no kids if you have given up caffeine, at least I know for next time.
"Yes please" said Squirrel "biscuits are our favourite things."

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Caffeine withdrawal
« Reply #53 on: 19 May, 2018, 02:40:27 pm »
It's easy to see how you can run 'better', i.e. faster, but slightly harder to imagine how you can sleep better if you already remain asleep for as much time as you intended to.
Not saying it isn't possible, but I would have to see it to believe it, I guess I will have to evaluate it emprically.

You can get sleep monitoring apps that will evaluate the quality of your sleep.

It's all about sleep cycles and phases. Time isn't the best measure.
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

frillipippi

  • from Italy
Re: Caffeine withdrawal
« Reply #54 on: 20 May, 2018, 05:46:14 pm »
Back to the topic just to tell you my experience.
Long before discovering Audax, I understood how powerful the effect of caffeine withdrawal can be because I took the habit of drinking many (about eight) cups of coffee on working days, and just one or two on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday afternoon headache and drowsiness regularly kicked in. Saturday night I usually was a zombie. Sunday was a little better. At first, I attributed it to necktie and hard-collar shirts on working days. Then, I noticed that on Monday evening I was particularly awake and eventually I had a light bulb moment and understood it was all due to irregular assumption of caffeine.
In my personal experience, halving the daily caffeine assumption in a week's time (i.e first week gradually pass from 8 to 4 cups/day, second week 4 to 2, etc.) is a reasonably fast decrease, in the measure that it doesn't give me negative side effetcs. Of course I'll have no difficulties in going to bed early, while it might be a bit of an effort if I have to stay awake later than usual.
Cutting away the last daily cup of coffee, the early morning one, is by far the hardest part of the "decaffeination process". But once I pass a couple of weeks without drinking any coffee (nor tea, nor anything else with caffeine), provided I haven't accumulated any sleep debt right before the start, the first audax night passes away without any sleep and any effort. I usually wait until sunrise to drink a coffee and then... boom! Even if I've been riding for 24 hours, after one cup of coffee I'm completely awake. I then can go on for the whole day, totalling 36 hours of riding, without great effort, I just drink another cup of coffee or a can of coke if I start feeling drowsy, but not in the late afternoon, so that when I finally come to a rest caffeine is going away and I can take full advantage from my sleep.