Beating Caffeine

So as a new years resolution I decided to shed a few pounds and stop drinking so much soda. So the first day I started a diet and drank nothing but water, at around 3 in the afternoon my head began throbbing and by 8 I was in bed in the fetal position due to the agonizing headache that I had.... I finally ventured into the kitchen and grabbed a soda, the pain was gone within 10 minutes... It came back a half hour later and continued this way until I had downed about 3 soda's (diet coke to be exact).

I've tried weening myself off but I'm still getting headaches if I don't drink at least 4 throughout the day....

Has anyone else dealt with this? Whats the easiest way? Even when I quit smoking there was no aches or pain, just unease and twichiness....

I had the exact same situation about a week ago. My response has been to slow down on the caffiene but at a much slower pace than you described. I basically was drinking coffee just because it was there. I haven't organized my slow down but I have cut back considerably. Since I don't actually desire to quit completely it doesn't really bother me. Did you try taking an advil instead of a soda?

If your purpose is to lose a few pounds, then caffeine may be to your advantage. It's both a stimulant and a diuretic, so that should help your weight loss. So stick with the Diet Coke.

(I refuse to be held liable for any heart explosions or other side effects as result of this advice.)

Cut a few pounds but in general be more healthy... dark soda's from what I've heard and read aren't too good for you. But it beats the headaches... I've never had headaches like these. I'm normally the kind of guy that never gets sick, doesn't take medication of any kind and in general pretty stable but these headaches blow me away they render me completely useless...

I'll try the advil... thanks for the advice.

I've pretty much avoided caffeine for about 10 years now. I'll have iced tea or a coke on occasion, but only rarely. It really isn't that hard to live without, although I don't envy anybody trying to quit.

-Biscuits

You might also consider trying to substitute drinks will less caffeine in them. Tea, for example, has less caffeine than coffee. And, if you want, you can get just as obscure and snobby about your tea as you might about your coffee beans. Mmm... yin hao jasmine tea....

When I was a college freshmen, I was drinking way too much coffee, until one day I said "gee, I wonder why my hands are shaking?" I dropped the coffee, went with tea (no sugar or cream for me), and managed to avoid any serious withdrawl symptoms.

A few years ago, when I was getting into running, my doctor told me to drop caffeine entirely (athletes need to stay hydrated, and caffeine is a diuretic). It sucked for a while, but now I have my trusty 1 liter bottle of water next to me at work all the time and I don't really miss the caffeine. And, just think of all the money I save in restaurants not buying Coke! (Although, there's always beer.)

Tea, for example, has less caffeine than coffee.

Does it ? I have always been told that it has very similar caffeine levels.

Tea has more caffeine than most people think. I believe it is 1.5 to 2.5 times that of a Coca-Cola. I really don't know how much caffeine coffee has.

I gave up coffee about 6 months ago.
The first 3 or 4 days were tough. Mostly because of the headaches you described. But after that it got much better.
I think it just takes a few days for your body to detox.

I was only going from 2 lg coffees a day to no coffees a day.
Not sure how that measures up to your soda habit.
I still have coffee but now its only when I want to. Roughly about once or twice a week.
I get to save about 3 bucks a day too.


Z~

I guess I'm lucky: I can quit caffeine at will. I don't go through withdrawal. I don't know why. It also doesn't keep me awake, though.

I've never had issues sleeping... other than the issues my fiance has trying to wake me up in the morning (I'm a deep sleeper). Never thought I'd have issues with caffiene... til I tried to quit...

Ah, but without caffeine, do you have problems staying awake?

I have the same experience. Caffeine does little to me unless I take massive quantities.

Also, Caffeine level stats. Tea has about 1/3 to 1/2 what coffee does.

I don't know... I can't quit

Actually, when I was in the fetal position the first night... I had no problems taking a nap to try and make it go away...

I don't know what kind of tea they are using there. On the machines in the dining halls, the caffeine contents of every beverage are listed.

It has been a year since I have been there, but this is what I remember

Coke and other softdrinks are listed as having:
38-44
Tea is listed as having:
65-75

Of course, I'm doing that from memory. Still, I imagine that iced tea has different caffeine quantity than green tea, and can also vary widely based upon its strength.

-Biscuits

I was in the same boat you are. I drank 3-4 caffeinated sodas a day and never had trouble sleeping. I just decided to quit cold turkey one day, and after 2-3 days of intense caffeine headaches, they finally went away. You could either do the 'withdrawl' thing over the weekend or take an ibuprofen (something with less caffeine than the soda) to ease it down a bit.

Actually I might just switch to tea... granted higher caffeine but better for you then soda. I don't mind the addiction so much

as an American I have to reccommend the only obvious way out...sue the manufacturer for selling an addictive product that harms you in many ways. I bet they've even secretly known about its addictive qualities for decades but probably don't talk much about it.

No doubt I could win.... people sueing for burning themselve with hot coffee (who'd have thought coffee is hot?), people sueing mcdonalds for making them fat, and not to mention people sueing the cig companys for giving them cancer...

I used to drink about 6 cokes a day, I am now down to 2. You just have to slowly ween yourself off of them. By early afternoon I start getting headaches if I don't have one but then I sip it slowly all day and have another with dinner. Drinking tons of water does help you loose weight.

For me, one big part of the weight loss was getting rid of the Pepsi I usually kept stocked in my home and my office.

The problem is, I think diet colas taste like panther piss. So Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke were out.

I tried a bunch of different diet drinks, tiring of each one after a certain number of months.

I spent time with Diet Squirt, Diet Mountain Dew, and generic equivalents. Those are fine for a while, but I started to really get sick of them. I found that Diet Dr. Pepper is really good, and doesn't make me retch like Diet Coke/Pepsi. That one I drank for a very very long time.

Recently, my latest passion is Diet Peach Snapple Iced Tea. I like the diet version better than the non-diet version, which is too strong. I now buy it several 12-packs at a time so that I make sure not to run out.

I still have the problem of, when I'm out to dinner/lunch, being unable to order a drink I can tolerate because all they have is Diet Coke. So I just say "screw it" and get a real sugar drink. I don't eat out often enough for that to make a dent in my diet.

As far as the hot coffee incident, that one is blown out of proportion. The recommended temperature for coffee is, I believe, 160 degrees farenheit. McDonalds served theirs at 180 degrees. McDonalds new this was dangerous, but it saved them money since the coffee stayed fresh longer.

This particular store was serving their coffee at over 200 degrees farenheit. Not only that, the lids did not fit properly. McDonalds had been made aware that this franchise was doing this and took no action.

When the lid inevitably came off the coffee (while the lady was drinking it in her car), the lady burned her crotch area so badly that she had to get skin grafts.

Still sound as ridiculous as you made it out to be?

-Biscuits

Skin graft + crotch = hell ya I'm sueing your ass

She wasn't even going to sue until McDonalds refused to contribute to her medical bills in a very rude letter.

For me, one big part of the weight loss was getting rid of the Pepsi I usually kept stocked in my home and my office.

I found the best thing for me for getting off of soda is to drink tons of water. I have a 30+ ounce water glass at work that I fill up at least four or five times a day. If I am constantly drinking water it never seems to occur to me to go grab a soda from the fridge. Plus there are a ton of other benefits to drinking lots of water. Of course every hour or so requires a trip to the bathroom, so there is a tradeoff

Diet Squirt? What is that?!?!

- Trevor

Wierd. I've never had a caffeine withdrawal headache. Occasionally I stop drinking stuff with caffeine and all that happens is that I get sleepy slightly earlier than I would normally do. It doesn't really keep me up for much longer at night but I've decided recently to stop drinking anything with caffeine in during the evening as I'm an insomniac sometimes.

- Trevor

In reply to:

---

Still sound as ridiculous as you made it out to be?

---

In short: YES!

Stig

If they got more than the cost of the surgery, it's still ridiculous.

You might guess I think damage awards and "pain and suffering" are a farce.

People suffer for free every day. If you were at all complicit in your suffering, suck it up. This isn't "a large object fell and crushed my bedroom". If someone is forced to buy coffee, perhaps, but no one's forced me, yet...

Monetary damages are not simply for the plantiff, the size of the award has to punish the defendant or it isn't a deterent of the orginal action. In this case the cost of surgery would not be a large enough amount to get McDonald's attention.

the size of the award has to punish the defendant

In that case, the money should go to a charity, and neither the plaintiff nor the plaintiff's lawyer should see a penny of it.

... If the lawyers didn't see the money, we wouldn't have these kind of lawsuits. Hey, not a bad idea!!!

Not a penny of it would result in a lack of needed lawyers, but some sort of ceiling would be advantageous.

If there were no penalties assessed in the settlement, why do anything right? You can beat most lawsuits, so even when you legitimately owe money, you can simply refuse to pay. On those rare occasions that you lose, all you have to do is cough up what little money you owed in the first place.

McDonalds had an abysmal safety record. Numerous examples of their disregard to customers were made available during the trial. Furthermore, their cavalier attitude towards the lady with skin grafts angered the jury. They decided to give an astronomical settlement to send a wake-up call to McDonalds. They knew, as did everyone else, that this amount would be lowered in appeal.

I think the original settlement was something like 300 million dollars, whereas the final settlement was just over 1 million.

-Biscuits

By the way, the headaches you are getting are called vascular headaches. They are caused by too much blood being allowed to circulate through blood vessels in the brain, increasing pressure and causing a headache. Caffeine (as well as nicotine) have a capillary-shrinking effect on your blood vessels, making them smaller. Your body then adjusts. After a while, this size is assumed by your body to be "normal" When you stop drinking caffeine, the vessels are no longer the correct size, and a headache ensues.

Aslo, Advil will NOT help a vascular headache. Believe me, I tried.

Maybe aspirin? It thins the blood, right?

Aslo, Advil will NOT help a vascular headache. Believe me, I tried.

What's advil? Ibuprofen? I find paracetamol works fine against my caffeine-withdrawal headaches.

Peter

Thats a little scary, my blood vessels have gotten smaller... Quiting definately, maybe this is why I can't remember anything? Oh... wait a minute... that was the result of art college... nevermind

The biggest weight gainer (unless you eat a consistent fast food diet, in which case you probably have other malnutrition problems) is the sugar intake with coffee, tea and snacks. You may be OK in your original wieght loss plan by just having black coffee or tea with no sugar. Reducing the intake over a period of time would be beneficial too.
How long had you been having several cups of coffee per day? If it was a few years, going cold turkey like that was probably one of the more painful ways to drop it, as you found out.
Additionally, if you've had a bit of extra weight for a while, your body would be 'set' to that wieght and try to maintain that weight and you have to work REALLY hard to drop below that level and then MAINTAIN that weight until your body thinks that is the new normal weight.
Cutting out the sugar may be the best immediate solution.

Oh, and I understand that this is a good book on the subject

Yes, Advil is Ibuprofin.

Is that 1 lump or 2? 6 please Give up sugar, I don't think so.

Brett,

Perhaps the headaches and other effects aren't caffeine related...

It appears that Aspartame (the sweetner used in Diet Coke a.k.a Nutrasweet) may not be as harmless we think it is.

Have a read: KILLER COKE!!!

or
aspartamekills

or
Aspartame Warning

Urban legend? I don't know, I'm not one for conspiracy theories but I do like to read about them...

I guess the suggestion to go cold-turkey with just good 'ol plain water is the best suggestion

[EDIT] Ah, forgot to mention, memory loss is a side effect too, apparently...

Cas

needed lawyers

Surely that's an oxymoron?

I knew someone would jump on this when I wrote it. What I meant was that companies have the money to attract good lawyers, if consumers are legislated out of financial awards then the consumer has nothing to attract a good (ok ok smart) lawyer.

I'm with you...
Theres a line in a Beastie Boys song that goes something like:
"I like my sugar with coffee and cream"
I always thought that summed it up best.


Z~