Caffeine sensitivity
 

Hey everyone just wondering how many of you experience caffiene sensitivity, maybe it's due to the ssri but I miss coffee! Anyone ever get better on that end ? Any other sensitivities ? Alchohol seems obvious..

There is an herbal noncaffeinated drink called teechino that's pretty dang good! I likke putting it into a teaball instead of a filter.

Caffeine messes w GABA, which calms down overfiring neurons.

I have a sensitivity to all processed sugar. Basically everything you see on labels that was not made from Mother Nature lol. However I get by it, By just making sure I don't eat or drink to much of it. Before my concussion I was a really but soda guy, now if I have a couple sips of soda my brain will feel like it needs to shut down. Instead of soda, I'll go for some juice or flavored water drinks.

I have no caffeine sensitivity though!


Good luck!
Sam

You may not think you have any caffeine sensitivity but you may be causing brain fatigue. Caffeine is an excito-toxin. It stimulates the brain cells to fatigue or even death. You should limit your caffeine to one serving per day or less.

I was reading that low amounts of caffeine can be beneficial in stimulating communication between the pituatary gland and the hypothalamus. So no more than two cups of coffee per day.

I don't have any problems with my 2 cups of coffee. I am very sensitive to it though and never drink coffee after 9am :o I sometimes only have 1. If I have too much coffee it gives me the jitters and makes me feel anxious. I just love my Colombian coffee beans. ahhh Just the smell of them is enough. :cool:

MVTBI, green tea is good. It has a totally different way of working.

Caffeine is an adenosine receptor antagonist - it prevents adenosine from slowing down neurons. Why is it excito-toxic to the brain?

I was under the impression that excito-toxins are neurotransmitters like Glutamate, which can allow a massive influx of Calcium Ions to the nerve cell and therefore excite them to death. Does Caffeine do anything similar to that in high doses?

And yes, Glutamate is a neurotransmitter and an excito-toxin. Any substance that enhances its release is toxic to the brain. Does Caffeine affect Glutamate release?

Yea I found I had to cut coffee out all together for a long while. I started drinking tea instead. It's only recently (10-11 months post cocus) that I've been able to drink coffee again without it triggering migraines but now I generally avoid it altogether.

TBI-induced sensitivity to caffeine
 

I had a skiing accident at 28 that gave me a head injury and left me hospitalized for several months. That was 29 years ago.
I immediately discovered after leaving the hospital that caffeine from coffee or cola had a huge impact on my mental energy level. Caffeine seemed to bring me back to normal function in life and work. I became an avid coffee drinker for most of the next 25 years.
There were some work environments where my new personality flaws got in the way, and I didn’t do so well. I did fine in some environments though. The types of things that happened were an inability to freely switch focus from one subject to another, and to sometimes experience rage that I couldn’t shut down. These things may have been the same type of thing happening in my brain, like an over-excited feedback loop.
About four years ago I discovered a Reader’s Digest article in an older issue (which I have not been able to locate since) that explained my problems and what I needed to do. The article was written by a physician who had had a head injury due to a cycling accident. Effects of head injuries are like snowflakes and no two are identical, but the symptoms he described matched my symptoms well. He also named a culprit in eliciting his, generally negative, personality symptoms: caffeine. The doctor described how high levels of caffeine changed the way that he argued issues. It wasn’t that caffeine directly made him excited or angry while he was arguing, it was that it didn’t allow the excitement to diminish. His excitement would build and build until he was in a rage. However, he was able to completely reverse this and other behaviors by cutting caffeine from his diet.
After reading this, I suddenly felt like Dr. Jekyll looking back over his life and recognizing the presence of Mr. Hyde. There were periods of disaster in my post-accident work history, but there was also an excellent period while I worked with NASA personnel. That was the only job I had had where there was no coffee machine in the office. I fulfilled my daily caffeine requirement with caffeinated soda. All caffeinated beverages are not the same. Coffee, I have learned, has many times the amount of caffeine that is found in caffeinated sodas. A 20 oz. Starbucks coffee contains 415 mg caffeine, whereas a can of my favorite diet soda contains only about 43. Three cans of soda per day gives me about 130 mg of caffeine, which keeps my energy up, and I may be able to go much lower. When I was drinking coffee, I know that I consumed well over 1000 mg some days. I may have made poor decisions on those days.
The past four years have been consistently “Mr. Hyde-free”. I still argue with my wife, but I give up so much sooner now.
I wish I could locate that Reader’s Digest article though.

Still struggle with caffeine sensitivity 18 months after my injury. I get the normal effects at first, but in the days after I feel sluggish, angry, depressed, foggier, violent, and feel a desire to self-harm. I can tolerate it now much more than before, but still have trouble if I'm not conservative. I have to drink much less and much less often.