

The calculus of caffeine consumption - randomwalker
http://arvindn.livejournal.com/57651.html

======
whacked_new
Intriguing headline and interesting content, but where's the calculus? I mean,
not in terms of rates of changes and piecemeal and aggregated effects, but it
was really all quite fuzzy.

Enjoyable nonetheless. Is it possible to get some sources? In particular, 2-3
weeks for tolerance build up, and 5 days to "adenosine normality"? 5 days is a
surprisingly small figure, and I would guess there is a rebound effect if it's
just a short relapse. No expert here though, but coffee is my buddy so I want
to care :)

Actually, would it also be possible to get a source regarding the attentional
fluctuation throughout the day?

~~~
randomwalker
Calculus is a pretty general term; the study of rates of change is a
_particular_ calculus. It's certainly the most common one, and so it is
properly referred to as _The Calculus_.

All the numbers I reported are from papers on pubmed and stuff, most of which
are linked to from the wikipedia article. I spent several hours reading and
re-reading papers; I didn't cite them because my normal blog audience doesn't
care. But yeah, you can verify everything by starting out on
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine>

Attention fluctuation -- look up biphasic sleep, or studies on the
effectiveness of napping.

~~~
whacked_new
I'm looking through the sources and can't find a paper on tolerance buildup
times nor rebound effects after abstinence. Alas, I only have access to
abstracts right now :(

As for polyphasic sleep and napping, it is known that energy levels fluctuate
cyclically throughout the day with two peaks, but I'm surprised that you
plotted it with a sinusoidal curve that would suggest constant periods and
surprisingly, constant amplitudes... of course, without axes the graphs don't
say much of anything, but it's still a surprising presentation. You could
justify it as being for a general audience, but it has significant risk of
creating misconceptions, and weakens this article quite a bit.

By the way, one of the papers finds "Caffeine consumption for 4 weeks also
significantly reduced hippocampal neurogenesis compared to controls." Which is
not happy news for me.

------
streety
"Clearly, an idea that advances the state of the art is unlikely to occur
except when attention level peaks."

I'm not at all sure this is true. Tales of apple tress, baths and monkeys (or
was it snakes?) chasing tails come to mind. In my own personal experience I've
had some of my best ideas in the shower or on the bus going home.

~~~
mileszs
I could be wrong, but I think you might be confusing attentiveness with focus.
I don't believe the author is saying that the best ideas are guaranteed to
occur when you are at a peak focus on the problem, but rather when your mind
is most attentive, in general.

That is simply my interpretation, though.

------
tel
Anecdotal ramblings, spotty biochemistry, and a few fuzz charts. Edward Tufte
would make a poignant chart describing the aneurysm he'd get from reading
this.

That being said, I anecdotally agree with the thesis: Drink coffee to improve
your natural strengths instead of trying to BigPharma more hours into the day.

------
rms
Also remember that for the purposes of using caffeine to enhance productivity,
the worst thing you can do is chug three cups in the morning. Instead, you
want to drink your dose as slowly as possible throughout the period of time
you want to be stimulated.

------
fbbwsa
pseudoscience is the worst kind of "science".

its amazing how graphs and pretty rhetoric trick uneducated readers.

see: current HN post #1 -- <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=366857>

~~~
randomwalker
What? Pseudoscience is junk that claims to be science. If I claimed that were
science, I would have tried to get it published instead of writing a blog
post.

I wrote the article a year and a half ago, and I've been living by it for 3-4
years now. It's worked out amazingly well. I wrote it in order to share my
experience and thinking with other people.

Got a problem with that?

As for references, see my comment above.

~~~
fbbwsa
hmm... correct.

my apologies, offense not intended, though looking back I can see that wasn't
the nicest post by me. You didn't claim it was science and you're right it
shouldn't be critiqued as such.

i AM a scientist by training, so sometimes the stuff i see on the internet
people try to pass off as science perturbs me. i wrote that hastily after a
quick read of the article and i confess i was out of line.

And you know what? I don't have a problem with it, and even if someone does,
you should tell 'em to screw off. Worse than bad science, is when one person
tries to prevent others from the act of content/idea creation. naysayers
provide no value and you're right to be annoyed by my response. my initial
response to your article wasn't intended to be in that spirit, so my bad, guy.

keep it up.

~~~
randomwalker
no worries.

i'm a scientist as well, look up my profile :)

~~~
fbbwsa
since we've already established that i was out of line, i just thought i'd
revisit this topic of pseudoscience vs science
since:<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/11/18.html>

currently (as of Nov 19, 7:40am CST) is the number one ranked post on HN.

I think it reflects both of our sentiments.

Incidentally, I went to UT Austin as well.

