Quitting coffee will improve your mood
If you're struggling with anxiety or feeling overly stressed, quitting caffeine may help improve your mood. You may also find that when you give up caffeine, your sleep quality improves, and you wake up feeling more rested and less groggy in the morning.
Also, anxiety and depression often occur together, and caffeine can worsen anxiety. Stopping abruptly can worsen depression. If you regularly drink caffeinated beverages, quitting can cause a depressed mood until your body adjusts. It can also cause other signs and symptoms, such as headaches, fatigue and irritability.
In general, caffeine withdrawal symptoms can start 12 to 24 hours after you have your last hit of caffeine. Symptoms will be at their worst 20 to 51 hours after, and they can last anywhere from two to nine days.
Reduced anxiety and stress: Caffeine can increase feelings of anxiety and stress in some people. By quitting caffeine, you may find that you feel calmer and more relaxed, which can have a positive impact on your mental health.
While the side effects of caffeine and anxiety can be alike, you can't get anxiety from caffeine directly. But, drinking coffee can make anxiety symptoms worse. Research shows that in people with panic disorder, caffeine consumption raises the risk of having a panic attack and increases levels of anxiety.
Cut down slowly on the amount of caffeine in your diet. Don't make the mistake of stopping totally. You'll likely experience withdrawal symptoms and go back to drinking coffee or soda or taking a headache medication with caffeine in it to make the symptoms disappear. This starts the dependency cycle all over again.
Compared to other addictions, the withdrawal and recovery periods from Caffeine are relatively short. Most Caffeine addiction symptoms can be resolved in 7-12 days of consumption reduction.
If caffeine is a big part of your daily diet, taking it away can have a host of unpleasant effects in the short term. These include headache, tiredness, sleepiness, down moods, trouble concentrating, and crankiness. You'll start to feel symptoms a day or two after you stop. They can last anywhere from 2 to 9 days.
Caffeine does have its cognitive perks — including boosting alertness, energy and feelings of well-being — but overuse can cause a range of unpleasant side effects, including troubled sleep, jitters, irritability and gastric distress.
Quitting caffeine can reduce anxiety levels
This releases hormones that can increase anxiety and nervousness, spikes the heart rate, cause palpitations, and can even induce panic attacks. This is even worse for those of us more prone to suffering from stress and anxiety. It can make symptoms a lot worse.
Since caffeine withdrawal did decrease my motivation and made me feel duller, the matters became conflated in my mind. In other words, no coffee, no think-y.
Caffeine is a stimulant, which means it increases activity in your brain and nervous system. It also increases the circulation of chemicals such as cortisol and adrenaline in the body.
Choose Your Method: Cold Turkey or Gradual Weaning
This way, you can avoid headaches or hits to your productivity while you're at work. Weaning yourself off of caffeine takes longer and requires more effort, but you'll be less likely to feel symptoms of withdrawal.
Caffeine Myth No.
This one has some truth to it, depending on what you mean by "addictive." Caffeine is a stimulant to the central nervous system, and regular use of caffeine does cause mild physical dependence. But caffeine doesn't threaten your physical, social, or economic health the way addictive drugs do.
Know the higher your caffeine intake, the more severe your symptoms might be, and the longer it may take for you to feel well again. Symptoms are likely to begin around 12 to 24 hours after you last ingested caffeine, and they can last between two and nine days.
It is good to remember that coffee is not the bad guy here and in fact can actually have some positive health benefits. However, coffee does contain short-acting stimulate caffeine and if you are struggling with anxiety symptoms, skipping that extra cup of Joe may help reduce those anxiety signs.
Because caffeine is a diuretic, the medication can be flushed out of your body at a faster rate and the life span of the medication is reduced. If you have a health condition and are prescribed ADHD meds, you might be advised to stop drinking caffeine as taking both can heighten the effects of the ADHD meds.
Interestingly, it turns out there was a reason for that: Caffeine helps the brain release dopamine into the prefrontal cortex, a brain area important for mood regulation. Caffeine may also help the storage of dopamine in the amygdala, another part of the brain important for anxiety regulation.