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Caffeine Vault 149

Posted by emmett from the hyper-wildetuna dept.
Brazilian Geek writes: "This is interesting ... Here's a link to the Caffeine Vault. Everything you wanted to know about every geek's favorite drug. BTW, did you know that caffeine can kill? Here's a handy table with the caffeine content of some popular soft drinks and different brews of coffee."
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Caffeine Vault More

Caffeine Vault

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  • putting down cup #29 ....
  • Hello? How could they foget Red Bull from the quick sheet?
  • haven't touched the stuff in years. had a few headaches at first, mouth was a little dry. but that only lasted a few weeks.
  • That's like saying "Stay away from penicillin, man; I shot up a liter of that shit and it HURT."

    Maybe you just shouldn't take 7 of them.
  • In most cases it lasts only 2 days.
  • Yep; in sufficiently high doses, anything can kill you. Even abnormally high water intake for a sustained period can kill you in several ways, including malnutirion:

    There's even this article against water, for the people unaware that dihydrogen monoxide is water. Read it. It's fun.

    Dihydrogen monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year. Most of these deaths are caused by accidental inhalation of DHMO, but the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide do not end there. Prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage. Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive sweating and urination, and possibly a bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting and body electrolyte imbalance. For those who have become dependent, DHMO withdrawal means certain death.

    Dihydrogen monoxide:

    is also known as hydric acid, and is the major component of acid rain.

    contributes to the "greenhouse effect."

    may cause severe burns.

    contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.

    accelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.

    may cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes.

    has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients.

    CONTAMINATION IS REACHING EPIDEMIC PROPORTIONS!

    Quantities of dihydrogen monoxide have been found in almost every stream, lake, and reservoir in America today. But the pollution is global, and the contaminant has even been found in Antarctic ice. In the midwest alone DHMO has caused millions of dollars of property damage.

    Despite the danger, dihydrogen monoxide is often used:

    as an industrial solvent and coolant.

    in nuclear power plants.

    in the production of styrofoam.

    as a fire retardant.

    in many forms of cruel animal research.

    in the distribution of pesticides. Even after washing, produce remains contaminated by this chemical.

    as an additive in certain "junk-foods" and other food products.

    Companies dump waste DHMO into rivers and the ocean, and nothing can be done to stop them because this practice is still legal. The impact on wildlife is extreme, and we cannot afford to ignore it any longer!

    THE HORROR MUST BE STOPPED!

    The American government has refused to ban the production, distribution, or use of this damaging chemical due to its "importance to the economic health of this nation." In fact, the navy and other military organizations are conducting experiments with DHMO, and designing multi-billion dollar devices to control and utilize it during warfare situations. Hundreds of military research facilities receive tons of it through a highly sophisticated underground distribution network. Many store large quantities for later use.

    IT'S NOT TOO LATE!

    Act NOW to prevent further contamination. Find out more about this dangerous chemical. What you don't know CAN hurt you and others throughout the world.

  • Want caffeine with without all that other baggage (sugar, color, etc.)? Want to make your own custom drinks with caffeine (e.g., caffeinated orange juice from frozen concentrate)?

    Well, a while back I discovered Water Joe [waterjoe.com]. Each 17oz bottle has 60mg of caffeine (and they now do larger bottles too). It's a bit more expensive than cola, but hey...

    The same company also makes other bottled water conconctions [waterconcepts.com].

  • IIRC then caffeine is water-soluble.

    Ahh, well. Just checked the "rubber bible [amazon.com]" and no, caffeine isn't water-soluble.

    Wonder how the water method for decaffinating coffee works then -- just lots and lots of water?

    ---

    "Where do you come from?"

  • ...This is your brain on caffeine [reallifecomics.com].

    Any questions?

  • Good to see that I am not wasting my time with a Espresso...

    By the way I am always looking for a good place to get a good Espresso... So if you know of any in Melbourne (Australia) let me know, a have a couple but need more...

    Also isn't there a double Jolt cola, with twice as much caffeine... Not that I like the stuff!!!

    So once again just pass on down some good places for a Coffee in Melbourne, or for everyone else where you live!!!

    Anyhow better head,
    Brad
  • Yep, almost too much of anything will kill you.

    Drink too much water and you die, stay too long in the water, and you die.

    But too much oxygen will kill you even faster. Just breath pure oxygen under two atmospheres pressure (29.4 psi), and you will convulse and die in minutes. Breath from an oxygen tank at 33 feet underwater (10m), and you will die. Breath plain old air at 300feet, and you will die.

  • LOL! Thanks. After dealing with Hazmat for a couple years while in the Navy, I never imagined there to be an MSDS for water. :) Although it is damned hard to OD on water, I have heard of people who take on almost addictive behavior towards water and occasionally overdose, sometimes even lethally. Apparently, flooding the kidneys causing sodium levels in the blood to drop low and cause seizures. So it seems to be possible, but its pretty damned unlikely, and a entry into the Darwin Awards if you do pull it off. :)

    Deo
  • It's interesting stuff, Pure Caffiene
    Little white granules
    Bitter

  • Re:Caffeine has it'sown MSDS too (Score:5)

    by aed ( 156746 ) on Friday July 21, 2000 @11:31PM (#913688)
    The correct link is: http://erowid.org/ch emicals/caffeine/caffeine_data_sheet.shtml [erowid.org]

    if 13 mg/kg is toxic, then for a 200lb (100kg) person the toxicity level = 13mg/kg * 100kg =1300mg
  • actually commercial mp3s would still have that hiss in the upper register

    I only recently gained the listening acuity for it to bother me....

    I doubt many people notice it

    *sips can of surge again*
  • with a java front end.
  • While caffeine is useful because of its easy availability in the US, for an equal amount of stimulation it raises the pulse and blood pressure significantly more than methamphetamine. Caffeine has a narrower LD50/ED50 ratio, and more serious side effects. People have been talking about massive caffeine doses, on the order of grams. A small dose of amphetamine or methamphetamine would be much safer.

    The main danger of amphetamine and methamphetamine is that they are effective enough stimulants that people can stay awake for days/weeks. Obviously, you should not do this.

  • Hah. (Score:1)

    by Torke ( 101454 )
    I need caffeine tonight. Some stupid chick took the dryer and I need to get my clothes clean. It's already 2:23am and I need to get up at 5:30. Dammit! I need those stupid caffeine mints or something.
  • Nothing on earth is better for a caffeine kick than coffee double brewed with Water Joe. Sleep? What me, Sleep?
  • Would you have volunteered to take the place of one of the animals?
  • Really, this hardly counts as news. For about 5 years now there's been copies of the Caffeine FAQ [cs.unb.ca] floating around. Its packed with much more information than the linked site offers.

    Plus, the caffeine images on the site mentioned in the article are kind of lame. Using a copy of CAChe, readily avaliable to most 1st year organic chem students, it'd be piece of cake to make a caffeine molecule that danced, spun, showed electron density, and otherwise entertained, all in .gif format.
  • That seems unlikely to me, simply because coffee has a subjectively identical stimulating effect as soda (where pure caffeine was added), caffeine pills, or pure caffeine from a chemical supplier. If other stimulants are present in coffee, they have either an effect that can not be distinguished from caffeine, or they play a minor role.
  • caffeine is good, caffeine is great, caffeine makes you stay up late. caffeine has all the vitamins you need, but will make your face look so unclean. It powers the minds behind the software boom, and lets you spend quality time in the bathroom.
  • > The claim that beathing "plain old air at 300 feet, and you will die" is so much bullshit.

    I propose you immediately dive to 300ft on a regular air mix and prove us wrong.
  • I notice Instant Tea is on the Table.

    You do realise that that was invented by Communists. They realised that Proper tea is theft
  • That's incredible that ~30 cups of coffee, according to this article, can kill.

    Now I wonder how many coffee beans go into an average cup of coffee. I wonder this because I used to eat chocolate covered coffee beans by the handful. I would think that the amount of coffee beans, combined with the chocolate, could easily kill. I have to question these statistics.

    JL
  • Obviously caffeine is water soluble. The production of coffee from ground coffee beans demonstrates this. The caffeine dissolved in soft drinks demonstrates this. Don't believe common sense? Then look at this, from its merck entry:

    One gram dissolves in 46 ml water, 5.5 ml water at 80 C, 1.5 ml boiling water, 66 ml alcohol, 22 ml alcohol at 60 C, 50 ml acetone, 5.5 ml chloroform, 530 ml ether, 100 ml benzene, 22 ml boiling benzene. Freely sol in pyrrole; in tetrahydrofuran contg about 4% water; also sol in ethyl acetate; slightly in petr ether. Soly in water is increased by alkali benzoates, cinnamates, citrates, or salicylates.

  • LD50 (Score:1)

    by chuckw ( 15728 )
    This LD50 number has me a bit upset. Who in their right mind could pump an animal full of caffeine and let it shake and drool until it fried it's brain? I guess it was necessary to do a few times to discover the threshold and validate the results. I hope this sort of thing doesn't happen too often...
    --
    Quantum Linux Laboratories - Accelerating Business with Linux
    * Education
    * Integration
    * Support
  • This also works the other way, ie I have had a whole lot of caffeine tonight (espresso + coffee) and would actually like to get to sleep.. no chance of that now, it's 4:30 and I aimed to be up at 7:00. Whoops. :)


    -----
  • I checked the page linked, and the caffine FAQ, but the best drink in the world is missing: RC Edge. [rcedge.com] It has Caffine and some herbs, and that stuff'll getcha buzzed. Some one also mentioned red bull not being on the list. I'd like to know the amounts on those, and I'd like to know when the 72mg limit was set. Any one know the amount of caffine in the caffinated gum? It tastes like crap, but it works (I saw it and had to try it once.) What I like about the gum is that they have to put a warning on the pack, somthing like "Do not consume more than 2 sticks in less than 4 hours." Back to RC Edge... What I like about it is it tastes GOOD unlike some other high-caffine things.

    Just a side note:: RC Cola is the official drink of the little league. I can just see the entire team bouncing up and down on the bench right now: "Come one coach!!!! PUT ME IN!!! I CAN DO IT COACH, COME ON PUT ME IN"

    Disclamer: this post is probibly incoherent (if that's even spelled right) because I'm tired.

  • Has 80mg in 250ml cans.

    And that is only the export versions. The Austrian originals had lots more. Couple this with Orange Absolut Vodka (55%) and "We have a winner".

    MRo

  • If you like tea, but can't drink caffine for medical reasons, try this: steep the tea leaves in boiling water for 30 seconds, throw out the water, and then steep the leaves in new water. Caffeine is highly water soluble, and 80% of the caffine is disolved in the first 30 seconds.

    I've found this technique to be very useful, since the selection of pre-decafinated teas at the local stores is piss-poor. Now I can drink whatever flavor I like.


    Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose that you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
  • INADBIWICWMOP (I'm not a doctor but I wish I could write my own perscriptions )

    I've been trying to figure out something for a few years. Is it possible to maintain a constant blood-caffeine level? I imagine this would have to be accomplished by tracking your caffeine intake, and supplying yourself with a sustained, regular dose. What I'm having a hard time understanding is the concept of half-lifes of medical dosages, absorption rates, etc.. Does anyone have any simple, layman's way of explaining any of this so that I could experiment on myself a little?
  • There are only so many coffee beans that you can actually use per cup. Why? Water can only absorb so much material....
  • I have to agree with him. Coffee and a big joint are very nice, especially first thing in the morning. It seems to give a combination of the best of both drugs.

    I don't think coffee and LSD would go together. Impossible. He's a freak.
  • My friend, biochemist, told me that caffeine's input in stimulating effect of coffee is about 3 to 5 percent. All the rest is provided with other alcaloids (for example - tannin) So all talks about caffeine are empty talks.
  • The site doesn't mention caffeine lipstick. I kid you not - see this Guardian Article [guardianunlimited.co.uk] for details.

    I get enough of a buzz from kissing someone on the lips without getting a hit of caffeine when I do it!

    Baz

  • If you take a look at the entry at the caffeine vault (or in Merck), it turns out that caffeine's water solubility is very temperature dependent. Merck lists it at 1g / 46 ml at room temperature (which certainly sounds pretty soluble to me) and an astounding 1g / 1.5 ml at boiling. That's awfully damn soluble at the temperature at which most people brew their coffee and tea.

    Wonder how the water method for decaffinating coffee works then -- just lots and lots of water?

    It's actually pretty noxious- worse IMO than the old method of direct extraction with methylene chloride. I once knew a senior chemist from General Foods, who described the process to me.

    Basically what they do is to make a batch of super-strong coffee, so strong in fact that it's saturated in all the water soluble elements of coffee. Then they extract this "water" with methylene chloride. Caffeine is quite unusual in that it's highly soluble in both water (at least hot water) and methylene chloride, so they basically extract only caffeine and closely related compounds that way. Then they take this decaffeinated "water" and use it to extract the coffee beans, presumably at close to boiling. Since it's saturated in everything except for caffeine, it doesn't extract anything from the coffee beans except for caffeine. My source for this says that they recirculate the same batch of "water" through the process for years, which is why I'm not terribly impressed by it.

  • The solvent most often used for decaffeination is dichloromethane (also commonly known as methylene chloride). Chlorinated hydrocarbons are basically all known or suspect carcinogens, but apparently this process is still considered acceptable because the decaffeination is performed before roasting and any of the volatile dichloromethane is driven off in the roasting process. Starbucks' literature, at least, claims that dichloromethane is below detectable levels (which are quite low) in decaf coffee beans.

    Also FWIW the CO2 used for extraction now is actually supercritical, not liquid. The difference is not terribly important or obvious to the layman, but it does apparently have a pretty dramatic impact on its solvent properties.

  • Weird. I have drank Surge (soda cans) and I couldn't handle after 10 sips (heart beat faster and starting to shake hehe). I can handle Dew easily. According to the chart, Dew has more caffeine. That doesn't make sense to me. Is there something in Surge that made me all hyped? My coworker could drink three cans easily.

  • No kidding! When I was younger, up to about ten years ago, I got the same effect off caffeine as everyone else - it helped me stay awake and made me a bit jittery. But for the last three or four years I've had an odd reaction, which I am curious to know if anyone else shares.

    First thing in the morning I always drink one cup of coffee, and it clears away the cobwebs. (For all I know that could be the effect of the sugar - I sweeten my coffee with honey at home.) But then any time in the day after that, whenever I drink a cup of coffee, rather than getting me all tensed up, it has the paradoxical effect of making me want to put my head down on my desk and take a nap. So where I used to dose myself with coffee to stay alert at work, now that technique doesn't work at all anymore.

    And where some people, after having drunk a cup of coffee late at night, find it difficult to go to sleep soon afterwards, for me, if it's late, a cup of coffee sends me right off to dreamland. For me, caffeine is a more effective sleep-inducer than an alcoholic drink. A while back I had to drive home from one of my company's branch offices at 3:00 AM and I made the mistake of drinking a cup of coffee from a vending machine at a rest stop en route. I was tired but OK until then, but immediately after drinking the coffee I started drifting off while driving and being awakened by the vibration from running over the reflectors on the lane stripe - if I hadn't given up and pulled over to the side of the road for a quick nap in the driver's seat, I think I'd have wrecked my car.

    Am I the only one who experiences this effect?

    Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

  • I have drank Surge and I couldn't handle after 10 sips ... I can handle Dew easily. ... Is there something in Surge that made me all hyped?

    I think it was just the taste. No human being should be made to drink that stuff. People say Mt Dew looks like piss, but I swear I've seen pubic hair floating in Surge bottles at the store.

  • Yep; in sufficiently high doses, anything can kill you. Even ... water ...

    Yah, drop a ton of ice on someone, and they'll be dead!

    ;-)
  • (summarized from the table)

    Jolt Cola: 72 mg. caffeine
    Drip Coffee(7 oz.) 115-175 mg. caffeine
    Espresso (2 oz.) 100 mg. caffeine

    Now I now why those coffees with two shots of espresso that I drink when I need to wake up work so well. Its almost four times the caffeine as a Jolt!

  • If anyone remembers their old Anarchist Cookbook, it is also simple enough to create a lethat poison by cooking garden variety dip for awhile, concentrating the nicotine. Igestion will cause almost immediate cardiac arrest. Plus, if the intended victim smokes, it's relatively untraceable! Fun knowledge for everyday life.
  • err...meant to say over four times the caffeine. It's 4AM here, guess I need to refuel.
  • >Breath plain old air at 300feet, and you will die.

    Huh?

    I've climbed a 14000+ft. mountainwith no ill effects. Are you maybe thinking of 300psi?
  • Water is very addictive. Just think of the withdrawal symptoms.
  • Caffine goes through the body rather quickly, so it's hard to maintain the caffine level save by intravenious feeding. I've heard that in order to exceed the LD50 level of caffeine you need to drink 60 cups of coffee within 60 minutes, even though only 10 cups will have enough to kill you.
  • Overall, in moderate doses, for most people, caffeine appears to be fine. Some circumstances which require caution: People with GERD (gastro-esophageal reflux disease) should not use caffeine. This is heartburn in its various instantiations, and caffeine relaxes the sphincter that keeps the stomach from gurgling into the esophagus, which is the point behind reflux. The problem is that chronic reflux can lead to Barrett's esophagus (about 10% of cases of chronic reflux), and Barrett's esophagus is a pre-cancerous condition (about 10% eventually progress to esophageal cancer). The other problem is the overdose. There are reported cases of nodoze used excessively (eg by grad students and IT-ish people) to maintain horrific schedules leading to "Permanent Dozing", ie death. In high doses, caffeine (and its relatives theophylline and methylybromine, the "caffeine" in chocolate) disrupt the function of the heart, causing ventricular arrhythmias and ultimately death. That's fairly rare, but taking several grams of caffeine is fairly risky.

    Oh, and the other thing: ever wonder why Excedrin and some of the other headache medicines have caffeine in them? In part, it's because caffeine withdrawal in addicted patients (half of America it seems) can give you headaches. So that's the other thing.

  • (If I'd known this article was coming along as a story, I wouldn't have posted the msg below to the caffeine poll thread)

    The coffee-lover's version of the mentat mantra from Frank Herbert's Dune:

    It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion,
    It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed,
    The hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning,
    It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.

  • No (Score:1)

    by dxkelly ( 11295 )
    But did we really need to know the LD50 of caffeine?
  • is a picture of the caffeine molucule
  • Yeah, you're right.. technically, there is no such thing as liquid CO2

    There are two kinds of people in the world: chemists and normal ones ;-)

  • 12-Mile-Limit Cocktail
    2 oz. bush rum
    2 oz. fresh OJ
    2 oz. tamarind juice
    juice of two limes
    3 No-Doz, crushed, or juice of three cola nuts
    3 tbs. brown sugar (5 if you use cola nuts)

    Blend contents with ice at high speed. Drink up. This will keep you high, alert, and on top of things when you cross the line.

    Hawkley: The Freetrader's Almanac and Cookbook [amazon.com]


    ---

    "Where do you come from?"

  • Did you know that if downing 4 bottles of S kyrocket [thinkgeek.com] Flavored syrup from ThinkGeek [thinkgeek.com] would kill the average human? It well goes over the LD50 of caffeine.
  • Taste wasn't that bad :). It is not great either like Mountain Dew.

  • No, it's not caffeine that's a laxative. Coffee has other chemicals in it that make it a diaretic (sp?). Caffeine by itself does nothing for your digestive tract.

    That's why I like a cup of decaf after dinner. Not that it "expels" (ewwwww...), but it really settles your stomach.

  • let's be medically realistic (Score:5)

    by toska ( 30916 ) on Saturday July 22, 2000 @01:48AM (#913733)
    I'd be a little cautious in comparing water overload to caffeine overload. While it is possible for polydipsia (pathologically increased water intake) to cause death, it's actually pretty rare. There are these organs called kidneys that in healthy young people do a great job of keeping up. Eventually, you can overcome the capacity of the kidneys to expel pure water, and if you're not taking in salts, then you can have an electrolyte abnormality, seixure, cardiac arrhythmias, and death. A really old diabetic who developed polydipsia (usually a psychiatric condition, btw, with some people actually drinking straight from their showerheads), would be at pretty high risk since the body is already pretty compromised.


    The achlorhydria is also pretty rare, and you can digest much of your food. I've never heard of a reported case of achlorhydria from chronic low-level polydipsia leading to clinically significant malnutrition.


    I wouldn't leave people with the impression that caffeine is just as toxic as water. It's not. It's more toxic, and it can kill you if you overdose on it. If you don't do the stupid "deadline in 2 days. No more sleep and a couple boxes of nodoze should solve it", you'll never run into trouble. If one of your coworkers on a project or something starts getting really confused and lethargic after taking a lot of caffeine (slumping down, not making sense, staring off), you should take them to the ER and get charcoal down their throats fast. It'd be hard to get there by drinking coffee (who can get 50 cups down that fast), but those 100mg tablets can add up fast.

  • how can caffeine be your favorite drug with so many other wonderful drugs out there. all caffeine is is my most used drug.
  • That page did not suggest he is a regular user of pot and LSD. He just said he used them. We don't know how many times.

    I can understand how one might have a problem with caffeine and a desire to stop using it. By no means do I wish to trivialize the possible long-term consequences of pot or LSD usage, but I will note three things true about the drug caffeine that are not necessarily true for pot or LSD. Caffeine is cheap and readily available, it is acceptable to ingest caffeine just about wherever you want, and it is physically addictive. LSD is not something most recreational drug users do everyday. For one thing, it's not very easy to have LSD around all of the time, even if you are a small-scale dealer. Secondly, it's not something you really want to do everyday. You want to allocate a chunk of time in advance for when you want to trip because you know you're going to be awake and unable to sleep for several hours. You also want pick a time when you won't need to drive somewhere or will be expecting a visit from an unpleasant person such as a relative or an IRS auditor. There are precautions that most recreational drug users think about before they decide to trip. It's something you put more thought into and something that is generally done infrequently. It's more common to smoke pot on a regular basis, but obviously there are reasons why you would still restrict your intake so that you're not smoking up all day long. You can lose your job if you're stoned at work, get in an accident if you're stoned when you drive, etc. These are just a few examples of why you'd have reason to put some serious thought into the times and frequency in which you'll smoke pot.

    Caffeine does not mentally impair you the way that alcohol, pot, or LSD does. However, it's still a drug! It still effects your body, and as such it's a good idea to regulate your intake of it. Regulating your caffeine habit could be more difficult than restricting your cannabis or LSD usage because you can ingest caffeine just about whenever you want! You could go to work, drink coffee, eat your lunch and drink soda, drink more coffee in the afternoon, etc. and not worry about it because it's viewed as totally harmless. You didn't have as many reasons to think about why you should watch your caffeine intake. If you are extremely careless, you could get yourself into patterns of lacking energy, being unable to concentrate, and being up at hours you don't want to be.

    I'm of course not saying the health effects of caffeine are worse than pot or LSD, or anything like that. I'm just saying I think it is completely plausible that someone could have a problem with a caffeine addiction that's having unpleasant effects on their life but at the same time be able to use pot and LSD in moderation and responsibly.
  • well more news for the druggies, tobacco [lycaeum.org] could make you vomit without nausea, you might be terribly surprised if you cook and dose your nutmeg [lycaeum.org] as a fool, and coffeine [lycaeum.org] could get you dancing on the freway in a traffic
    don't miss their Report Collections [lycaeum.org]. crazy stories if you can skim skim some junk. (well, It includes accounts from people of various ages and backgrounds, aims to give a picture as complete as possible.) Enjoy.
  • My intake probably hovers around 2 grams a day, or roughly one pot of good coffee. I can tell you that those details [health.org] seem geared more towards the average caffeine user, as in maybe two colas, or one cup of coffee. Odds are decent that the average /.er is off that chart.

    I know the effects of not having caffeine for one day do not qualify as mild, unless mono also qualifies as mild.
    --------------------

  • i have always like the Lycaeum [lycaeum.org] for stuff like this. It's also got some funny anecdotes about specific drugs including Caffeine, for interested parties.


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • Are they allowed to sell Red Bull in the US? They sure aren't here in Canada... we can't even get caffinated Mountain Dew here. (My sister smuggled some Red Bull from the UK, tho... i think it's the only "energy drink" that has ever had an affect on me.)

    BTW, for those who wonder whats up with the Mountain Dew, Canadian law looks at it like this: In dark drinks, coffee, cola, etc., Caffeine is considered a flavour enhancer. However, in light drinks, it's considered a drug, and has to be controlled as such. Thus, no Red Bull, and no caffeinated Mountain Dew.

    However, for those who need a kick, Jones Soda's Whoopass [jonessoda.com] is pretty powerful stuff... think Jolt meets XTC. =^)
    -legolas

    i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...

  • I'm a PADI certified scuba diver. The claim that beathing "plain old air at 300 feet, and you will die" is so much bullshit. Plain and simple, no other name for such rank misinformation.

    Of course, if you want to go down to 300 feet "breathing plain old air" you're going to have to have enough air in your tank to do the necessary decompression along the way to the surface.

    I would not use air though for 300 feet, I'd go with a Nitrox mix in my tank.

  • Theres a very recent discussion about caffeine here [slashdot.org], in the most recent poll.

    Them geeks sure like their caffeine.

  • Re:Medical mathematics (Score:4)

    by YoJ ( 20860 ) on Saturday July 22, 2000 @04:44AM (#913742) Journal
    Concentration of drugs in the body over time is calculated using the Michaelis-Menten differential equation. Let y(t) be the amount of drug in the body (grams) at time t (seconds). Then:

    y'(t)=-k y(t)/(A+y(t))

    where A and k are constants that depend on the drug.

    Drugs like cocaine have y(t) very small relative to A, so the concentration can be approximated with an exponential decay. This is where the concept of half-life of drugs comes in. The concentration decreases by a half for every half-life of time that goes by. So if the half-life is 1 hr, after 3 hours there is 1/8 the initial amount of drug in the body.

    For drugs like alcohol, y(t) is large relative to A, which makes the decay more linear and less exponential. One serving of alcohol takes about an hour to pass out of the body. So after half an hour, half the initial alcohol is in the blood.

    To model the level of caffeine in your body without complicated medical tests, you would have to find the right constants for caffeine from medical literature. Then carefully record every source of caffeine you intake to the model. Since caffeine passes through the body relatively quickly, it would be pretty much impossible to keep a constant concentration in the blood. It would be possible to keep the concentration between an upper and lower limit.

  • Indeed. One of the most deadly substances known to man is Dihydrogen Monoxide [dhmo.org], yet we have our daily intake of dhmo every day...
    ----
  • Okay. Let me rephrase... scammed the dryer while I was washing my clothes. I mean, c'mon, what crazy person does their laundry so early in the morning? (besides the obvious me, of course. ;)
  • >I've climbed a 14000+ft. mountainwith no ill
    >effects. Are you maybe thinking of 300psi?

    Nope. He means 300 ft. You've just got your directions mixed up. Remember he was just talking 'bout SCUBA diving? He means 300ft UNDERWATER.

    At those depths, a 21% O2 mix (such as air) will cause you to die of oxygen toxicity within minutes. Oh, and that 78% N2? At those pressures N2 becomes intoxicating, and you suffer from nitrogen narcosis... to say nothing of the bends when you come back up.

    For deep diving, a very low O2 mixture is used, generally 5% O2 or less. And to prevent nitrogen narcosis and the bends, an inert gas, usually helium, is mixed with the oxygen.

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • WKiernan dun said:

    First thing in the morning I always drink one cup of coffee, and it clears away the cobwebs. (For all I know that could be the effect of the sugar - I sweeten my coffee with honey at home.) But then any time in the day after that, whenever I drink a cup of coffee, rather than getting me all tensed up, it has the paradoxical effect of making me want to put my head down on my desk and take a nap. So where I used to dose myself with coffee to stay alert at work, now that technique doesn't work at all anymore. And where some people, after having drunk a cup of coffee late at night, find it difficult to go to sleep soon afterwards, for me, if it's late, a cup of coffee sends me right off to dreamland. For me, caffeine is a more effective sleep-inducer than an alcoholic drink. A while back I had to drive home from one of my company's branch offices at 3:00 AM and I made the mistake of drinking a cup of coffee from a vending machine at a rest stop en route. I was tired but OK until then, but immediately after drinking the coffee I started drifting off while driving and being awakened by the vibration from running over the reflectors on the lane stripe - if I hadn't given up and pulled over to the side of the road for a quick nap in the driver's seat, I think I'd have wrecked my car. Am I the only one who experiences this effect?

    Actually, no, you aren't.

    Myself...well, I'm of the type that was referred to in less politically correct days as "being hyper" and known more in these days as ADHD, aka "Ritalin Prescription On A Stick". (I grew up largely before the days of dosing kids with Ritalin. I just got antihistamines that had the interesting side effect of being tranquilisers. :)

    With a lot of people who run towards being "hyper", stimulants (including speed, Ritalin (which just metabolises to speed) and caffeine) actually tend to mellow one out. You're running on overdrive as it is--it's now thought that stimulants overload the brain just enough to mellow one out.

    Myself, I'm not crazy about Ritalin. And yet I drink coffee--actually preferring the strong stuff (espresso, "trucker coffee" (regular coffee brewed approximately double strength--most folks see it as drinkable as battery acid, and my husband has to remind me to make coffee "half your usual strength" if he's to drink it :), etc.). I will probably have no stomach lining by the time I'm thirty, thanks to having literally grown up on trucker's-coffee. :)

    I also tend to drink coffee not just to wake up, but often to unwind after a stressful day--the stuff actually calms me down, especially if I put a bit of flavouring into it or make cappuccino...I'll be awake, yes, but relaxed. Prolly has to do with the funky wiring that's in hyper folks in general...

    For that matter, the same goes with chocolate...the more bitter, the better. I honestly wish I could find a good recipe to make it like the old Aztecs did (no sugar, black as night, bitter enough to put hair on your chest, and even with the occasional chili pepper added for flavour!). ;) Not much on milk chocolate...not strong enough. Gimme the bittersweet stuff :)

    (Hmmm...this prolly counts as a form of self-medication, I expect. Ah well. Somewhat cheaper than Ritalin and a hell of a lot more enjoyable.)

    Now, admittedly, OD'ing on caffeine is a Bad Thing. Trucker's-coffee is prolly the maximum you want to take the liquid stuff...and I honestly do think trucker's-coffee is prolly stronger than espresso, to be honest :) I can testify that taking several Vivarin on top of a pot of coffee is a Bad Thing (my sister made the mistake of doing this during cramming for spring exams in college, and literally could not sleep for four days straight--luckily, she had enough body mass to keep from the nastier effects like arrythmias and puking blood and the like, but to this day she avoids Vivarin like the plague)...then again, one can't make cappuccino with Vivarin, or add amaretto flavouring to Vivarin, or experiment in making one's own amaretto or hazelnut Vivarin (well, I guess you could, but it ain't like grinding coffee beans). :)

  • yes.

    People WILL overdose unless you test the upper bound limits. For ANYTHING, including caffeine.

    -rt-
  • Are they allowed to sell Red Bull in the US? They sure aren't here in Canada... we can't even get caffinated Mountain Dew here.

    Yup, I buy Red Bull by the caseload in the States all the time, and bring it into Canada. The customs people don't care, I don't have to pay any duty, and I get Red Bull for a month or so.

    Before I found Red Bull I used to sleep...

    -rt-
  • These statistics about caffeine content in various drinks tend to be annoyingly limited - there's no Red Bull, no Solstice, in fact pretty much none of the energy drinks popular all around Europe. They tend to contain loads of caffeine (I seem to remember that Red Bull has more caffeine in it than Jolt), taurine, vitamine b and sometimes guarana. Sugar too, of course. I usually favor a good tea or latte or espresso, but nothing I've tried works quite as well as Red Bull, especially as I think it tastes better than many other energy drinks and soft drinks. Drinking two or three cans of it has me buzzing for an hour or two, pretty much unable two sit still. Cheap it isn't, and probably not healthy either :-)
  • According to the ingredient list [red-bull.com] from the fine folks at Red Bull... one can has about as much as a cup of coffee. So from the list given by the Caffeine Vault... 115-175mg. I've read elsewhere that it's around 130mg, but don't have a link for that handy.

    -rt-
  • caffine is good it makes every day a spadoinkle day . for true enjoyment caffeine + fragging is a great combo watch the hours fly by as you murder your friends amped to the core well thats probly why i have no life and im posting on slashdot maybe you shouldnt.

    -Praise "Bob"
    "We would be fools not to ride this strange torpedo"- hunter s thompson
  • Just looking at the chart for consuming caffine, it seems I consume roughly the amount in the "Heavy" range at certain times of the day.
    Coca Cola is practically running through my blood stream.
    Anyone here consume leathal amounts of Jolt?
  • I was a bit suprised at the "myths" section. It was written with nothing but good things to say, and failed to indicate where/why the myths originiated. It also kept repeating "normal quantities" and "most people". It fails to define what normal is, and who "most people" are. I think many of the people responding on slashdot drink enough coffee/caffeine to not fit into that "most people" category, and for us, those myths COULD be true.

    Also, it fails to mention any link between caffeine and depression - a trend that is common amongst hi-intake coffee drinkers. Myth? Fact? Hmmmm.....
  • SMalL ConSOLatION To mE bUT thANk FOr tHAT iNfORmATION!
  • ever wonder why Excedrin and some of the other headache medicines have caffeine in them? In part, it's because caffeine withdrawal in addicted patients (half of America it seems) can give you headaches.

    AFAIK it's because of its effects on peripheral veins which then result in a changed blood circulation in the brain.

    Why to take headache medicine when a cup of coffee is enough?

  • Sorry, but the soluability of caffeine in water is very poor, especially compared to the other substances that provide scent and flavour. Decaf is made by extracting the caffeine with a non polar (mixes with oil, not water) solvent. I think they used to use petrol for that, but switched to liquified CO2
  • It really depends is the best answer. It depends whether it is water solulable or fat solulable, whether it goes to the muscles [at the cellular level], how fast it is metabolized in the liver, and a bunch of factors.

    For caffeine, I think it lingers for approximately 12 hours with the peak fairly early (within 20 mins to 70 mins). After it starts to wear off, just take another sip. Say every 3 - 4 hours.

  • NO such thing as too much coffee. (Score:4)

    by www.sorehands.com ( 142825 ) on Saturday July 22, 2000 @05:43AM (#913758) Homepage
    Hold it, I have to brew another pot....Ok, I'm back.

    You know, you drink to much coffee when... [sorehands.com]

  • Well, even though 192 mg/kg is technically the lethal dosage, a lot less than that can kill you. A friend of mine, who weighs around 200 pounds or 94 kilograms, once drank 22 shots of espresso in one sitting. That's around 2200 mg of caffeine, which is only 23.4 mg/kg. And yet, the next day his limbs started losing feeling and turning blue (I don't know why it was the next day.. well, he drank it late at night, maybe it happened early in the day), and we had to take him to the hospital. Caffeine poisoning isn't all that hard to clean up, they just gave him some saline and flushed him out, but the doctor in the emergency room told us that he came close to dying of it, and definitely would have if he hadn't run out of aderol the day before.

    So even something not that far over the toxicity level can kill you.
    ---

  • Re:Caffeine has it'sown MSDS too (Score:3)

    by laborit ( 90558 ) on Saturday July 22, 2000 @05:58AM (#913764) Homepage
    I don't think I've EVERY heard of someone reaching Lethal dosage...

    Oh, it's not just theoretical rat-torture. Although the guy in question [mapinc.org] did have to take ~90 pills = 18g = ~180 cups of strong coffee = 600 Penguin Mints...

    Of course, I must warn against someone eating half a pound of chocolate covered espresso beans, unless they want to stay up for two days.

    Yeah, the half-life can be a problem. You're much better off with ephedrine (clean, no jitters), Nicorette(TM) (shorter-acting), or cocaine (the side effect where you turn into God is pretty nice).

    - Michael Cohn
  • > BTW, did you know that caffeine can kill?

    Yep; in sufficiently high doses, anything can kill you. Even abnormally high water intake for a sustained period can kill you in several ways, including malnutirion: if you drink insane quantities of water, your digestive acids may actually become too diluted to effectively digest many foods. Even non-diabetics can overdose on sugar...which makes me wonder why I'm not dead yet considering the deranged quantities of Jolt and sweet sweet heavenly hash I've imbibed...
    makes me feel like Elvis when I binge, except that I'd never under any circumstances put peanut butter on my hamburgers.

    But back to the caffeine, there was at least one case I recall reading about, in which a mother overdosed her young daughter on caffeine pills by repeatedly feeding them to her over several days. The mother didn't realize that the autopsy would turn up plenty of undigested pills, some with the brand still visible on the capsules...
  • Actually, marijuana can be very harmful to ones health. Long-term usage can cause considerable brain damage.

    Substantiate please.

    - Michael Cohn

  • Caffeine has it'sown MSDS too (Score:5)

    by krystal_blade ( 188089 ) on Friday July 21, 2000 @10:40PM (#913772)
    Shock you're co-workers, satisfy your safety oriented boss. Download the CAFFEINE MSDS, and place it next to the office coffee pot!!

    http://erowid.org/chemicals/caffeine/caffeine_data _sheets.shtml

    Caffeine Toxicity: Anhydrous: 192 mg/kg lethal dosage for human. Toxic dosage is 13 mg/kg oral man.

    That equates to around 130 mg for a toxicity level in a 200 lb person. Females and males are so closely linked on lethality, and toxicicity level, posting both here would be a waste.

    I don't think I've EVERY heard of someone reaching Lethal dosage...

    Of course, I must warn against someone eating half a pound of chocolate covered espresso beans, unless they want to stay up for two days.

    mummmummm-mmmuuuusssssssssssssssssssssssssssstttt gggegegetttttt mmmomo more kh kh kh off offf eeee!!!

    krystal_blade

  • Some guy... (Score:3)

    by RPoet ( 20693 ) on Friday July 21, 2000 @10:40PM (#913774) Journal
    Read this guy [erowid.org]. He's apparantly a regular user of pot and LSD, and that's like the most natural thing in the world, but he's trying to cut down on the caffeine... That should be a warning to all you kids out there -- cut the caffeine (not) ;)
    --
  • After getting what should be a lethal dose, the other 50% did *not* die.

    I can picture one busy habitrail for a few days. :-)
    --
  • Well now I know to just skip the Coke and Jolt and just stick with good old coffee. I can keep my hands warm in the winter and keep awake plus I only have to drink 1/2 the ammount of coffee to get double the caffine of soda! Its little tidbits of information on the web that make paying 150 DM per month for IDSL access in Germany worth while!

  • Re:Caffeine morphine Jolt Cola--what's the diff? : (Score:5)

    by rve ( 4436 ) on Saturday July 22, 2000 @03:09AM (#913782)
    The LD50 should not be regarded as a border, below which you live and suffer no ill effects and above which you die.

    The LD50 is based on the dose that kills 50% of a group of test animals, usually rats, rabbits or mice through it's direct effects. This dose is multiplied by a certain factor (depending on the weight, and probably species of the test animal), to give a _probable_ LD50 for humans.

    At a far lower dose, only 1% may die, or at an even lower dose no test animal may die, but some develop permanent damage to their organs. At a far higher dose, 99.999% may die, but some could survive.

  • Re:Caffeine is not (Score:3)

    by laborit ( 90558 ) on Saturday July 22, 2000 @06:03AM (#913789) Homepage
    Neither LSD nor marijuana is addictive (or, if marijuana is "psychologically addictive" because people get used to its pleasant effects, then caffeine is too). Neither one is dangerous or harmful to health. So while your point is taken, I don't think it indicates any hypocracy on the author's part.

    Also note that Caffeine isn't as physically habituating as some drugs, but overall it may be harder to quit -- people who are trying to get off speed get some social support and substantial approval for it, whereas society practically encourages caffeine overuse.

    - Michael Cohn
  • I'm a PADI certified scuba diver. The claim that beathing "plain old air at 300 feet, and you will die" is so much bullshit. Plain and simple, no other name for such rank misinformation.

    Of course, if you want to go down to 300 feet "breathing plain old air" you're going to have to have enough air in your tank to do the necessary decompression along the way to the surface.

    I would not use air though for 300 feet, I'd go with a Nitrox mix in my tank.

    I strongly suggest you take a refresher course. You are a danger to fellow divers. It's also painfully obvious that you don't know the first thing about Nitrox. One of the main tenents of technical diving is that O2 is TOXIC under elevated partial pressures. Diving on EAN32 (32% oxygen Nitrox, a common mix) would most definitely be lethal at 300 ft.

    Here's the math, we'll consider a PPO2 of 2.0 (200%) to be toxic, which is rather liberal considering that divers typically regard 1.4/1.5 to be the limit.

    300 ft is 10 atmospheres (300 / 33 + 1)
    32% O2 at sea level is 0.32 PPO2, at 10 atmospheres, that's 3.2 PPO2 (320%!).

    Even air (21% O2) is potentially lethal at 300 ft.
    21% O2 = 0.21 PPO2 * 10 AtA = 2.1 PPO2 (210%!)

    Instant Seizure in a bottle...

  • There's disputed research by Kawachi et al. that caffeine users might commit suicide less. I mean, they can only commit suicide once, but they are less likely to try. Junkscience.com [junkscience.com] has a cite for, and a short summary and discussion of [junkscience.com], the original paper.
  • This is slightly off-topic, but I hope that this post and story underscore the importance of responsible drug use. That means doing your research. Would you try to use a new program without reading the manual/man page?

    Everyone should check out the resources available at places such as:
    Erowid [erowid.org]
    The Lycaeum [lycaeum.org]
    Ecstasy.org [ecstasy.org]
    Dancesafe [dancesafe.org]

    To those that think drugs are evil, remember Prozac, Ritalin, the heart medicine you take, the pills your grandmother takes every day, and then think about just how much you actually know about the things you put in your body daily.

    Do your research -- Enjoy drugs w/peace of mind.

    -Kabloona
    "We can't stop here, this is bat country!"

  • I can attest to a caffeine over does.
    Deadline at work, went about 3 weeks, hardly any sleep drinking about 6 quad-shot mocha's a day at minimum. At the end of the time I woke up one morning (after just falling asleep 2 hours prior) with an agonozing pain in my chest. I thought I was having a heart attack. Nope, too much caffeine cause my heart to freak out on me. It hurt. Really bad. I quit very soon after that.


    nerdfarm.org [nerdfarm.org]
  • Another good reason to find out what you're taking before you do take it, especially on unregulated supplements. From what I saw on a Dateline special and in my own research (mainly on erowid and similar sites) ephedrine can have extremely serious side effects when used as a supplement. Stories of marine hopefuls dying on training courses while on ephedrine based products are absolutely chilling.

    The thing is that when ephedrine is mixed with caffiene its believed that there can be extremely serious cardiac damage done, ie arrest under medium fatigue.

    Hell, even "Seventh Heaven" had an episode about it, and therefore it as to be bad!
  • The chart in the story shows Jolt as the highest caffeine, 72mg in 12oz. Well, don't forget about Bawls! [bawls.com], it has 80mgs in a 10oz bottle! I drink this stuff when its "one of those mornings" or I want to go to a show or club and I just don't think I will have the energy. You'll know when it kicks in (and you'll definetly know when it starts to wear off)!

    To purchase some of your own Bawls, check out ThinkGeek [thinkgeek.com] but I highly recommend against buying from BeveragesDirect [beveragesdirect.com], they don't answer the phone and forget to ship stuff...

    Geoffeg

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