Every morning I follow the same routine. I take a liquid probiotic on an empty stomach that requires me to wait ten minutes before eating or drinking anything.
Desperate to have my first strong, flat white coffee of the day, I set a timer on my phone. When the time seems to drag, I check the timer is definitely running. Come on! Why is it taking so long?
By the time we’re at eight minutes, I start preparing the coffee with my fancy machine so my steaming mug is ready and waiting on the stroke of ten minutes. Bliss.
Safe to say, I love coffee. None of your mild and weak rubbish watered down with half a pint of milk, either – it has to be espresso, the highest intensity I can find, either with a dash of hot milk, or sometimes drunk as a double – black, straight down like a tequila shot.
My first coffee is swiftly followed by another and I carry on drinking cups throughout the day, notching up five on average – though six or seven isn’t unheard of.
Coffee is now so popular in the UK that 98million cups of it are consumed daily. This means there are now more regular drinkers of coffee than tea, something that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.
Since splashing out £600 on a sleek barista-style machine that uses pods (the expense felt justified since a flat white takeaway is now just shy of £5 in many coffee shops), I rarely drink tea. But the question is: do I drink too much coffee? And even though I seem to experience no ill effects, will quitting make me healthier? Is it – God forbid – ageing?
The messages are mixed.
Since splashing out £600 on a sleek barista-style machine that uses pods, Claudia Connell started drinking several cups of coffee a day. But will quitting make her healthier?
It’s well established that caffeine can increase anxiety, disrupt sleep and induce temporary spikes in your heart rate and blood pressure. Some studies suggest it can raise cholesterol, too.
Yet, just last week, a report based on a large-scale analysis of UK health trends found drinking four to five coffees a day can significantly improve liver health – reducing the risk of liver cancer, for example, by 47 per cent – while it also contains antioxidants and has anti-inflammatory qualities.
Having recently turned 60, I’m firmly in what’s referred to as ‘sniper’s alley’ when it comes to health. It’s an age when people can suddenly be taken out by things such as high blood pressure, heart disease and raised cholesterol.
So, to see once and for all whether being a coffee addict is either good for me or keeping me from optimum health, I decide to quit for six weeks.
Coffee never gives me palpitations, but the thought of giving it up does. I honestly think I’d find it easier to give up food than coffee. It’s one of my few vices.
To ensure fair and accurate results, I take a series of health tests while still drinking my usual amount, with a plan to repeat them when I’m coffee-free.
Health firm Medichecks offers a series of home assessments and recommends I take its £119 Advance Diet and Lifestyle Blood Test, which will measure 27 biomarkers, including liver and kidney function, cholesterol level and key vitamins and minerals.
A nurse draws the blood and the results are sent off to a lab to be analysed and studied by a doctor.
In the meantime, I visit my GP to have my blood pressure checked – it’s a healthy 117/78 (anything under 120/80 is considered good). I then purchase an at-home monitor, to make further, regular checks. Sure enough, I get the same reading as the GP, so I know it’s reliable equipment.
While the blood tests will measure my cortisol levels at the time of taking, I also want to investigate them throughout the day to see if caffeine causes any big spikes. Cortisol is a stress hormone, and when levels become consistently too high it can lead to other problems – such as weight gain, mood swings and brain fog.
Regenerus Labs offers a £133 cortisol analysis saliva test based on four samples gathered throughout the course of one day.
Since the most commonly experienced side-effects of caffeine are a racing heart and poor sleep, I need to track those, too. For that I use an Oura Ring (from £399). Fitted with sensors, it analyses 30 biometrics (including sleep patterns, stress and heart rate), uploading the data to a linked smartphone app.
Blood pressure is typically a little higher first thing in the morning and when I take mine, before any coffee, it’s 119/80 – still in the healthy range but slightly elevated. A few minutes after, I’m one flat white down (with an extra shot for good measure) and I take some more readings. My blood pressure is now 121/81 and my resting heart rate goes from 65 to 68bpm. However, just five minutes later things have settled to their pre-coffee levels.
Caffeine can induce temporary spikes in your heart rate and blood pressure, disrupt sleep and increase anxiety
So coffee does spike blood pressure and heart rate, but I don’t feel it and I don’t really care. I once wore a heart monitor to see how stressed I got reverse parking a car – it was much worse. During my coffee phase, I drink a minimum of five cups a day, including into the afternoon.
I know some people swear they can’t have caffeine after a certain time, but it never seems to interfere with my sleep. I’ve even been known to take a book and a coffee to bed with me.
I’m on HRT, which has undoubtedly saved me from menopausal insomnia. Consequently, I’ve always slept like a log.
My Oura Ring requires at least two weeks of wearing before it can start accurately reporting my stress levels and ‘readiness’ – this is a daily score calculated after analysing nine key metrics including sleep, heart rate, body temperature and activity.
I’m not a ‘stressy’ person – I tend to take everything in my stride – and feel confident my stress readings won’t be dramatic.
But it does get to work immediately on analysing my sleep. Have I been kidding myself all this time about the way coffee affects it?
I check the data the morning after drinking five coffees – the last one at 6pm before going to bed at 11pm – and it shows that I have a sleep score of 78 (out of 100) and a ‘readiness’ score of 83, rated as very good.
Over the following month of coffee-drinking, I average seven hours, 40 minutes of sleep per night, achieving good levels of both REM and deep sleep – the most restorative stages.
I know most would think this very odd, but the only part of my data that surprises me is that it seems to take me around 40 minutes to drop off – it always feels much faster than that to me.
Claudia wears an Oura ring – a device that analyses sleep, heart rate, body temperature and activity – which helped her to track the effects of going caffeine-free
On my last full week of caffeine, a bit nervous about what lies ahead, I ramp things up a bit and drink six cups a day – a bit like an alcoholic before they go to rehab.
Astonishingly my sleep score marginally improves, while my resting heart rate when asleep goes down to 62bpm.
My blood results from Medichecks fall well within normal ranges and my cortisol analysis from Regenerus shows my levels are on the lower side first thing in the morning. They then fall back to a normal range throughout the day. Coffee definitely doesn’t seem to be spiking them.
What’s more, my first stress report from my Oura Ring confirms I experience lower than average stress. I’m beginning to feel really quite super-human, especially as throughout the six weeks of sustained coffee-drinking my blood pressure remains good and steady. I’m very much dreading having to quit. But perhaps doing so will tip me into super-healthy status, delivering the sleep quality, stress levels and blood pressure of a baby?
I decide to go cold turkey and brace myself for hideous withdrawal symptoms: headaches, fatigue, not to mention my irritability at missing my favourite drink. I’ve known people to be physically sick from caffeine withdrawal, with terrible aches and pains after giving it up.
And what will I drink instead? I don’t want to risk decaf coffee, just in case the beans get mixed up. (I have to confess that during my waitressing days, when a customer ordered decaf I didn’t exactly take care to make sure I picked up the right jug). I do like matcha tea but it contains caffeine, so I settle on peppermint instead. It’s light and refreshing but nowhere near as satisfying as coffee.
Nearly every morning I reach for coffee on auto-pilot and stop myself in the nick of time. In the end, I dismantle the machine and hide it at the back of a cupboard.
When I travel to London on the train, I usually make a cafetiere’s worth of coffee and fill a travel mug. Twice I do this without thinking, but thankfully realise before taking a sip.
But the physical side still seems bizarrely fine. I wait for the headache to kick in… and it doesn’t. No shakes, no irritability and my head is perfectly clear.
To be honest, I’m baffled – why am I so unaffected? A nutritionist friend suggests my extraordinary tolerance of caffeine may be genetic and suggests a DNA test.
After taking a saliva swab, I send my sample off to DNApal, which will produce a report (prices starting from £239.99) analysing my unique genetic data. This includes my ‘stimulant genotype’ – or how my body reacts to and metabolises stimulants such as caffeine.
Caffeine is not considered addictive in the same way as nicotine or alcohol, but it can still lead to physical dependence. For many, coffee becomes ingrained into a daily routine
My response gets odder still. Rather than improving my sleep, quitting coffee seems to be doing the complete opposite. My first night of caffeine-free sleep is terrible according to my Oura Ring, earning me a score of just 54. The next day is the same.
I put it down to my anxiety about giving up coffee. The only improvement is that it now takes me an average of 30 minutes to fall asleep instead of 40. As for my daily stress levels, they stay the same, as does my blood pressure when I check it.
Dietitian Nichola Ludlam-Raine (nicsnutrition.com) says: ‘Genetics play an important role in how we metabolise caffeine, including variations in the CYP1A2 gene, which influences how quickly caffeine is broken down by the liver.
‘Fast metabolisers often tolerate coffee well and may be less likely to experience sleep disruption or jitters. Age, body size, medications, smoking status and habitual caffeine intake can also influence how someone responds.’
Sure enough, my results from DNApal come back and show that I have an AA variant on the CYP1A2 gene. This gene is responsible for detoxifying multiple substances including caffeine, meaning it moves faster through my system than it does for those without the variant.
As a result, I have a high tolerance and am able to drink it without getting the jitters or feeling anxious. It’s also unlikely to increase my risk of hypertension.
My results also show that when it comes to the ADORA2A gene – which is related to caffeine-linked insomnia – I have something called a TC variant. That means there’s an increased chance coffee could lead to sleep disturbances, but in my case the variant doesn’t appear to be expressed.
When I discuss this with Vicky Godfrey, DNApal co-founder and a registered nutritional therapist, she tells me the fact I metabolise coffee so quickly is the pertinent factor here. And suddenly it all makes sense. It’s why I can order a double espresso at the end of a restaurant meal at 11pm and sleep perfectly well, while my friends sip their chamomile tea and look on in horror.
As I’m getting towards the end of my coffee-free time, I repeat my blood and saliva cortisol tests.
My blood tests show that, off coffee, my cholesterol has risen the tiniest amount, my iron levels dropped fractionally, and my vitamin B12 rose. The cortisol monitoring shows my levels have fallen, but only by the smallest amount.
Had the results shown caffeine made me more stressed and wrecked my sleep, I would have been prepared to quit. But thanks to my genetics, I can knock it back like there’s no tomorrow, so that’s what I will do.
After the six coffee-free weeks are up, I devour my first mug of the day – and then four to follow. For the first time ever, I stop and consider: do I feel wired? Hyper? Shaky? No, I really don’t. I know this is very lucky.
Given coffee doesn’t affect me, does that mean I’m free to drink even more or is there a danger of becoming dependent?
Ludlam-Raine says: ‘Even if someone metabolises caffeine quickly, as you appear to, the general recommendation of up to 400mg per day (roughly three to four barista-style coffees) still applies. It doesn’t mean higher intakes are beneficial or risk-free.
‘Caffeine isn’t considered addictive in the same way as nicotine or alcohol, but it can lead to physical dependence.
‘There’s a psychological component, with many people associating coffee with routines, comfort, productivity or social occasions. For many coffee drinkers, cravings are likely to be a combination of dependence and habit rather than addiction.’
Remarkably, my first night back on the caffeine is the best sleep I’ve had in ages – eight hours and 32 minutes – and earns me a sleep score of 94.
Maybe the relief of returning to my favourite beverage has relaxed me? Either way, I’ll be caning the coffee from now on.
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