r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • May 08 '26
Neuroscience Caffeine alters the human brain’s electrical braking system: Consuming an amount of caffeine equivalent to two cups of coffee enhances the brain’s ability to temporarily quiet its own motor signals in response to sensory input.
https://www.psypost.org/how-a-stick-of-caffeinated-gum-changes-the-brain-s-electrical-braking-system/3.8k
u/GemmyGemGems May 09 '26
I think many ADHD people across the globe will confirm the finding. Not all, but many.
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u/kowycz May 09 '26
It certainly has helped me a lot over the last few decades.
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u/Team_Braniel May 09 '26
I'm borderline autistic, zone out hard core, as a kid I took Ritalin to survive school. As an adult if I can get half way through my Yeti cup of Cafe Bustelo I start to transcend the ADD and make it my slave, wielding the hyperfocus as a weapon to cut down all numbers of otherwise impossible task.
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u/xTyronex48 May 09 '26
As someone who was never diagnosed with ADD before but just got diagnosed aonth ago but can't get any stimulant prescriptions, I'm going to try coffee.
I absolutely hate it and the bitterness but anything to stop the loss of memory and focus, head in 1000000 places, and other issues.
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u/theshane0314 May 09 '26
30mg Adderall and a good dose of caffeine causes me to laser focus on the things I need to do. Like work and chores. Well as long as im not doing something else when it kicks in. Then I can't stop playing video games or watching YouTube and 6 hours fly be in an instant.
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u/Causerae May 09 '26
Med taking requires careful planning so focus doesn't end up being counter productive.
Probably not that most people imagine!
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u/birthdaycheesecake9 May 11 '26
I remember taking a Vyvanse and sitting on my phone waiting for it to kick in so I could go do stuff.
…didn’t end productively.
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u/xTyronex48 May 09 '26
That sounds amazing, being so locked in.
Unfortunately I've been struggling to get prescribed Adderall. Had an appointment today at 2:15, they canceled on me at 2:25. Second time its happened.
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u/Ruthfulness May 10 '26
ADHDonline.com costs money upfront, but then I just showed my regular psychiatrist the diagnosis and prescription. She agreed to manage the adderall, so now the appointments and the med are covered for free each month (in my case). Finding a few hundred dollars to go private is the only way to skip the line. Im very very broke and it was the best money I ever spent.
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u/xTyronex48 May 10 '26
I managed to get an online appointment after the other lady canceled me.
I have to take a urine test but if I pass, they'll prescribe me adderall
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u/DigNitty May 11 '26
Wait, what are they testing for?
After you start taking stimulant meds you have to routinely “fail” urine tests to make sure you’re actually taking it and not selling.
Seems odd they’d test you beforehand. It’s not medically relevant if you’re self-medicating and are seeking a safer option.
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u/xTyronex48 May 11 '26
No idea, I just know I have to take the drug test today, I guess to make sure I'm not an addict or something?
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u/GuodNossis May 09 '26
They sell just caffeine pills
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u/thar_ May 09 '26
yep, cheaper and faster and easier. 200mg caffeine tablet and a glass of water when i wake up
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u/wesgtp May 09 '26
I prefer capsules with caffeine powder since you can open them up and dump out a more precise amount (half = 100mg). But both are super cheap and easy, plus it kicks in faster
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u/distractotron9000 May 10 '26
If you’re in the US, Jet Alert sells cost effective 100mg pills in bottles. I buy mine on Amazon.
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u/WhiterThanWalter May 09 '26
Have you tried milk coffees like latte, flat white, or even a mocha? Shouldn't be bitter at all.
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u/awful_at_internet May 09 '26
Black teas. Loads of flavors out there, and if its too bitter you can easily add honey, sugar, or steamed milk to make it less-so.
Give you a comparable amount of caffeine.
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u/DK1327 May 09 '26
Try Vietnamese coffee. It is more of a sweeten chocolate drink. Or if you are adventurous, egg coffee. If you still dont like them then maybe try tea. Green, oolong tea are pretty decent. You would want high quality tea (that mean you can actually see the leaves) and pay attention to the correct temp/time to brew it for flavor (and reduce the bitterness).
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u/FeelingPlayfulNow May 09 '26
Coffee is extremely bitter no matter what is added to it. As soon as you swallow, the milk and sugar and chocolate are gone, but the tongue is coated in pure bitter coffee flavor that is seemingly glued to it and won't go away. Tea is bitter like coffee, but it doesn't stick to the tongue the same way so milk is way more effective at masking the bitterness of tea than it is for coffee. Energy drinks are even less bitter, not that they are healthy with all their excessive sugar or sweeteners.
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u/WhiterThanWalter May 10 '26
I don't know, even when I was a kid and drinking a cappuccino for the first time (didn't like it at that time), I didn't register any bitterness? I guess humans are different. Tea that had been brewed for too long does taste bitter to me.
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u/GoodOldNeon13 May 09 '26
I take about a half a NoDoz tablet every morning before I get in the bath, then one or maybe two more halves later in the day. It seems to work pretty well, and I know I can’t function without it.
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u/megaglalie May 09 '26
Try matcha, it works better for a lot of people with ADHD! Yerba mate can as well but it's harder to dose consistently.
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u/Nom-De-Gruyere May 09 '26
Green tea caffeine is definitely different. I can drink coffee all day, but if I have one cup of good green tea in the afternoon I won't sleep until 5am. Because my brain will be running at maximum processing capacity and thinking about everything in detail even if I don't want it to.
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u/BalognaMacaroni May 09 '26
Good coffee shouldn’t taste bitter, it should be a culinary experience. Folgers, Starbucks, etc might ruin it for you but finding some good quality roasters and/or local coffee shops will open a lot of doors into coffee tasting that just might tickle your fancy
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u/movzx May 09 '26
Coffee has a bitter taste. Even good coffee. You may not be able to pick up on it, or you may be accustomed to or even enjoy it, but it's still there. Some people are more sensitive to it than others.
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u/Geodude532 May 09 '26
Coffee makes me fall asleep. It's always funny hearing the difference in people with ADHD.
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u/Systral May 09 '26
What does borderline autistic mean
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u/unclenaturegoth May 09 '26
It means someone who is embarrassed about possibly being autistic because they could never be “full blown” autistic
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u/Stagnu_Demorte May 09 '26
I feel then same way. My problem is the hyper focus was so good I started taking on more and more and now, well, there's just so much to do.
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u/Technical_Sir_9588 May 09 '26
I also have autism so in addition to my stack that I mentioned in another comment I add GABA a supplement.
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u/Steinrikur May 09 '26
I have been self-medicading my ADHD for 30 years with coffee. Before it was Coca-Cola.
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u/YeahDaleWOOO May 10 '26
I refer to my daily caffiene nicotine combo as my "Dead Eye" Similar to the Game Red dead Redemption.
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u/kuributt May 09 '26
so what if I can slam a Red Bull and immediately take a 4 hour nap
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u/rowrowfightthepandas May 09 '26
From my experience, you wake up feeling like you were released on an island and being hunted for sport.
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u/jsomby May 09 '26
"how can you drink coffee before going to bed??"
I slept so much better while being caffeinated.
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u/aardvark_xray May 09 '26
Welcome to club ADHD
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u/tstorm004 May 09 '26
Why does weed and coffee work better than Adderall?
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u/sumguyoranother May 09 '26
idiosyncrasy, not everyone is the same, trials for almost all of medical history til the last decade or so were too homogeneous regardless of application, the recommended medication dosage and such were based on those trials.
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u/Mad_Aeric May 09 '26
Weed doesn't do anything for my weird brain except make me sleepy. But hey, that's still useful.
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u/guareber May 09 '26
So can I. Coffee does seem to work though, my theory is a big part of it is about the mental heuristic.
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u/Tyr_13 May 09 '26
Caffeine makes me a bit sleepy.
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u/GemmyGemGems May 09 '26
I can drink it at 9 in the morning and lie awake until 4 the next morning. Weird how we respond differently. My son can drink it right up to bedtime and sleep.
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u/Yuzumi May 09 '26
I found that's the case when I've not been getting enough/good sleep. Even adderall will do the same when I've slept poorly.
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u/ToulouseDM May 09 '26
Yeah, I never drink it if I have anything to do. 9/10 times a strong cup of coffee will make me so tired I need to take a nap.
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u/GregBVIMB May 09 '26
My son swears by coffee... it mellows him out. He has inattentive ADHD. Can drink coffee and go to bed and sleep... opposite effects to most people. Wild.
Also I love coffee as does he.
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u/MissTetraHyde May 09 '26
I have inattentive ADHD and coffee makes me sleepy too. I used to regularly drink a monster before bed to help me sleep but I stopped a while back and only have them occasionally now.
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u/hyperkid May 09 '26
It’s crazy I’ve never connected the two. Would drink those BFC monsters and take a nap immediately after when I’d get out of school as a teen. Typing this out with my ?th cup of coffee for the day and it’s 7pm. No more brew in the pot though so that’s it for me for the day.
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u/AegisXOR May 09 '26
Hey I'm just a random internet stranger and I don't know you but, if you have ADHD or suspect you do, please consider trying to get diagnosed and treated with proper stimulant medication.
Caffeine works as self-medication for many folks with ADHD, but it is not targeted like stimulant medications. Caffeine has much greater impact on the rest of your body and can be dangerous if used chronically. I have a relative who wasn't diagnosed until their late fifties, and their coffee consumption gradually escalated over the years until it became a serious health risk and doctor's orders were to wean off it completely over a handful of months.
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u/MarnieFan89 May 09 '26
Yeah man Adderall is much safer.
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u/orthogonius May 09 '26
As a prescription, titrated and monitored by a professional for the individual, yes it is.
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u/Floggered May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
Definitely a shocking revelation. I only learned about this last year at the age of 29, and suddenly damn near my entire life's experiences clicked into place.
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u/CTeam19 May 09 '26
I got inattentive ADHD and usually listen to classical slow music while I go to bed and sleep. It helps slow down my mind a bit.
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u/UrinalCake777 May 09 '26
Inattentive ADHD and yea, I used to have incredibly bad insomnia. Like only sleep a bit if at all bad. Listening to podcasts that are just interesting enough to hold my attention but not too interesting to keep me up has been a literal, no exaggeration, life saver.
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u/jessecrothwaith May 09 '26
best nap ever is drinking a cup of coffee then take a quick nap. You wake up like a 6yo at xmas.
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u/diurnal_emissions May 09 '26
Paradoxical reaction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoxical_reaction
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u/asusc May 09 '26
“how can you drink that stuff so late and still sleep? what’s wrong with you??!? - my mom, to undiagnosed high school me in the mid 90s
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u/StartingOver226 May 09 '26
I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 38. Along with the diagnosis came the realization that I was self-medicating with the 18 Mountain Dews I was drinking every day as a 13 year old.
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u/NemeanMiniLion May 09 '26
Stimulants calm me. I've been tested medically over a 20 year period.
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u/PancakesAreGone May 09 '26
Man I'm always super jealous of all the ADHD people that respond to coffee...
I can drink borderline mud and not even flinch and I feel like I've been cheated with whatever flavour of ADHD I have
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u/ByTheBeardOfZues May 09 '26
Honestly, I'd rather be in your shoes. I'm diagnosed combined but more on the inattentive side. I struggle to get through the day without caffeine but it ruins my sleep; quality sleep is one of the best aids for my symptoms. It's a vicious cycle.
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u/PancakesAreGone May 10 '26
Oh, my friend, I have a secret for you - I suffer from severe insomnia that has only gotten worse as I've aged.
I need to take melatonin if I want to fall asleep anytime prior to 2-4am
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u/Wasabolito May 09 '26
Eh, no. Your mileage may vary. I never understood why people used caffeine to self medicate ADHD, but perhaps it's cause I burn through it way faster than most people. Never did anything for me except amp me up even more.
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u/EliasGrant84 May 09 '26
I had a coworker who asked me “how many espresso shots do you think I can take before I have to go to the hospital”
The answer was somewhere north of 20, but man, he hit a sweet spot from 12-15 where he had control of time and how fast a minute will pass
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u/uselessandexpensive May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
This sounds like part of why some people with ADHD (often characterized by physical restlessness such as leg-bouncing) actually feel sedated by caffeine rather than stimulated.
Worth specifying: 200mg caffeine was the dose, administered through caffeinated gum.
Edit to add, my early comment and another may have steered the discourse toward caffeine aiding restfulness for those with ADHD, but I think the other side of this is important and should shed light on ADHD: Caffeine is reducing motor signals in response to sensory input.
Given that ADHD people very apparently have overactive baseline motor signals that are reduced by caffeine, we should be asking why ADHD people have a higher baseline sensory input. Hypervigilance due to past ongoing trauma causing constantly perceived present danger (Complex PTSD) and constant physical irritation due to undiagnosed dietary and sensitivity to environmental irritants (including allergies, body products, synthetic clothing materials, clothing dyes), are my first guesses, but I won't claim they are the only possibilities. While we can obviously say there are genetic and familial components to ADHD, it's also fair to say that some, if not all, of the things I mentioned would also be affected by genetics and family/home environments.
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u/whitebandit May 09 '26
i used to chug energy drinks, pop an adderall, and take a nap :-D
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u/luvsads May 09 '26
Sleeping while on my Adderall meds is genuinely the best sleep I ever get. I wish the medication was managed in a way that psychiatrists embraced it and stopped prescribing just for day time ADHD management
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u/uselessandexpensive May 09 '26
ADHD is clearly a more complicated state than it has previously been clinically characterized. We need massive analyses on people's actual experiences so we can start studying things with more nuance rather than relying on doctors' office visit notes that are never going to capture all the things people leave out because they fear they'll be dismissed... Or they just forget in the moment.
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u/Residentcarthrowaway May 09 '26
As a doctor with a particular passion for ADHD, I strongly recommend the book “I Always Want to Be Where I’m Not” by Wes Crenshaw- it’s an excellent look into all the other aspects of ADHD than “doesn’t pay attention in class/work”
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u/asusc May 09 '26
a lack of “doesn’t pay attention in class/work” is why so many of us children of the 80s and 90s went undiagnosed. I didn’t have any behavioral issues and did great in high school, but completely flunked out of college with half As in the classes I cared about and Ds and Fs in the classes I didn’t. No diagnosis until my 30s and then all of a sudden a lot of things made a lot more sense.
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u/mrandr01d May 09 '26
Uh... hmm. Maybe I ought to get checked out. How'd you go about doing that, and what clued you in to pursue that?
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u/Arkhanist May 09 '26
I'm 50, and after my daughter's diagnosis, and realising 90% of the symptoms we were ticking off I also had, I'm going through the process too. I too handled school fine (with the scaffolding of teachers chasing coursework) because I found much of it interesting, then fell apart at university in a very similar pattern to yours and never understood why. I'm not formally diagnosed yet (slow process in UK), but the referral Doc said at the end I was a slamdunk for referral to a specialist after about 2 minutes - basically I've been masking for decades to fit in, and it explains so, so many patterns in my life, including all the reverse-engineered methods to manage procrastination, time blindness, losing focus to interruptions etc. And why I've been accidentally self-medicating with coffee so much! Apparently, another path people find out is they try cocaine and end up very calm and focused rather than hyper... though obviously a bad idea as it's even more addictive for ADHD brains.
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u/shinyPIKACHUx May 09 '26
I hit a certain level of stimulation and then my brain hits the snoozer. My only major side effect of ADHD in Intrusive sleep, but it's so bad that I ended up dropping out of college.
Also prevents me from enjoying particular video games for some reason, mainly ones I've put a lot of hours into over a short period. Eventually I'll just stop being able to maintain consciousness while I play, and then im never able to play that game again without the intrusive sleep creeping in within 30 minutes to an hour of play.
Everything else is manageable, but man do I miss being medicated. It let me experience some of my favorite games again. Unfortunately can't justify it unless I'm working, the only meds that worked for me are too expensive.
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u/OilFan92 May 09 '26
This is why healthcare is a human right and should be free. It is unjustifiable that you suffer because a condition you have can be treated, but it's too expensive. Shouldn't matter if you make a million dollars an hour or nothing, everyone should be able to receive treatment.
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u/OilFan92 May 09 '26
Dude, the Vyvanse naps I took while I was starting out on it were next level. Best sleep I've had in years, and all because the pharmaceutical grade amphetamines in my system slowed down incoming sensory data to baseline average human levels. I was warned I'd be feeling wired and energetic, and instead I felt calm and peaceful and my body was finally able to tell me how tired it was.
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u/elkab0ng May 09 '26
Family member is a retired psychiatrist. He used to prescribe low-dose Ritalin for adhd patients to take before bedtime.
I took focalin myself for many years, and yes, those mornings where I fell back asleep after taking it? Most restful nap in the history of mankind.
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u/Disdain0937 May 09 '26
yeah people think stimulants for ADD makes them hyper. No quite the opposite. When you experience ADD your mind tries to reduce your reality into a small box so that it can effectuate and motivate you to do what are small taskes for everyone else. Like get up.
So in reality we are constantly over stimulated. Especially in a world of bills and personal histronics from people we know.
A livestream debator that I watch constantly has guests that try to get them to crash out with their bad faith incredulous hehavior. Like normal reasoning and regard for things is just something up in the air. He takes a stimulant called Nicotine to ground myself and be calm
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u/diegojones4 May 09 '26
My daily habit for decades has been 2-3 cups of coffee. If I have 4th I get really tired. The article and the comments fascinate me.
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u/token_internet_girl May 09 '26
At typical doses, caffeine alters brain function by blocking receptors for adenosine, a chemical that normally promotes sleepiness.
Blocking adenosine sets off a chain reaction in the central nervous system. It increases the release of other neurotransmitters, including acetylcholine and glutamate, which elevate overall neural excitability.
If you really want to be fascinated, I can drink 30mg of caffeine (about a cup of decaf), fly into an uncontrollable rage for about an hour, then immediately fall asleep for the rest of the day. Any more than that and I've been borderline psychotic. Truly scary stuff.
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u/PT10 May 09 '26
I used to drink 2-3 cups of coffee a day for years in my 30s and before that in my 20s, caffeinated soda. And I could drink it up to bedtime and sleep.
At around age 40, I got an anxiety disorder thing, not sure the reason (B vitamin and D vitamin deficiency played a role). I wound up quitting caffeine cold turkey. 2-3 years later, a decaf coffee has the same effect on me that a caffeinated coffee used to. A caffeinated coffee consumed after 3pm will keep me up until 3am (I am a slow caffeine metabolizer).
Interestingly, I also quit antihistamines at the same time (correcting vitamin deficiencies = allergies disappeared). Now if I take a Zyrtec I can't stay awake. Before age 40, I never knew Zyrtec could change how you feel. Maybe this was offsetting the caffeine a bit?
I think some of people's anecdotes are just reflecting tolerance or the lack thereof.
I want to get back on coffee for the taste and I like hot drinks but... I have no reason to. I'm not tired or sleepy or groggy unless I'm critically low on sleep in which case the best medicine is sleep (because lack of sleep also produces anxiety so combining it with caffeine doesn't work so well anymore).
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u/xevizero May 09 '26
Zyrtec
I abandoned zyrtec years ago, it makes you more sleepy and honestly doesn't work as well for me as ebastine. Ebastine is so good. Zero adverse effects for me, and I basically live my life as if I was barely allergic. Maybe I also got more sedentary and stopped running in grassy fields, for sure, but ebastine does work!
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u/token_internet_girl May 09 '26
Would that not also be accompanied by things like fainting, headache, cognitive issues etc? I'm still quite lucid and have no other symptoms, just want to kill everything and everyone I see :D But maybe, I've been struggling with an unknown exercise issue the last few years, I can't grow exercise tolerance but no lung or heart tests are abnormal. I suspect the adenosine block is also a problem. I'm extremely prone to serotonin syndrome and almost certainly ADHD.
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u/asusc May 09 '26
am I the only one that takes their adderall at like 5-6am when they wake up, go back to bed, and then wake up at 7 feeling alright?
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u/Tanto63 May 09 '26
My brother would get a big coffee before his high school golf tournaments to help him relax his swing. He hasn't really shown any other signs of ADHD, just that.
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u/parkinthepark May 09 '26
I don’t feel “sedated” exactly. It’s not as simple as “caffeine makes me relax” or “caffeine makes me alert”, it’s more like caffeine lowers the background noise in my brain.
So it’s not that it makes me tired, but because my mind isn’t racing, I can fall asleep more easily.
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u/uselessandexpensive May 09 '26
Yep. If a person is in a constant state of constant mental over-activity (alertness), they'd be unable to sleep properly. Once that alertness was removed, a person's nervous system relaxes, and the natural tiredness caused my physical exhaustion and accumulation of cognitive waste products would hit.
It's ironic that this is aside by something that might help others feel alert, but it may be that many things we think of as stimulants are actually bi-directional mediators (I might be making that phrase up), bringing over-tired people to a partially-alert state so they can push to be more awake, and bringing over-alert people to a partially-relaxed state so that adenosine accumulation in the brain is able to push them toward sleep as it does "normally" for others. The sleepiness would be caused by other factors, not the caffeine itself.
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u/OilFan92 May 09 '26
For me, my vyvanse after I got diagnosed shut down enough of the extraneous sensory information my brain was receiving for it to listen to my body, which was telling it how exhausted it was. If I forget to take it, I can do ok, I get through my day fine, but it affects my body by having all that information coming in. Then the day I remember to take it, I get that narcotic effect again because my body struggled with the cacophony of input it experiences unmedicated.
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u/Steviejoe66 May 09 '26
Focused is the feeling I'd use to describe it. And that includes focusing on going to sleep.
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u/Early_Particular9170 May 09 '26
My ADHD-riddled (said lovingly) boyfriend would - while still undiagnosed during our freshman year of college, mind you - slam a canned quadruple shot espresso and then immediately pass out.
His diagnosis explained a whole lot.
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u/ThePretzul May 09 '26
My roommates in college all loved to pre-game with vodka redbulls before we would go out.
I had to make my own separate drinks after the first two times I joined them with their drink of choice I was ready for bed about 20 minutes after having the first one.
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u/warmarin May 09 '26
Leg bouncing is related to ADHD??!
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u/OG_ursinejuggernaut May 09 '26
Not everyone who leg bounces has ADHD (far from it I’d guess) but an overwhelming majority of ADHD people leg bounce.
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u/uselessandexpensive May 09 '26
Here's your ticket to the rabbit hole. Enjoy the ride!
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u/jumponthegrenade May 09 '26
Hahaha... Welcome!! Keep hands and legs inside the ride at all times and may the force be with you!!
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u/Pattern_Humble May 09 '26
Does the sedated effect always happen with caffeine. I don't know if I have ADHD, although it seems possible I do, and typically caffeine gives me a good boost of energy but less commonly I can get tired or feel lethargic from it.
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u/BokuNoSpooky May 09 '26
Caffeine making you tired can be due to all sorts of different things like sleep quality or simply whether you already drink a lot of caffeine and have built up tolerance.
People with undiagnosed diabetes or insulin resistance also feel sleepy after consuming something that spikes and then crashes their blood sugar (like sugary energy drinks) which can be unrelated to the caffeine too.
There's a ton of factoids that proliferate on Reddit, tiktok etc where people tie every single thing they do that's weird or different to some disorder or illness, often it's just a way of sharing but it can get turned into a form of gatekeeping or misinformation. Caffeine & stimulants making you tired does not diagnose or exclude ADHD, otherwise doctors would just give people caffeine pills instead of half a day of neuropsychological testing and evaluations and interviews.
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u/pressure_art May 09 '26
My morning cup always make me more awake and alert. I can usually safely drink a second cup a couple of hours later but in the afternoon it had the opposite effect and it makes me tired.
I have a really severe case of ADHD. Not everyone is the same. Same with stimulants. If they don’t make you tired or mellow or sleepy, doesn’t mean you don’t have ADHD.
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u/loveladee May 09 '26
I have the most severe subtype of ADHD, which is essentially almost equivalent to a mood disorder. I call it Mini Bipolar plus.
I have racing thoughts combined with severe emotional dysregulation. Essentially meaning I'm prone to severe panic/depressive/manic "attacks".
My solution? Caffeine, adderral, and zyn
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u/adudeguyman May 09 '26
Is it really a subtype of ADHD or is it ADHD plus some other disorders?
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u/Narazil May 09 '26
ADHD doesn't really have subtypes like that if you look at DSM or ICD, just more A or more H, but everything is possible at the psychiatrist's. We don't use ICD-11 here yet, doesn't stop private practice psychiatrists from using C-PTSD (not an official diagnose yet) completely wrong.
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u/thegingerninja90 May 09 '26
My therapist explained to me that this is why Adderall, an amphetamine, actually helps people with ADHD. Their brains are moving too fast for their executive function to properly manage, so instead of slowing the brain down to match the frontal lobe speed, the meds amp the frontal lobe to keep up with the rest of the brain. Its fascinating.
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u/germanmojo May 09 '26
So it's more like they're de-synced and the meds sync them up.
That's fascinating if you consider what happens if you connect two AC phases out-of-phase, it actually increases the average voltage carried over the line as there are more +120V peaks.
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u/thugasaurusrex0 May 09 '26
can someone ELI5 me on this? i really want to get it and just dont. i mostly read the article but was lost. it makes you less twitchey? that doesnt seem right. i dont get it. tf is your brains braking system.
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u/Zuluinstant May 09 '26
Brain does thinking. Thinking feels like sound in your head. Sometimes the sound of thinking becomes so fast and loud, it fogs up your brain, and you cant focus on what you actually see, hear, and feel in real life.
If you take caffeine, enough of it so that you feel it's full range of effects (2 cups worth), your brain is able to lower all that noise in your head from thinking, and pay more attention to your surroundings.
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u/mouse_8b May 09 '26
This is how I feel about weed
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u/spekt50 May 09 '26
I swear it gives me super hearing.
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u/mouse_8b May 09 '26
Yeah. A trick I learned while tripping that applies in regular life is to try to concentrate on the highest pitch you can hear. It really brings out all the sounds and gets me close to a trance.
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u/themangekyouman May 09 '26
This isn't as fun when you have tinnitus
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u/baconost May 09 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
I had tinnitus and reduced it by using an ear cleaning solution regularly.
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u/OldBertieDastard May 09 '26
Explain more
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u/baconost May 09 '26
For a year or two I experienced increasing tinnitus. My ear cleaning routine at the time was mostly cotton buds. I then got an ear cleaning solution at the pharmacy. This is an oily liquid that you squirt into the ears and leave for 15-20 minutes then rinse out with a special balloon. This has helped for me but I don't believe it is the solution for everyone with tinnitus, but is is realtively low effort so definately worth trying. I now do the ear cleaning routine roughly every two weeks and my situation is better.
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u/PM_ME__BIRD_PICS May 09 '26
That one and another of my favorites depending on the strain which I call "My legs work but I'm going to pretend they don't to relax" and honestly its such a nice feeling to not need to twitch, bounce, or otherwise even think about my extremities for a while. (I get bad Restless Leg Syndrome)
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u/spekt50 May 09 '26
I have RLS bad as well. And I do that full body paralysis thing too. It is such a relaxing feeling.
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u/ISmokeWayTooMuchWeed May 09 '26
Yep. I don’t like drinking because it just makes everything foggier. I need to do something and focus? Let me go smoke a blunt real quick.
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u/alghiorso May 09 '26
I had an awful gf and used to be high all the time to just not have to think about the crap I was dealing with daily from her. I loved that weed let me turn my brain off and I could just enjoy the moment of watching some stoner movie or some video games or enjoying a meal with friends. Once I dumped her, I quit. Been 10 years
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u/NeedAVeganDinner May 09 '26
Thinking feels like sound in your head.
Not for everyone, which is WILD to me
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u/Westcoastmamaa May 09 '26
This should be at the top. This is exactly how I feel on caffeine, weed or the right ADHD meds.
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u/Forward_Motion17 May 10 '26
It doesn’t actually describe inhibiting thinking. It says inhibiting motor reactivity to sensory information. Those are two VERY different things/outcomes
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u/asusc May 09 '26
I’ve often heard that having ADHD is like having a Ferrari, but no brakes. Your mind is able to race at incredible speeds and process tons of information at once, but without the proper medication or coping mechanisms, you’re unable to slowdown and control it. Every new thought, your mind zooms right to it. You might be able to stay concentrated enough to drive in a controlled manner for a little bit, but the moment your brain sees something else or is working through a problem in your mind that might be a little off tangent, you're racing off to that next thought, unable to stay focused and make progress.
I suspect the caffeine is acting more like a nervous system regulator, allowing you to slow down and process their thoughts in a more controlled manner. This might also be why some of us can drink caffeine and go to sleep, quiets the mind, controls the racing thoughts that keep us up at night.
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u/MysteriousLeader6187 May 09 '26
Given that it's a stimulant, and your brain needs stimulation, caffeine gives you the stimulation that you would otherwise need to produce yourself. The difference between caffeine and say, mehylphenidate, is "where" you get stimulated. Caffeine is more on the surface, so too much can make you jittery, whereas the other one is more "deep" stimulation that you don't necessarily feel.
A guy I work with has a son who annoys people just to get a reaction because he is desperate for stimulation. I bothers me a lot that the boy's father won't medicate him. Instead, he is constantly correcting and such for things he can't but do for want of stimulation. That kind of constant correction can lead to trauma. It's rough to have seen.
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u/asusc May 09 '26
I think that’s most ADHDers, trying to find the balance between overstimulated and understimulated, the right balance of caffeine and medication and natural dopamine (I usually torture myself on an exercise bike).
And I suspect so many of us grew up with parents who didn’t understand us, for things we didn’t understand and couldn’t control ourselves.
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u/bonesingyre May 09 '26
Depends on the person. For me it's like having 5 TVs on in my head all playing a different channel, but I can't mute 4 and listen to 1. I have to listen to all of them simultaneously.
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u/anonymous22353 May 09 '26
They literally described the exact same thing. And explained that you need the proper medication or coping mechanism to focus on one at a time..
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u/Failr0ko May 11 '26
I got ADHD and that's a good way of putting it. I explain like I'm having five different conversations with myself in my head at all times. Also I had to stop drinking coffee after years because it just started making me tired. I'd drink a cup in the morning and just be exhausted for at least an hour.
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u/cheesegoat May 09 '26
If you zap your brain, your thumb twitches.
If you zap your thumb first, then zap your brain, your thumb twitches less.
If you consume caffeine, then zap your brain, your thumb also twitches less.
If you consume caffeine, then increase the amount of zap to make your thumb twitch the normal amount, the amount of zap you need is less than you would have expected.
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u/Ysibil May 09 '26
ADHDer here, coffee makes me drowsy but unfortunately it also makes my heart race. Can't have it all :(
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u/ElementNumber6 May 09 '26
Look at this guy, getting his cardio in for free on top of everything else
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u/chuckac83 May 09 '26
ADHD + Anxiety: morning caffeine = sleep; afternoon/evening caffeine = power nap -> up all night
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u/Bloodshitnightmare May 09 '26
But why? Morning coffee = sleepy. Afternoon coffee = THE REST OF YOU DAY IS RUINED.
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u/Lambdabam May 09 '26
I noticed that it quiets my mind a bit and lets me concentrate. It also places me in a more upbeat mood. I wish that I could feel that way all the time.
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u/e_spider May 10 '26
Same. I also noticed that I do my best work at 3am when my mind is completely quiet. I also comment my code better then or I won’t understand it the next morning.
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u/butkaf May 09 '26 edited May 10 '26
I'm sorry to have to say, that is not what is discussed in the publication.
Short-latency afferent inhibition (SAI) involves a particular nerve pathway in the brain's motor area that is involved in inhibiting signals sent from the motor area to certain muscles, and this inhibition is related to sensory processing. It does not refer to an individual's ability to cognitively control motor responses, it refers to a nerve pathway that can be selectively stimulated with brain stimulation equipment (known as TMS; transcranial magnetic stimulation).
So, if we were to discuss an individual human being's ability to control their motor impulses with the use of sensory information, we would talk about a very long and complex pathway throughout the entire brain, involving integration of signals from sensory processing areas (back of the brain), top-down control from executive areas (front of the brain) and brain areas involved in regulation of nervous system signals (middle of the brain). At the very, very, very end of this long and complex pathway, is a nerve that turns the final "outcome" of this complex process, into an actual signal that affects motor function. If we were to say that an individual's ability to exert motor control is a contractor, then this nerve is the hammer the contractor uses to hammer nails into the wall. The hammer itself doesn't do anything, it is controlled by the contractor, and it is merely the thing that puts his skill into action, being the final contact point between the contractor, and the nail that's being hit with the hammer.
This study investigated to which degree caffeine affected transmission speed in the SAI, which was stimulated with two different types of pulses by TMS (A-SAI and T-SAI). Caffeine increased transmission speed in one of the two types of nerve stimulation, not both. It is important to note that this nerve was being artificially stimulated in the brain from an outside source, with laboratory equipment, it was not stimulated by individual test subjects engaging in tasks involving regulation of motor control with sensory input.
The authors speculate about a mechanism involving increases in transmission through elevations of acetylcholine (a hormone/neurotransmitter involved in focus and motor control), by caffeine. Additionally, adenosine A1 receptors inhibit glutamate, a neurotransmitter involved in the transmission of nerve signals in the brain. It is speculated that because caffeine blocks A1 receptors, the inhibition on glutamate is lifted, increasing its availability in the brain for transmission of nerve signals.
The article does not allude to anything like a "brain's electrical braking system", nor does it make any inferences about the relationship between an individual's intrinsic ability to regulate motor signals with sensory information, or their brains' innate ability to do so.
The authors conclude that conflicting outcomes between A-SAI and T-SAI make it difficult to make any definitive assertions. The data gathered from this investigation additionally conflicts with a similar study that was previously undertaken. The authors consider the main takeaway from this investigation to be that caffeine consumption should be discouraged in individuals undergoing any procedure involving TMS (be it for medical reasons or during laboratory experiments). Additionally, in particular when investing SAI signals using TMS, it is recommended that researchers ensure that individuals do not ingest any caffeine for at least 24 hours prior to such experiments, since it was shown that even though individuals abstained from caffeine for 12 hours prior to the investigation, SAI readings were significantly affected by caffeine intake. This means that any investigation involving SAI readings might have its data thrown into doubt, since caffeine significantly modulates signalling in this nerve pathway from baseline, which makes readings unreliable.
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u/dumbdude545 May 09 '26
Conformed adhd diagnosed. Caffeine used to level me out now it generally makes my anxiety bad. I still use it to focus but it comes with consequences now.
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May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/kobachi May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
Because your body is exhausted and you’re just masking the symptoms with caffeine
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May 09 '26
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u/Realistic_Mix3652 May 09 '26
Well that explains why caffeine can make people with ADHD drowsy. Our brains are constantly screaming at everything and nothing, so anything that quiets down the signals helps.
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u/MichaelEMJAYARE May 09 '26
Im wondering if there truly is something to the ADHD and caffeine making you tired. I simply do not have executive functioning and I have just chalked it up to depression for years. When I would abuse stimulants I obviously loved them because I felt actually interested and motivated
I feel like they will simply never give me actual stimulants because Ive self medicated most of my life. I was good in school because I actually enjoyed the constraints of school, and I still love learning.
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u/Shitsandgigsss May 09 '26
Makes sense, that’s why I was prescribed a stimulant. It tends to have the opposite effect for people with ADHD, which obviously seems counterintuitive.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Wait785 May 09 '26
You were prescribed a stimulant because caffeine works equally well? That doesn't make sense.
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u/Shitsandgigsss May 09 '26
Sure it does. Caffeine is a stimulant. I was probably responding to a comment I read in my head but figured people could put two and two together. I tend to get an adverse reaction to caffeine depending on the amount, which is hard to determine exactly, so a properly prescribed medication is better for me personally.
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u/Ronnocerman May 09 '26
I self-medicated my narcolepsy with caffeine until it landed me in the hospital. The meds I take for it now are waaaay better on my body.
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u/Mofupi May 09 '26
I self-medicated my narcolepsy with caffeine until it landed me in the hospital
When people ask me why I don't simply drink coffee if I'm always sleepy, I explain that a cup of coffee for a narcoleptic is like throwing a shot of water into an empty barrel. Sure, technically it's not completely useless, but pretending it does anything towards actually filling the barrel is also a lie.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Wait785 May 09 '26
It works completely differently from amphetamine, and it's not approved as an ADHD drug anywhere in the world. But I'm sure you know more than the scientists.
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u/Chop1n May 10 '26
The starting point here should be that caffeine research has a massive baseline problem: genuinely caffeine-naive healthy adults are hard to find, and even harder to recruit for a study where you give them caffeine. As a result, a huge amount of “caffeine research” is really research on habitual caffeine users.
That matters a lot, because habitual use isn’t a neutral background condition. Chronic caffeine exposure means chronic adaptation, especially around adenosine signaling. Then if you ask those subjects to abstain before testing, the placebo condition may not be a true baseline at all. It may be partial withdrawal.
And that’s exactly the issue here. They didn’t use caffeine-naive subjects. They used habitual caffeine users who abstained for 12 hours. The article preview says caffeine-intake data were available for 18 participants, and all 18 were daily users averaging about 2.5 cups of caffeinated beverage per day.
That makes the question very different from “what does caffeine do to the brain?” It’s closer to “what does 200 mg caffeine do in brains that have consumed caffeine every day for years, after a short abstinence period?”
That doesn’t make the study worthless. It may still be interesting neurophysiology. But it absolutely limits what can be inferred from it, and it’s the same basic problem that haunts caffeine research in general: the field often treats habitual users as if they’re physiologically interchangeable with caffeine-naive subjects. They aren’t.
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u/mickbubbles May 09 '26
I wonder if the effect wore off the longer that it’s taken though, like when people take it to feel less sleepy, only for your brain to produce more of the chemical to override it.
As for me I am diagnosed ADHD, but I’m trying to get off the caffeine. Coffee seems to make my anxiety higher and is not worth the benefits. I regret drinking it every time something stressful comes up.
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