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Is caffeine really that bad for anxiety? (lemmy.world)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/anxiety@lemmy.world
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Should I give it up? I have pretty severe anxiety but I also love the taste of Orange Cream Coke Zero and Monster.

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[–] 3 points 10 months ago (3 children)

In my experience, caffeine is really bad for anxiety. I've been off caffeine for over 20 years now. I still get a little bit of it because it's hard to cut it out completely even when you drink decaffeinated coffee and decaffeinated tea. And if you eat chocolate you're getting a little bit of caffeine, but I don't drink caffeinated beverages.

The reason I went off caffeine is because I was having an irregular heartbeat, and I had to go to a heart doctor. He suggested before he put me on any medication that first I try to cut back on my caffeine intake. I slowly weaned myself off caffeine over a couple weeks and because I did it slowly, I didn't experience any of the problems people usually have. I didn't have headaches. I wasn't tired, none of that.

And once I cut caffeine out completely, I was really surprised how much better I felt. First of all, my heart went back to normal, it went back to beating regularly and normally and that felt really good.

And secondly, I couldn't believe how much better my anxiety felt. I used to sit in classrooms and my hands would just be like shaking, and it was, you know, really stressful. You know how that is. And I just thought that was something I was just gonna have to deal with, but I didn't realize it was the caffeine that was causing it. And when I stopped the caffeine that completely went away. And I felt so much better.

Everybody's different, and some people might not be able to cut caffeine completely out and feel okay. Some people might need to have some caffeine to feel okay. But just cutting back a bit of it, you know, just see if you can cut back slowly, cut down to about half and see if it reduces your anxiety. I don't regret stopping caffeine at all. It was a very good thing to do.

As I'm sure you know, when you start feeling anxiety, the feeling of it like your hand's shaking causes you to feel more anxiety.And it just kind of like circles around and becomes more intense, and the caffeine really does make that worse, because like I said, the caffeine can be what's causing your hands to shake and you think it's anxiety, but it's the caffeine, but then it becomes anxiety because of your worry about the anxiety. If that makes any sense?

Sorry, this was so long. I hope that it helps you. I wish that somebody had told me about this sooner and I'm glad that I realized it.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 10 months ago (2 children)

    Thank you! I've cut down to slightly less than half of what i'd normally consume. I think I can live without the two monsters I was drinking in the morning. I'll probably drink one or two coke zeros and see how that goes. I'm not sure I want to give it up completely yet. Though I will if I have to.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    That's good to hear. Has your anxiety reduced at all? I hope so. Do you know about some of the breathing exercises that you can do? These are things that you can do even if you're in public to calm yourself if you start to feel nervous.

    Look up box breathing or square breathing. It's basically just inhaling and holding and then exhaling on the count of 4 for each one. There are variants of this too where you breathe in for 4 hold for 2 and then breathe out for 4. It's important to remember not to force this if it feels uncomfortable just go at what feels comfortable for you and you can build up until you're at these counts. These methods are very helpful and practical so much so that they're used by trained military and other professionals while in situations where they need to calm their anxiety.

    Another method is to count to ten slowly, while you breathe in on one, breathe out on two, breathe in on three, breathe out on four and so on up to ten or more.

    The biggest hurdle is just remembering to use a breathing exercise when you feel anxious. But if you make a routine of it where maybe every day, when you wake up, you do it.And if you keep doing that, you'll get used to doing that and you're more likely to remember later on if you feel anxiety that there's this breathing thing you can do to help yourself.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 9 months ago

    It's still pretty early but I've been consuming ~60 mg of caffeine daily whereas before it was probably 800 or so. I feel less anxious so far. I have practiced square breathing, it helps me sometimes. I sometimes find it difficult if i'm breathing heavily. I never considered daily breathing exercises. I'll try it out. Thank you!

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