Coffee can bring on anxiety symptoms
Too much caffeine can bring on anxiety symptoms, and a lot of doctors don’t even ask about how coffee you drink each day.
Unrecognized “coffee nerves” could lead you to a psychiatrist and months of useless treatment with calm-down drugs.
Too much caffeine in coffee, tea or cola drinks can bring on all the symptoms of an anxiety attack.
Drugs can help in true anxiety states but may not work against the effects of too much caffeine. Doctors should (but don’t always) routinely ask patients about their caffeine intake. Over-doses of caffeine can bring such symptoms as nervousness, irritability, tremulousness, occasional muscle twitching, sensory disturbances, attacks of diarrhea, insomnia, irregular heartbeat, a drop in blood pressure and even circulatory failures in extreme cases.
A doctor could interpret it all as an anxiety attack. A doctor’s study of doctors, told of reviewing records of 100 psychiatric patients. 42 were diagnosed as having anxiety, with no question ever having been asked about caffeine consumption.
The study cited a new case of a woman, 27, suffering attacks of headache, lightheadedness, tremulousness, and irregular heartbeat two or three times daily. The symptoms developed over a three-week period. Rejecting a diagnosis of anxiety reaction to something in her life, she did her own detective work, tracing the symptoms back to her purchase of a fresh-drip coffee pot.
Because this coffee was “so much better,” she had started consuming an average of 10-12 cups of strong, black coffee per day, more than 1,000 milligrams of caffeine.
That’s four times the 250 milligrams considered a large dose. When she reduced her coffee consumption to normal, her symptoms disappeared.
In another study, an Army officer took calmdown drugs for 14 months without effect. His dizziness, “butterflies in the stomach,” diarrhea and other complaints went away when he cut back from consumption of as many as 14 cups of coffee daily, interspersed with three or four cola drinks.
He had been consuming 1,200 milligrams of caffeine daily. “Three cups of coffee, two
over-the-counter headache tablets, and a cola drink consumed in one morning approximates to 500 milligrams of caffeine intake”.
Many people exceed that limit by quite a long way. I know I did not too long ago, but since cutting back on my caffeine intake, I feel a lot happier and a lot healthier.
So if you drink a lot of coffee or other caffeine rich products, you’re first step to reduce anxiety and panic attack symptoms could be to cut down for a few days and see what happens. I’m not suggesting this is the crux of your cause of anxiety, but it’s certainly a worthwhile exercise – even if just for the health benefits you feel.
