7 replies to this topic

[health_nutty]

Elevated cortisol doesn't sound like a good thing. I'm thinking of seriously limiting my caffeine intake (its been pretty out of control lately).

http://www.psychosom...stract/67/5/734

affeine Stimulation of Cortisol Secretion Across the Waking Hours in Relation to Caffeine Intake Levels
William R. Lovallo, PhD, Thomas L. Whitsett, MD, Mustafa al’Absi, PhD, Bong Hee Sung, PhD, Andrea S. Vincent, PhD and Michael F. Wilson, MD

From the Veterans Affairs Medical Center (W.R.L., A.S.V., B.S.M., T.L.W.), Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (W.R.L., A.S.V.), and Department of Medicine (T.L.W.), University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, OK; Department of Behavioral Sciences (M.A.), University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth, MN; Cardiology (M.F.W., B.H.S.), Kaleida, Millard Fillmore Division, Buffalo, NY.

Address correspondence and reprint requests to William R. Lovallo, PhD, VA Medical Center (151A), 921 NE 13th Street, Oklahoma City, OK 73104. E-mail: bill@mindbody1.org

Objective: Caffeine increases cortisol secretion in people at rest or undergoing mental stress. It is not known whether tolerance develops in this response with daily intake of caffeine in the diet. We therefore tested the cortisol response to caffeine challenge after controlled levels of caffeine intake.

Methods: Men (N = 48) and women (N = 48) completed a double-blind, crossover trial conducted over 4 weeks. On each week, subjects abstained for 5 days from dietary caffeine and instead took capsules totaling 0 mg, 300 mg, and 600 mg/day in 3 divided doses. On day 6, they took capsules with either 0 mg or 250 mg at 9:00 AM, 1:00 PM, and 6:00 PM, and cortisol was sampled from saliva collected at 8 times from 7:30 AM to 7:00 PM.

Results: After 5 days of caffeine abstinence, caffeine challenge doses caused a robust increase in cortisol across the test day (p < .0001). In contrast, 5 days of caffeine intake at 300 mg/day and 600 mg/day abolished the cortisol response to the initial 9:00 AM caffeine dose, although cortisol levels were again elevated between 1:00 PM and 7:00 PM (p = .02 to .002) after the second caffeine dose taken at 1:00 PM. Cortisol levels declined to control levels during the evening sampling period.

Conclusion: Cortisol responses to caffeine are reduced, but not eliminated, in healthy young men and women who consume caffeine on a daily basis.

Key Words: caffeine • cortisol • men • women • tolerance

Abbreviations: ANOVA = analysis of variance; C = caffeine; HPAC = hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis; P = placebo; ACTH = adrenocorticotropin.






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[lucid]

Thanks for the article healthy_nut,
From reading the graphs, it seems that the regular caffeine users are by and large ok. At most times they are within 10% of the cortisol levels of the placebo control group. Towards the end of the day, regular caffeine users had ~25% increased cortisol levels (though cortisol levels for all groups were around an average of 1.75ug/ml in the late afternoon where as they were all around 3ug/ml in the morning: so cortisol levels decline over the course of a day). The real people who get hammered are those who are the occasional caffeine drinkers who sported a 25% increase in cortisol levels from the time of the stressor (10:30 AM) until the end of the day.

I think I will make my caffine avoidance a little more zealous, and try to avoid it all together.

[health_nutty]

It seems tea lowers cortisol:

http://www.scienceda...61004173749.htm


Science News
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Black Tea Soothes Away Stress

ScienceDaily (Oct. 4, 2006) — Daily cups of tea can help you recover more quickly from the stresses of everyday life, according to a new study by UCL (University College London) researchers. New scientific evidence shows that black tea has an effect on stress hormone levels in the body.

The study, published in the journal Psychopharmacology, found that people who drank tea were able to de-stress more quickly than those who drank a fake tea substitute. Furthermore, the study participants – who drank a black tea concoction four times a day for six weeks – were found to have lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their blood after a stressful event, compared with a control group who drank the fake or placebo tea for the same period of time.

In the study, 75 young male regular tea drinkers were split into two groups and monitored for six weeks. They all gave up their normal tea, coffee and caffeinated beverages, then one group was given a fruit-flavoured caffeinated tea mixture made up of the constituents of an average cup of black tea. The other group – the control group – was given a caffeinated placebo identical in taste, but devoid of the active tea ingredients. All drinks were tea-coloured, but were designed to mask some of the normal sensory cues associated with tea drinking (such as smell, taste and familiarity of the brew), to eliminate confounding factors such as the ‘comforting’ effect of drinking a cup of tea.

Both groups were subjected to challenging tasks, while their cortisol, blood pressure, blood platelet and self-rated levels of stress were measured. In one task, volunteers were exposed to one of three stressful situations (threat of unemployment, a shop lifting accusation or an incident in a nursing home), where they had to prepare a verbal response and argue their case in front of a camera.

The tasks triggered substantial increases in blood pressure, heart rate and subjective stress ratings in both of the groups. In other words, similar stress levels were induced in both groups. However, 50 minutes after the task, cortisol levels had dropped by an average of 47 per cent in the tea drinking group compared with 27 per cent in the fake tea group.

UCL researchers also found that blood platelet activation – linked to blood clotting and the risk of heart attacks – was lower in the tea drinkers, and that this group reported a greater degree of relaxation in the recovery period after the task.

Professor Andrew Steptoe, UCL Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, says: “Drinking tea has traditionally been associated with stress relief, and many people believe that drinking tea helps them relax after facing the stresses of everyday life. However, scientific evidence for the relaxing properties of tea is quite limited. This is one of the first studies to assess tea in a double-blind placebo controlled design – that is, neither we nor the participants knew whether they were drinking real or fake tea. This means that any differences were due to the biological ingredients of tea, and not to the relaxing situations in which people might drink tea, whether they were familiar with the taste and liked it, and so on.

“We do not know what ingredients of tea were responsible for these effects on stress recovery and relaxation. Tea is chemically very complex, with many different ingredients. Ingredients such as catechins, polyphenols, flavonoids and amino acids have been found to have effects on neurotransmitters in the brain, but we cannot tell from this research which ones produced the differences.

“Nevertheless, our study suggests that drinking black tea may speed up our recovery from the daily stresses in life. Although it does not appear to reduce the actual levels of stress we experience, tea does seem to have a greater effect in bringing stress hormone levels back to normal. This has important health implications, because slow recovery following acute stress has been associated with a greater risk of chronic illnesses such as coronary heart disease.”

Edited by health_nutty, 13 March 2008 - 04:06 PM.

[maxwatt]

I stopped drinking coffee regularly over a year ago but not because of cortisol. Too much espresso is a recipe for heartburn. Green tea looks to be far and away a healthier beverage.

[malbecman]

I think we've all been in the over-caffeinated state where its just like dumping fuel on the fire. If you are already under "stress", then more coffee just makes it worse and you can get anxious. I think that is the state you want to avoid in terms of harmful cortisol levels, etc. Address the underlying stress reasons, don't use stimulants and depressants (alcohol) to try and medicate your way thru it. I actually enjoy coffee more when I am calm and relaxed like on vacation or a long weekend. Then its more of a mild stimulant but also positive mood enhancement and puts me in a more reflective state.

[inawe]

As far as LE, with coffee and caffeine we went through several cycles
of "it's bad for you" no "it's good for you". Last thing I remember is
that it helped prevent Parkinson's. They have free coffee at my gym,
should I take or not? I take my coffee black but, should I put cream on my cortisol?

[malbecman]

Most of the retrospective epidemiological studies I've read on coffee and caffeine have been unable to find a link between increased coffee
consumption and any change in lifespan. Basically it means that if there is any effect, its drowned out by the "noise" of inter-individual variability.
Humans are just too darned out-bred.

What we would need would be a nice inbred lab mouse or rat strain (most are), isocaloric diets, and have one control group and the other jacked up on Starbucks all the time....

As far as LE, with coffee and caffeine we went through several cycles
of "it's bad for you" no "it's good for you". Last thing I remember is
that it helped prevent Parkinson's. They have free coffee at my gym,
should I take or not? I take my coffee black but, should I put cream on my cortisol?

[wydell]

I started the coffee thread on here and thought had a lot of good info on coffee and disease prevention. As an update, I gave up coffee because I thought it was making feel stressed.