Hm.

"Caffeine detoxes your body."

Oh, please, no.

"Caffeine is addictive."

Both: Ooh, this is a good one.

[both laugh]

Hi, my name is Dr. Sophie Balzora.

I'm a gastroenterologist at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

Hi, my name is Dr. Ugo Iroku.

I'm a gastroenterologist at Mount Sinai Hospital.

And today, we'll be debunking myths about caffeine.

"Caffeine is bad for you."

Caffeine is not bad for you.

So, there was a time where I must admit

I had bought the hype that caffeine was bad for you,

but when you do the research,

you find out that a lot of the concerns

really don't hold up.

There are concerns about caffeine causing osteoporosis,

but when you look at it,

the amount of milligrams that you need to consume

to cause that are excessive of 700 milligrams a day.

The amount of caffeine that's being consumed daily

is usually on the order of less than 300 milligrams a day.

And so a lot of these concerns

really don't apply at those levels.

There's actually a lot of benefit to caffeine and coffee.

So, there have been studies showing

decrease in cancers like colon cancer,

head and neck cancers, breast cancer,

chronic liver disease, a lot of other

kind of inflammatory conditions that we worry about.

So chemicals that are able to act upon that

and reduce inflammatory processes,

and caffeine's one of those compounds that can do that.

Balzora: Three cups of coffee is seen

to lower your risk of stroke in certain studies.

Tea can do the same by lowering the risk by 20%,

and also dark chocolate.

And in those few instances where your specialist

may tell you to cut down on caffeine,

whether it's your cardiologist or your gastroenterologist,

those are isolated cases, so speak to your doctor.

But in general,

myth, caffeine is not, in general, bad for you.

"Caffeine will make up for lost sleep."

Hm.

That's a myth,

because there is nothing that can make up for lost sleep

other than adequate, restful, replenishing sleep.

All caffeine does is increase your alertness

and make you feel like you're more energetic,

but it doesn't actually give you more energy.

Nature has created an important molecule called adenosine,

and that's this molecule over here.

And essentially, adenosine tells your brain

it's time to go to bed.

What caffeine does is to block adenosine's message

and keep you thinking that you should be awake.

But when the effect of caffeine wears off,

the adenosine's still there

and your body will still crash and go to bed.

If a person does choose to neglect their sleep

and try to replace that with caffeine,

they're going to find that their sleep pattern

is just continually affected.

They'll have lower levels of REM sleep,

and if you drink too close to bedtime,

they'll actually have a decreased amount of sleep as well.

Balzora: Ultimately, the brain needs sleep,

and you're not going to get that from consuming

extra amounts of caffeine.

This is a good one.

"Decaf coffee doesn't have caffeine."

I've been waiting to do this.

Balzora: Rip it! Iroku: Myth!

Decaf may sound like they've completely de'd the caf,

but it does not mean that.

It just means it's reduced.

I think by the FDA formal recommendations

are that they should be 95% of the caffeine

taken away from a content before it can be called a decaf,

but sometimes there can be variation from cup to cup to cup.

You might see it somewhere

in the order of 15 or so milligrams a cup,

and, again, this is as compared to 80

to, like, 160 milligrams,

depending on the exact type of coffee you're drinking.

As a gastroenterologist, if I'm talking to a person

who has a lot of acid reflux,

sometimes what we want to do

is to reduce the amount of caffeine that the person takes,

not down to zero.

The reduced amount sometimes does help that person

get over their reflux symptoms a little better.

It's not zero, but it's a lot less caffeine

than typically you would find in that cup.

"Drinking coffee will stunt your growth."

So, thankfully, drinking coffee, drinking caffeine,

all those things do not stunt your growth.

Most of our growth happens

during our childhood and adolescence, of course.

Ultimately, once bone growth is complete,

then there's no stunting of growth that occurs.

Iroku: When you look at the amount

of caffeine consumption in teenagers,

it usually typically maxes out

at about 80 milligrams a day,

and any kind of risk to your bones

with calcium or magnesium loss,

again, usually occurs above 700 milligrams a day.

So the kids will be fine.

They're not consuming, in general,

enough caffeine to really warrant any concern

about calcium loss from their bones.

700, 800 grams a day,

that's at least eight-plus cups of coffee.

Iroku: That's a lot of coffee. Balzora: That's a huge amount.

So, I mean, the things that affect bone growth the most

would be the health status of the kid, chronic illnesses

or something that causes malnutrition, for instance,

genetics. So how tall are your parents,

how tall are your siblings?

Those are the types of things that really impact growth.

It's not really going to be caffeine consumption.

What she said.

"Caffeine in soda is much less than caffeine in coffee."

Hm.

I'm going to say that that's a myth.

I think that what's important to know,

and I think what people don't really realize,

is that it really depends on the beverage.

There are some sodas that have tons of caffeine, right?

Significantly higher amounts

than what we consider in an average cup of coffee.

You really got to look at that label

to see what the caffeine content is.

So, as you can see here,

soda has 40 milligrams in that can of cola,

and that's greater than your shot of espresso,

which only has 27 milligrams.

At the same time, it's also less than your black tea,

which has 45 milligrams;

less than your instant coffee, at 82 milligrams;

and less than your brewed coffee, at 95 milligrams.

These are averages, but it just goes to show

that soda can just have more caffeine than some drinks

and less than others.

"Caffeine detoxes your body."

Oh, please, no.

One of the more common conversations

I'll have with my patients

is about this concept of detoxification.

They might see something on the internet

which promises that, no matter what you eat or consume,

that if you take this detoxification product,

it just takes out all the bad items

and leaves you feeling healthy.

Unfortunately, it's not that easy.

It's better to watch what you're putting in your body

before you put it in there

than to try to edit it after it's already been incorporated.

And so this concept of caffeine as a detoxifying agent

is one of them, because it can lead

to people using it as an enema.

So that means when they insert fluid

into the rectum up to their colon.

But it's not safe, it has not been proven,

and it could lead to a lot of injury in the colon,

burning, perforation even.

That is what the kidney's for,

that is what the liver's for,

that is what your intestines are for,

really, is to get rid of waste.

If there's one detoxifying agent, it's just water.

You just want to make sure you're drinking enough water

so that your bowels are moving, your kidneys are happy,

the urine is flowing. The body will take care of the rest.

"Caffeine dehydrates you."

This is one of those tricky ones

that's not completely true.

Caffeine is a mild diuretic.

If you consume about 300 milligrams of caffeine,

it might slightly increase your urine output

by about 4 fluid ounces,

but that's not a large amount,

especially if you think about the fact

that a lot of the ways we consume caffeine

are filled with water themselves.

So I'm going to call this: myth!

I could not agree more, Ugo.

I think that's a huge myth.

I think that people can get thirsty after drinking caffeine,

especially if you're adding things to the caffeine, right,

or if there's a lot of extra sugar in that caffeine.

Then that can make you thirsty,

and so it's not really the caffeine itself

that is causing that sensation of thirst,

but perhaps the additives to the drink as a whole.

The other thing is that everyone gets thirsty,

and so you probably just aren't drinking enough fluids.

So a cup of coffee is not going to do it.

Make sure you're drinking a lot of fluid throughout the day.

"Caffeine is addictive."

Both: Ooh, this is a good one.

[both laugh]

Caffeine is not considered an addicting substance.

There is a need to use it oftentimes

routinely to maintain alertness,

especially in the morning, right upon rising,

but at the end of the day,

it's considered that your physical dependence

on caffeine as a substance is not so severe

to truly call it an addiction.

If you were to go cold turkey with your coffee intake,

as much as that scares you,

you'd feel horrible for about a day or two.

Lasting for an additional week, you would feel off,

but then you'd find yourself back to a new normal.

And so, no, caffeine is not necessarily

an addictive substance.

Caffeine is short acting.

There's no danger in going completely cold turkey

from drinking caffeine every day,

multiple cups, to just stopping.

"Having more than one cup of coffee a day is bad for you."

Hm.

I'd say that's definitely a myth.

The general thought is that,

if you're consuming 400 milligrams or less

of caffeine in a day,

that's a very safe amount for you to consume.

Now, what you have to remember is what's in a cup

may differ depending on exactly how big that cup is

and exactly what type

of caffeine preparation you're drinking,

so you want to define what a cup is.

Typically, it's 8 fluid ounces.

You can have many of those

before you run into that 400 level,

which is considered a nice low level

that you can reach every day.

Well, not all things are equal.

It applies to different people,

so if you're pregnant, for instance,

if you may have certain heart conditions

or gastrointestinal conditions,

then those kind of rules may vary.

And you may have a recommendation from your physician

that may be drinking much less than that, if at all.

So all my patients who are about to show me this video,

stop. This applies to you.