Is Caffeine Making Your Anxiety Worse?

Is Caffeine Making Your Anxiety Worse?

Coffee is the lifeblood of students; there are many papers and study sessions I could not imagine getting through if it were not for coffee. However, I worry that my coffee consumption has reached a tipping point and it is now doing more harm than good. I believe caffeine is giving me anxiety.

A little context. This semester I started seeing a campus counsellor because I noticed I was growing more anxious. I have never been an anxious person so I found this development really stressful in itself- I’ve always identified myself as someone who was relaxed, no matter the stress I was always able to keep a cool head. Now I would find my thoughts and my heart racing for no good reason; relaxing was impossible.

It became part of my homework to find relaxation techniques. In my search for ways to relax, I found that limiting caffeine was a suggestion which kept popping up, as someone who finds drinking a nice latte in a cosy café relaxing I decided I needed to investigate further.

While I have always known the benefits of drinking coffee,  which were used in defence of my habits, I have often neglected the negative side effects.

While coffee can make you more alert, and prevent Alzheimer’s, too much can cause feelings of anxiety and here is why.

Caffeine affects the body in a very similar way to stress, increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, and increased stress hormone; caffeine can more than double your blood levels of cortisol and epinephrine, two of the major hormones involved in feeling stressed.Caffeine also affects your neurotransmitter balance. While caffeine blocks adenosine (the hormone which makes you sleepy), and increases dopamine and acetylcholine (which increases motivation, productivity, and brain power), leading to the effects we seek from our morning cuppa caffeine also inhibits GABA – a hormone which is essential for feeling calm, happy, and relaxed, with low GABA levels being associated with anxiety attacks. There is also some evidence to suggest that regular caffeine consumption leads to serotonin depletion.

Not only does caffeine consumption interfere with the production of hormones and neurotransmitters but it can also cause essential nutrients to be excreted from your body. Caffeine is an anti-diuretic and as such increases, you need to pee, usually this excess pee is filled with nutrients that the kidneys were unable to reuptake. One of the most common being magnesium, which plays a major role in mental well-being.

At least four recognized mental disorders from the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) are directly caused/related to caffeine consumption;

·      caffeine intoxication

·      caffeine-induced anxiety disorder

·      caffeine-induced sleep disorder

·      caffeine withdrawal

with caffeine addiction being recognized as a clinical disorder by The World Health Organization.

This is not meant to come off as a “medications are garbage, have a clean diet and do yoga” sort of thing, but I believe in the battle of validating medication we have forgotten that our bodies do react to diet and exercise. You can believe in medication and still acknowledge that yoga reduces stress, and that coffee does exacerbate stress. Will giving up caffeine cure your anxiety? I don’t know, will it alleviate your symptoms? Possibly. I think the possibility makes it worth an honest try.

Alban, D. (2018, March 14). 15 Links Between Caffeine and Anxiety. Retrieved April 02, 2018, from https://bebrainfit.com/caffeine-anxiety/

• anxiety
• caffeine
• coffee
• health
• mental health