A couple months back, I was re-reading some materials on Energy, fatigue, cortisol levels etc., and the notion of a caffeine reset was brought back to my attention. A few fellow biohackers and health professionals swear by doing a quarterly reset or taking a break once in a while.
One of the reasons being that caffeine raises your cortisol and many of us are already in states of high cortisol due to stress, so taking a break or reset can be beneficial.
Another being that we can build a tolerance for caffeine and need to get more and more to function at the same levels as in the past. This could potentially be bad for a number of reasons that I won’t get into here in this blog post.
Also, not to mention the effects caffeine can have on sleep, dependent on timing and genetics.
After reading these materials, I began pondering and realized that since I was introduced to coffee back in 2nd year University, I have never taken a break from it, except maybe a long travel day or something where timing was a bit off. I have been consuming caffeine for 23-24 years straight.
I am writing this post on the 14th day of my caffeine reset. Tomorrow I will reintroduce caffeine via coffee and see if I get a cognitive boost or whatever.
This is how I began. I did one day of 75% of my normal load, the next day I dropped it down to 25% of normal, this was the only day where by the end of the day I had a caffeine withdrawal headache. I never get headaches, and I have had a few withdrawal headaches before (those travel days I mentioned before), so I am confident it wasn’t for another reason.
The next two days I stayed at 25%, no headaches, then went completely off for 2 weeks. I have to say, I had no issues, no headaches, I wasn’t any more tired by the end of the day than normal. It wasn’t like I was falling asleep at 8pm or anything like that.
Many of you know who follow me, I track my sleep religiously, but there were no real effects to my sleep. There are so many variables that effect sleep, that my sleep data was pretty much normal.
I did not take any other non-caffeine cognitive boosters and I did not feel like my cognition was affected at all. I was able to keep up with my regular routines and work habits.
So what did I learn? Well, I didn’t do any testing of cortisol levels or anything like that, but I know I can go without caffeine if I need to, and I may make it a routine reset protocol twice a year, because why not?
If you would like to work with me on all things related to your health, reach out and let’s have a conversation.
Also, don’t forget to subscribe to my youtube channel “Deepak Saini Health” so you never miss a video. Cheers!
Photo by Ante Samarzija on Unsplash
