> “I’ve talked to many people who are a year off of caffeine and they’re still dealing with crazy symptoms, everything from neuropathy to psychosis,” Bivens says. These people have suffered a “caffeine injury,” as he calls it, and he’s certain there are untold numbers of others out there also suffering needlessly.
For some reason in our culture we have a tendency to pick a bogeyman and attribute all our medical problems to that bogeyman, whether it be caffeine, seed oils, animal fat, sugar, carbs, lack of vitamin D, or what have you.
The anti-caffeine people profiled attribute myriad problems, including psychosis, to caffeine, even years after quitting caffeine. That they still have these problems years after quitting caffeine is actually evidence that those problems were never caused by caffeine, but they instead see it as evidence that caffeine can cause long-lasting “caffeine injury.” The point I’m making in my original comment is that this kind of thinking is actually quite common.
If you want to criticize the evidence that caffeine causes psychosis, do that--I actually agree with you on that.
But what you were doing, was waxing poetic about an extremely general societal problem you made up. The fact is, caffeine probably is the cause of some of the issues mentioned in the article (and I agree, probably not all the problems mentioned in the article). It would be worthwhile to have a conversation about what evidence is convincing and what is not, but what you did was dismiss the whole possibility of caffeine as a cause, calling it a bogeyman. Doing that actually contributes to a real problem noted in the article, which is that caffeine is not being discussed critically.
I can’t criticize the evidence that caffeine causes psychosis, because there is no evidence, and the burden of proof is on those who believe it does cause psychosis.
What I was doing was musing about a possible link between the anti-caffeine craze and the numerous anti-X crazes that preceded it. It is fascinating to me that many people, are eager to choose one (1) trapping of modern life and believe it causes so many different ills.
I did not intend to dismiss all the concerns about caffeine raised in the article—I was really just reacting to the quote, which presents a more extreme view of caffeine than the rest of the article.
> That they still have these problems years after quitting caffeine is actually evidence that those problems were never caused by caffeine, but they instead see it as evidence that caffeine can cause long-lasting “caffeine injury.”
To be fair, it's evidence of both of those things.
For some reason in our culture we have a tendency to pick a bogeyman and attribute all our medical problems to that bogeyman, whether it be caffeine, seed oils, animal fat, sugar, carbs, lack of vitamin D, or what have you.