Overcoming Caffeine Intolerance

[SarahBeara]

I've been totally intolerant to caffeine for about 5 years now. I suddenly experienced upset stomach, jitteriness, impending sense of 'doom' and overall low blood sugar (despite always having it with sugar)

I've tried many remedies, niacinamide + aspirin, K2 (haidut's brand), l-theanine (helped a little) but nothing took away that horrible panic feeling.

Recently in a quest to improve my menstrual symptoms I started to take milk thistle (specifically 200mg of silymarin).

I was taking it for around a month when I just thought I'd chance making a cup of caffeinated tea to see where my tolerance was. Tea is pretty low in caffeine so even if it badly affected me it wouldn't last too long.

I was amazing to find I felt really really good after the tea, like that bright wide-eyed awakeness I used to feel with none of the jitteriness.

I can even have the tea without accompanying sugar.

I'm hoping a short course of milk thistle will work and I can maintain with K2 as I don't like the idea of taking it all the time.

Just wanted to share in case this can help anyone else struggling with this issue.

 

[What-a-Riot]

One explanation for caffeine intolerance is slow phase I liver detox failing to break the caffeine into its (also functional) metabolites. Could be a liver issue that the aspirin/niacinamide exacerbate. Aspirin is removed from the body by glycine conjugation and niacinamide by methylation. Maybe continue the k2 and try supplementing taurine and glycine or a methylated glycine (TMG, choline) to get things up to speed while titrating caffeine doses with tea. Ideally caffeine should serve an antistress function, and it would be good to able to use that tool. Also aspirin is dopaminergic and modulates glutamate in several ways. I really don't know enough about it, but I do think aspirin can acutely stimulate anxiety even to the point of mimicking mild mania or psychoses in certain contexts, such as concomitant use with other dopaminergics that may rely on glutamate signaling to function ideally

 

[SarahBeara]

One explanation for caffeine intolerance is slow phase I liver detox failing to break the caffeine into its (also functional) metabolites. Could be a liver issue that the aspirin/niacinamide exacerbate. Aspirin is removed from the body by glycine conjugation and niacinamide by methylation. Maybe continue the k2 and try supplementing taurine and glycine or a methylated glycine (TMG, choline) to get things up to speed while titrating caffeine doses with tea. Ideally caffeine should serve an antistress function, and it would be good to able to use that tool. Also aspirin is dopaminergic and modulates glutamate in several ways. I really don't know enough about it, but I do think aspirin can acutely stimulate anxiety even to the point of mimicking mild mania or psychoses in certain contexts, such as concomitant use with other dopaminergics that may rely on glutamate signaling to function ideally

Super fascinating explanation of why I don't seem to do great on lots of aspirin. Thanks!

 

[scarlettsmum]

Super fascinating explanation of why I don't seem to do great on lots of aspirin. Thanks!

Thanks so much for sharing your experience, do keep us posted how you get on with liver detox. I have the same problem with caffeine and never knew aspirin was dopaminergic. Maybe that answers the question for me why sometimes it makes me feel like a warm hug and other times panicky. It's frustrating all these beneficial things being dopaminergic and therefore I never know how I will react to them.