Coffee lowering my ketones

#1

Hi guys! I have been measuring my blood ketones religiously and getting some of my highest numbers fasted in the morning. And them measuring them an hour or so after my caffeinated coffee with no fat in it and it drops dramatically (today 1.2 to 0.6, other times 2.4 to 1.0)
I have also experimented with BP coffee, it still drops but not as much. I don’t want to take BP coffee everyday though.
Is the caffeine doing this? Or is this a result of my daily hormones kicking in? Anyone has the same experience? I love my morning coffee but I also love my ketones :wink:

(Chris) #2

Try cutting coffee out for a day and measure if it’s important to keep ketones a certain level.

But instead of that, don’t chase ketones, chase results.

(495d0269633604077a0a) #3

The way I’ve been seeing it explained is that high levels of ketones available to be measured can mean that your body isn’t fully utilizing all the ketone bodies it is producing. Perhaps the coffee is not suppressing your body’s ability to make ketones, but rather enhancing its ability to use them?

I’ve read—even here on these forums—both that caffeine helps your body get into and stay in ketosis, and that caffeine prevents your body from getting into ketosis. The people posting these things seem to think there’s science to back then up, too.

Since I am a coffee-lover, I prefer to believe in the ketotic qualities of caffeine, and would probably not stop drinking it regardless of what the science eventually shows. I seem to be doing okay staying ketotic even with the quantity of coffee I drink, so you’ll just have to pry my mug from my cold, dead hands, lol!

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #4

Don’t know why the system switched me to that username. I thought I’d deleted the post and was going to re-post under my rightful username, but so be it.

#5

Ill have to do this experiment on a wekend cant afford to have a headache at work.
I like data and reading your posts on your fasting experiments I see that you do too :wink: but I get what you’re saying.

#6

me too!! It would be nice to know though, Ill have to skip it to see how I do.

(Ernest) #7

Caffeine does increase Cortisol levels, no?

(Randy) #8

You can pry my morning coffee cup from my cold dead hands!!! :wink:

(Chris) #9

Yeah, I am also hopelessly hooked on the stuff. :stuck_out_tongue:

If you do end up deciding to take a break, taper it! Usually when I’m in periods of cutting down on coffee, I’ll do a 4oz cup in the morning and try to go the whole day. Usually the headache will assert itself by the afternoon, at which point I’ll stop and evaluate whether it’s bad enough to have another small cup or if I can suck it up. It can get worse as the night progresses though (can you tell how hooked I am yet??).

Thanks for following my thread, too. :smiley:

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #10

There are lots of sites on teh Interwebz that talk about caffeine, but none of them cite any scholarly studies. The best I could come up with that discusses the physical effects of caffeine is https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1356551. The abstract reads as follows (note that the phrase “the methylxanthine” is a reference to caffeine; like theobromine, theophylline, and aminophylline, caffeine is a methylxanthine):

Caffeine is the most widely consumed central-nervous-system stimulant. Three main mechanisms of action of caffeine on the central nervous system have been described. Mobilization of intracellular calcium and inhibition of specific phosphodiesterases only occur at high non-physiological concentrations of caffeine. The only likely mechanism of action of the methylxanthine is the antagonism at the level of adenosine receptors. Caffeine increases energy metabolism throughout the brain but decreases at the same time cerebral blood flow, inducing a relative brain hypoperfusion. Caffeine activates noradrenaline neurons and seems to affect the local release of dopamine. Many of the alerting effects of caffeine may be related to the action of the methylxanthine on serotonin neurons. The methylxanthine induces dose-response increases in locomotor activity in animals. Its psychostimulant action on man is, however, often subtle and not very easy to detect. The effects of caffeine on learning, memory, performance and coordination are rather related to the methylxanthine action on arousal, vigilance and fatigue. Caffeine exerts obvious effects on anxiety and sleep which vary according to individual sensitivity to the methylxanthine. However, children in general do not appear more sensitive to methylxanthine effects than adults. The central nervous system does not seem to develop a great tolerance to the effects of caffeine although dependence and withdrawal symptoms are reported.

#11

Yes! and theres a correlation with ketones?

#12

So my theory is debunked today, my fasting ketones were 0.6 and an hour after my first cup 0.7, and now a couple hours later 0.8. I think it does go back to how my body is utilizing the ketones etc.
Coffee is my drug of choice :money_mouth_face:

#13

Iv’e given up coffee twice in my life and every time I went back it was only to try it out again but I got hooked, its definitely a drug.

(Chris) #14

Mystery solved!

I definitely feel you about the drug thing- it totally is. At least it’s not cigarettes or sugar, though.

#15

not that theres anything wrong with that :joy::joy: