this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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I'm wondering about something a bit beyond the simple "what's the maximum dose not to exceed?". We all know that caffeine, consumed wisely, has a very favorable benefit/risk ratio: improved focus, energy boost, better athletic performance, and even some suggested long- term health benefits from studies.

So my question is: for a healthy adult male, what would be the ideal quantity of caffeine in milligrams (mg) per day to maximize benefits (focus, energy, well-being) while minimizing downsides (anxiety, poor sleep, jitters)?

I'm not looking for the dose to pull an all-nighter or break a record, but really the "cruising" dose for optimal daily health and productivity.

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[–] eatsumbum@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago (3 children)

You might want to look up "half life of caffeine" before you spend all day drinking like that. Your body metabolizes caffeine differently than alcohol.

Alcohol is linier e.g. 1oz/hr. Caffeine is halfed every ~5 hours. So if you start at 100mg, 5 hours later you're going to have 50mg still going, 10 hours down the road you have 25mg. Fun times if you have 4 cups of coffee over a two hour period at 90mg a cup you're going to have ~350mg and it's going to take ~20 hours to get under 25mg.

There are numerous apps to track the actual amount of caffeine in your system at any given time and you might be surprised at how high the numbers go if you haven't tracked it before.

[–] Alfredolin@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

I think your physical activity have an influence on the metabolizing of coffeine.

Source: me. I have noticed a late coffee will more likely mess my sleep if I did not move my ass in the afternoon. Might also simply be the lack of physical activity though.

Great point about half-life, but there's also huge genetic variation - some people with CYP1A2 gene variants metabolize caffeine up to 4x faster than others, which is why some can have an espresso before bed while others get jittery from a small cup in the morning.

[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

~~Yeah I took into account a 5h half life, I'm a tall guy haha~~

Well I did, but messed up something else. It's more like a coffee every 2h or so for me

3mg/kg for me is about 350mg, so if I've not messed up the maths a 2nd time, I'd need to smash 4 coffees in the morning to get up to that level and then one every 2h30 to sustain